Epstein’s money, 4/4: the final ledger

At the end of June 2024, Jeffrey Epstein’s estate held just $2.19 million in cash. It had sold almost every property, paid more than $121 million through the compensation program, settled other survivor claims and completed most of a nine-figure settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands. Published reporting then identifies an IRS refund of roughly $111.6 million. Three months later, total estate assets stood at $145.08 million.

That refund rewrote the ending. An estate expected to run low on money was back above nine figures. The latest quarterly accounting shows $107,644,728.02 in gross assets at June 30, 2026. It also reports $22.5 million still payable under a survivor class settlement and $4.5 million in incurred but unpaid professional fees. Other claims, estate and inheritance taxes, and possible gift-tax liabilities remain unknown or to be determined.

The story cannot be reduced to subtracting $107.6 million in 2026 from $577.7 million in 2019. The first number was a provisional inventory. The second combines cash, receivables and private companies, some still carried at August 2019 values. In between, the same dollars were sometimes sold, taxed, borrowed, repaid and counted again in a different form.

This final installment follows the cash without mistaking it for the fortune. It comes after the documented origins and gaps in Epstein’s wealth, what his banks could see and the Highbridge, Valar, Apollo and ESW portfolio.

The $577.7 million starting point

The probate petition filed on August 15, 2019 lists $577,672,654 in personal and estate property. It includes $56.55 million in cash, $14.30 million in fixed income, $112.68 million in equities, $18.55 million in aircraft, vehicles and boats, and $194.99 million in hedge funds and private equity. Fine art remains marked “TBD,” with no amount in the total.

The six properties add to $180,603,063 in this primary document: New York $55.93 million, Zorro Ranch $17.25 million, Palm Beach $12.38 million, Paris $8.67 million, Great St. James $22.50 million and Little St. James $63.87 million. The $117 million property figure repeated in some coverage roughly matches the real estate subtotal without Little St. James. It is not the complete petition total.

The petition’s footnote matters. Values remained subject to appraisal and date-of-death updates. This was a photograph taken before final tax work, physical inventory and the liquidation of private assets. It established a starting point, not an exit price.

The houses became cash, then the cash moved on

The property liquidation invites a tidy story: six assets, six sales, one total. The public record is messier.

Palm Beach sold for $18.5 million in 2021. The East 71st Street townhouse brought $51 million. The Paris residence sold on June 29, 2022 for roughly $10.4 million at the exchange rate used in contemporaneous coverage. Little and Great St. James sold together for about $60 million in May 2023. Zorro Ranch found a buyer in August 2023, but New Mexico’s disclosure rules left the price private.

The subtotal of known public prices is therefore $139.9 million, plus an unknown amount for Zorro. Forbes reconstructed the sales and prices. The eleventh quarterly accounting confirms the Paris sale and says the net proceeds were still held by the French notary when that report was filed.

Public sale prices are gross. Commissions, closing costs, taxes, creditors and survivor-related transfers sit between the price and the estate’s retained cash. The 2022 settlement also sent half of Little St. James’s net proceeds to the Virgin Islands. Complete closing statements are not public for all six assets, so a single figure for what the estate “kept” would mix published amounts with assumptions.

The first line of claimants: survivors

The Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program operated in 2020 and 2021 under independent administrator Jordana Feldman. The estate’s seventeenth accounting reports $121,127,339.05 as “claims and other amounts paid pursuant to the EVCP.” That wording matters. The filing does not label every dollar as net compensation received by a claimant; it combines claims and other program amounts.

Settlements outside the EVCP form a second line. The same seventeenth accounting gives a cumulative $34.23 million at December 31, 2023. Later filings add $75,000 in Q2 2024, $8,344,610.90 in Q3, $1.275 million in Q4, $1.675 million in Q2 2025 and $3 million in Q4. The reconstructed total at year-end 2025 is $48,599,610.90. Reuters’ reported $49 million rounded figure is consistent with that ledger.

A third line opened in 2026 in Ward v. Indyke. The February 19 settlement agreement provides $35 million if at least forty people are found eligible, and $25 million if there are fewer than forty. The estate must place $12.5 million in a qualified settlement account after preliminary approval, then pay the balance after final approval and the eligibility count. Indyke and Kahn deny the allegations, and the agreement contains no admission of fault or liability.

