Jeffrey Epstein Invested With Peter Thiel, and His Estate Is Reaping Millions
Mr. Epstein, the late financier and sex offender, started by putting $40 million into Valar Ventures, a firm backed by Mr. Thiel. Today that investment is worth about $170 million.
Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender, met with many powerful people in finance and business during his career, but the financier invested with only a few of them.
One of those people was Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire.
In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was co-founded by Mr. Thiel. Today that investment is worth nearly $170 million, according to a confidential financial analysis of the late Mr. Epstein’s estate reviewed by The New York Times and a statement provided by a Valar spokesman.
The investment in Valar, which specializes in providing start-up capital to financial services tech companies, is the largest asset still held by Mr. Epstein’s estate, some six years after he died by suicide in federal custody while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Mr. Epstein’s investment with Mr. Thiel’s firm has not been previously reported or publicly disclosed.
There’s a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women. Those victims have already received monetary settlements from the estate, which required them to sign broad releases that gave up the right to bring future claims against it or individuals associated with it.
The money is more likely to be distributed to one of Mr. Epstein’s former girlfriends and two of his long-term advisers, who have been named the beneficiaries of his estate.
That outcome doesn’t sit well with one of the lawyers who fought for years to help the women receive restitution. David Boies, who represented several of Mr. Epstein’s victims, said federal authorities seemed to lose interest after Mr. Epstein’s death and the successful conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, his former companion, on sex-trafficking charges.
He said prosecutors in New York had made a mistake in not going for civil forfeiture after Mr. Epstein killed himself, which would have allowed the federal government to potentially seize the remaining assets.
“While we are grateful for the government’s prosecution of Epstein and Maxwell, the truth is that, both before and afterwards, the government was largely asleep at the switch,” Mr. Boies said.
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