It’s no secret that Jeffrey Epstein had a vast Rolodex of powerful executives. But how did he build that network in the first place?
The Fortune newsroom has been digging into that question in the weeks since the DOJ released 3 million documents about the case, including reams of Epstein’s email correspondence. This past week, we published a deep dive into Epstein’s relationship with the person that was perhaps his most prominent business contact: Microsoft (No. 14) cofounder Bill Gates, who was the richest man in the world when Epstein started chasing him. Fortune’s Eva Roytburg and Jim Edwards found that the relationship was one that Epstein very carefully and diligently engineered, following a playbook that he also deployed with other powerful subjects, including Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, to varying degrees of success.
The method essentially boiled down to: Target an executive; surround the target by forging relationships with less prominent contacts in their orbit; relentlessly seek introductions, meetings, and information on the individual; offer a range of services from tax advice to exit agreements, from investment tips to women; and keep all receipts of those interactions—for blackmail—in case the relationships soured.
In the case of Gates, Epstein made himself initially seem more credible by establishing a relationship with former Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky and Sinofsky’s longtime partner Melanie Walker, a medical doctor and senior official at the Gates Foundation, as well as with Boris Nikolic, who did a stint as Gates’ top science advisor.
“Jeffrey Epstein built his network the way a fixer always does: by making himself useful in moments of vulnerability,” Eva told me. “He negotiated high-profile executive exits, supplied access to women, and coached the powerful through crises both petty and life-altering. To reach the very top—men like Bill Gates and Elon Musk—he worked through intermediaries, collecting secrets until he had enough leverage to hint at access, repayment, or both.”
For more on what Eva and Jim learned from digging into this tangled network of power and manipulation, read: How Jeffrey Epstein pulled Bill Gates and Microsoft into a web of sex, money, and secrets.
In other news, the Oscars are this weekend. And the Best Picture nominees have an important thing in common: Not one of the 10 was filmed in Los Angeles. It’s more evidence that the Hollywood business model—one where a movie industry concentrated in L.A. set the agenda for the entertainment industry—is in a death spiral. Fortune’s Geoff Colvin has the story.
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Quick note: This week, we announced the Fortune 500 Innovation Forum, planned for Nov. 16-17 in Detroit. There, we’ll foster conversations about the role of capitalism and competition in America. Learn more.