The estate accounts fit the $35 million branch exactly: $10 million transferred in Q1, $2.5 million in Q2 and $22.5 million still payable at June 30. The first $12.5 million is a transfer into the Qualified Settlement Account, not proof that it has already been distributed to class members. The money remains under court jurisdiction. The settlement hearing is scheduled for September 16, 2026.

The public notice adds a possible deduction. Class counsel will ask for up to 30% of the global amount, plus expenses of up to $1 million, subject to the judge’s decision. The amount available for allocations will be lower than the global settlement if the court awards some or all of those requests.

The Virgin Islands published settlement total: $117.28 million

The settlement announced by the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice on November 30, 2022 required $105 million in cash, $450,000 for environmental remediation around Great St. James and half the proceeds from Little St. James.

The release also says the deal returns more than $80 million in economic-development tax benefits to the territory. Those tax benefits are included in the $105 million cash payment. Adding them would create a false $185 million settlement before the island proceeds.

The seventeenth accounting closes the sequence at $117,282,494.01 paid by December 31, 2023. Subtracting the $105 million, the $450,000 remediation amount and $456,245.01 of final interest leaves $11,376,249 attributable to the net Little St. James share. This figure is derived by subtraction; it is not separately labeled that way on the cover sheet.

The estate borrowed $30 million at 9% to finance part of the settlement. The twentieth accounting records its August 12, 2024 repayment: $31,768,611.14, principal and accrued interest. That is financing debt, not another survivor or government settlement.

The check that brought the estate back

The same twentieth accounting captures the summer 2024 reversal. Total assets rose from $84.44 million on June 30 to $145.08 million on September 30. “Income collected and other increases” reached $112,015,145.16. The public form does not break that line into a precise tax refund.

Reporting by The New York Times, repeated with the figures by the New York Post and Forbes, identifies $111.6 million as an IRS refund. The reports trace it to roughly $190 million in estate taxes paid in July 2020, before several assets, particularly real estate, sold below expected values.

The court filing reports $112,015,145.16 in quarterly increases; published reporting identifies $111.6 million of that increase as the federal refund. The underlying Form 706, IRS notice and detailed refund computation are not among the public records reviewed for this story.

Economically, the refund looks less like new income than the late return of an excessive advance. The estate had paid tax on provisional valuations before knowing the assets’ realized prices. Cash reappeared in 2024, but the transaction began in 2020.

The last balance sheet still contains the past

The twenty-seventh accounting, dated July 30 and docketed July 31, 2026, is the latest snapshot, at June 30:

• cash: $25,704,907.99;
• jewelry and watches: $4,055;
• loans receivable: $3,432,264;
• entities owned by Epstein: $78,503,501.04;
• reported total: $107,644,728.02.

The four components add to $107,644,728.03. The filed total is one cent lower. The discrepancy has no economic significance, but it is methodologically useful: the primary filing is reproduced with its anomaly instead of silently repaired.

The material valuation issue lies elsewhere. The $78.50 million entity line still relies on date-of-death appraisals, according to the filing’s notes. In March 2026, co-executor Darren Indyke told the House Oversight Committee that the two Valar interests might be worth roughly $172 million, while stressing that the estimate was unrealized and the fund duration uncertain.

That estimate does not sit on top of the balance sheet. Valar is already inside the estate-owned entity line. The relevant question is how much an old carrying value should be adjusted, not whether to calculate $107.6 million plus $172 million. A current audited LP statement or realized distribution would be needed to answer it.

The 1953 Trust waiting room

Epstein signed his will and amended the 1953 Trust on August 8, 2019, two days before his death. The will filed in the Virgin Islands pours the residue into the trust. It also grants Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn $250,000 each for serving as executors, payable when probate is complete, with no other executor compensation beyond reasonable reimbursed expenses.

The trust copy published by the U.S. Department of Justice, EFTA01266204, operates at a different scale. Debts, administration expenses and taxes come first. Then three priority bequests follow:

1. $50 million in cash to Karyna Shuliak, plus the purchase of a $50 million annuity;
2. $50 million to Darren Indyke;
3. $25 million to Richard Kahn.

These three ranks total $175 million in nominal bequests, before items 4 through 41. The trust directs the remaining bequests to be paid in order and to lapse where assets are insufficient. It also establishes nominal reserves, including $50 million for claims against the assets and $10 million for challenges to the will or trust.

