Jeffrey Epstein’s first criminal conviction was far earlier than thought

The release of a 1981 deposition transcript reveals an earlier conviction for the late sex offender… and not for the reasons you might think.

In the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, Jeffrey Epstein was working at Bear Stearns, the New York-based investment bank and trading firm that eventually collapsed in 2008.

At this time, Epstein lived in anonymity. It would be decades before he’d become a household name for conspiracy theories and a talking point at White House press briefings.

Since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, a virtual army of journalists has worked (myself included) to piece together Epstein’s past and how he became the infamous billionaire sex offender he became.

Part of Epstein’s mystique is how little we’ve heard directly from Epstein himself over the years. Though he had appeared in newspapers for various reasons, rarely was he the direct subject of the story before the early 2000s. Two of the earliest profiles on Epstein came in 2002 and 2003, under alluring titles such as Jeffrey Epstein: International Money Man of Mystery and The Talented Mr. Epstein.

Now, more of the puzzle surrounding Epstein’s opaque past was filled in this week with the release of a 1981 deposition transcript in which Epstein was questioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of an insider-trading investigation into Bear Stearns.

Here’s what we learned.