Seven Years After His Death, Jeffrey Epstein's Web of Enablers Still Haunts the Powerful

Jeffrey Epstein has been dead for seven years. His crimes -- sex trafficking, financial fraud, exploitation of minors -- are well-documented. Yet his shadow continues to loom over boardrooms, universities, and royal families because the institutions that enabled him never faced real consequences.

David Enrich, Deputy Investigations Editor at The New York Times, is working on a book about Epstein's finances. In a recent interview with WOSU Public Media, Enrich laid out a damning pattern: Epstein's rise wasn't the work of a criminal mastermind. It was the result of repeated institutional failures by people who should have known better.

The College Dropout Who Lied His Way to Wall Street

Epstein grew up solidly middle-class in a gated community in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He was good at math and piano. He dropped out of college, attended some graduate classes without earning a degree, and landed a job teaching high school math and physics at Dalton, a prestigious Manhattan private school.

Here's the first red flag: Dalton hired him despite his lack of a college degree. According to Enrich, Epstein appears to have lied about his educational background. The school never checked.

When Epstein was about to be laid off, he got lucky again. He bumped into the parent of one of his students -- someone with Wall Street connections -- who introduced him to Ace Greenberg, a top executive at Bear Stearns. That introduction launched Epstein's financial career.

"What if the Dalton school had actually done a modicum of due diligence on this guy they were hiring?" Enrich asked. "What if Bear Stearns had done a modicum of due diligence?"

They didn't. And that pattern -- of institutions choosing convenience over scrutiny -- repeated itself for decades.

A Pattern of Looking the Other Way

Epstein wasn't just good at math. He was good at exploiting the willful blindness of wealthy, powerful people who found it more profitable to stay in his orbit than to ask hard questions.

"There are people and institutions repeatedly that have the opportunity to figure out what Epstein was doing, and not just with his sex trafficking of women, just the frauds that he was perpetrating in the business world," Enrich said. "And they either decide not to pursue this or bring this to people's attention, or they just kind of look the other way."

Why? Because it was easier. Because Epstein had money and access. Because challenging him meant risking your own standing in elite circles.

This is how a man with no college degree, no legitimate credentials, and a history of lies became a fixture among billionaires, academics, and politicians. He didn't outsmart anyone. He just counted on their greed and cowardice.

The Institutions That Failed

The list of enablers is long and shameful. Bear Stearns gave him a job without vetting him. Dalton hired him to teach children despite his fabricated resume. Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria's Secret parent company L Brands, handed Epstein control of his fortune and his New York mansion -- the same mansion where much of Epstein's abuse took place.

Banks processed his transactions. Universities took his money. Media outlets gave him a platform as a "financier" and "philanthropist" without scrutinizing where his wealth came from or what he was doing with it.

Julie Brown and the Miami Herald brought Epstein's crimes back into the spotlight in 2018 with a groundbreaking investigation into his 2008 plea deal -- a sweetheart arrangement that let him serve just 13 months in a county jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor. That deal, brokered by then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, shielded Epstein's co-conspirators from prosecution and kept his victims in the dark.

Acosta later became Trump's Secretary of Labor. He resigned in 2019 after the Epstein scandal resurfaced.

Why This Still Matters

Epstein is dead. But the systems that enabled him are still intact. The wealthy men who partied on his private island, flew on his plane, and accepted his money have largely escaped accountability. Some have faced lawsuits. A few have seen their reputations damaged. But institutional consequences? Barely.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime associate and accomplice, is serving 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking. She is one of the only people to face criminal charges in connection with Epstein's crimes.

The rest -- the banks, the schools, the executives, the politicians -- have moved on. They've issued statements. They've claimed ignorance. They've hoped the public will forget.

We shouldn't. Because the Epstein story isn't just about one predator. It's about a culture of complicity that protects powerful men at the expense of their victims. It's about institutions that prioritize reputation over justice. It's about a system where the rich and connected get second chances, third chances, and plea deals, while survivors are left to fight for scraps of accountability.

Epstein's shadow lingers because we let it. Because we haven't dismantled the structures that made his crimes possible. Because we still live in a world where asking hard questions about powerful people is seen as rude, inconvenient, or career-limiting.

Seven years after his death, the question isn't just who Jeffrey Epstein was. It's who enabled him -- and why we're still letting them get away with it.