Shuliak was also to receive the six properties, household items and diamonds. All six properties were sold before final trust funding. The public instrument does not settle what substitute property, if any, would be due after those sales. That question belongs to probate administration and governing law, not a mechanical conversion of sale proceeds into a bequest.

The $250,000 executor fees and the $50 million and $25 million trust bequests to Indyke and Kahn are distinct. The former compensates a role after probate is complete. The latter depends on the trust’s priority rules and whatever survives the claims process. No accounting reviewed for this article documents a distribution to trust beneficiaries.

So where did the money go?

Three major estate-funded outflows are documented: $121.127 million under the EVCP label, $48.600 million in settlements outside the EVCP through year-end 2025, and $117.282 million paid to the Virgin Islands. The estate then transferred $12.5 million into the 2026 class settlement account, with $22.5 million still payable. Even these categories are not perfectly homogeneous: the EVCP line includes “claims and other amounts,” and the class deposit still awaits distribution.

The JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank settlements belong to a different ledger. Those banks funded their own agreements. Their money did not leave the estate. Combining them with estate outflows would measure the wider settlement landscape around Epstein, not the path of his $577.7 million inventory.

The houses generated cash, but complete net proceeds remain unavailable. Reporting says roughly $190 million went to federal estate tax in 2020 and $111.6 million came back in 2024. A $30 million bridge loan funded part of the territory settlement and later cost $31.769 million to repay. Valar remains locked in private funds whose eventual realization may differ sharply from its old carrying value.

The final ledger therefore ends with a precise, provisional answer. At June 30, 2026, the estate reported $107.645 million in gross assets. At least $27 million of liabilities were quantified. Other claims and taxes remained open. Most of the carrying value sat in private entities. The beneficiaries of the 1953 Trust were still behind that line.

Epstein’s fortune did not fall through one hidden trapdoor. It fragmented among survivors, the territory, tax authorities, creditors, professionals and illiquid holdings. Any future inheritance is the residual variable in that equation, not its starting point.

Conclusions supported by the accounts

The amounts cited here are distinguished by their basis: primary document, reported figure, derived calculation or unknown. Quarterly accountings 17 through 27 are read alongside the probate inventory, the USVI settlement, the 2026 class agreement, the will and the 1953 Trust. Reported property prices never become net proceeds without closing records. Valar estimates are never added to a balance that already includes them.

The documents trace a coherent path: the 2019 inventory, reported sales, the Virgin Islands settlement, settlements outside the EVCP, the class settlement and the first three priority bequests fit together. They do not, however, supply a ready-made closing balance. The June 30, 2026 balance sheet even retains a one-cent difference between its components and its total. That cent does not change the estate’s economics; it is a reminder to read the accounts as published rather than silently repair them. The Form 706 and IRS notice, property closing statements, the Zorro Ranch price, current Valar statements, cumulative professional fees, final taxes, other claims and any trust distributions are not public in the records reviewed.

Read the French version.

Main sources

• Probate petition, August 15, 2019, Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, ST-2019-PB-00080.
• Twenty-seventh quarterly accounting, through June 30, 2026, dated July 30 and docketed July 31, 2026.
• Twentieth quarterly accounting, through September 30, 2024, loan repayment and $112.015 million increase line.
• Full seventeenth quarterly accounting, through December 31, 2023, EVCP and USVI figures.
• USVI DOJ, settlement with the estate and co-defendants, November 30, 2022.
• Ward v. Indyke settlement documents and official schedule, accessed August 7, 2026.
• Jeffrey Epstein’s will and 1953 Trust, EFTA01266204.
• U.S. House Oversight Committee, Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke depositions, March 2026.
• Reuters, class settlement of up to $35 million, February 20, 2026.
• Forbes, reconstruction of the property sales, July 22, 2025.
• New York Post, reported amount and origin of the tax refund, January 15, 2025.

Limitations

Quarterly cover sheets publish asset stocks and selected categories of movement; they do not by themselves provide a consolidated statement of every cash flow since 2019. The $111.6 million IRS refund and roughly $190 million paid in 2020 are reported figures; the primary Q3 2024 increase line is broader at $112,015,145.16. Property prices are gross and Zorro Ranch remains undisclosed. The $172 million Valar figure is an oral estimate, not an audited statement or realized distribution. Tax liabilities and some claims remain to be determined. Information reviewed through August 7, 2026.