Many secrets died with Jeffrey Epstein, the high-society pedophile, philanthropist, and financier whose inner circle included princes, a former prime minister, and a former president. But the search for answers continues in New York, where Epstein held court for years before hanging himself in federal prison. One of Epstein’s more puzzling relationships was the one he had with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and his wife, Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, the founder of the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. Could one of Manhattan’s most prominent power couples know more about the Epstein mystery?
The three were close, after all. Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden, dated Epstein for years before she and Dubin married in 1994. Even after Epstein’s conviction in 2008, the couple stayed in contact with the registered sex offender, inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner at their home in Palm Beach the following year. Andersson-Dubin also wrote an email to Epstein’s probation officer, asserting that she was “100% comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein around my children,” who were then all minors. Multiple sources told me last month that Epstein was the godfather to the Dubins’ three children, although a spokesman for Dubin disputed that assertion. (“The Dubins are Jewish and Jewish people do not typically do godparents,” he said.)
Epstein and Dubin had business ties as well. Epstein introduced Dubin to Jes Staley, then a senior executive at JPMorganChase & Co. and now the CEO of Barclays, the big British bank. After JPMorganChase bought control of Highbridge Capital, Dubin’s hedge fund, in stages, starting in 2004, Epstein reportedly received a $15 million fee. Dubin also directed some of Epstein’s money, for which Epstein was a fiduciary, to at least two hedge fund managers—Dan Zwirn and Joseph Kusnan—who once worked at Highbridge before starting their own firms. “Glenn Dubin introduced me to Epstein as a new manager that he was familiar with and thought highly of,” Kusnan wrote me in an email, though he and Epstein met only once, he said, and never communicated again beyond Kusnan delivering “a good rate of return on his modest investment.”
The relationship between Epstein and Dubin also ventured into more controversial realms, if one believes the depositions recently unsealed in an old court case between one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, and Epstein’s longtime companion and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. According to Giuffre’s May 2016 deposition, Dubin was the “first” powerful person that Maxwell sent her to have sex with “after my training.” She also said that she was instructed by Maxwell to have sex with, among others, Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor; George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator; Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor; and Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout. “My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” Giuffre said in her deposition. “[Maxwell and Epstein’s] whole entire lives revolved around sex. They call massages sex. They call modeling sex.” She said Maxwell told her to give Dubin “a massage.” (The Dubins categorically deny Giuffre’s allegations. Their spokesperson also provided evidence they say disproves Giuffre's account. Dershowitz, Mitchell, Richardson, and Brunel have also denied her allegations.)
Then there is Rinaldo Rizzo’s June 2016 deposition, which was also recently unsealed. Rizzo and his wife, Debra, worked for the Dubins, primarily as their full-time chefs, but they did other work for the Dubins too, such as tagging their luggage for the private jet trips and generally being helpful with travel to and between the Dubins’ various homes in Palm Beach; Westchester County; Gothenburg, Sweden; Manhattan; and a sprawling ranch in Gunnison, Colorado. According to the deposition, Rizzo and his wife were preparing dinner for the Dubins in the kitchen of one of their homes when Andersson-Dubin brought in a 15-year-old Swedish girl who had accompanied Epstein and Maxwell on this visit to the Dubins’ home.
Rizzo testified that in late 2004 or early 2005, Andersson-Dubin told the unnamed girl to sit on a barstool in the kitchen. She seemed to be “distraught” and “upset,” Rizzo said, “and she was shaking.” She didn’t want to talk, her head was down, and Rizzo thought she was “on the verge of crying.” According to the deposition, the girl told him and his wife that she worked for Epstein as his “executive personal assistant,” and when Rizzo expressed shock that such a young girl could have that job, “she just breaks down hysterically.” Rizzo stated that the girl told him she was involved in some forced sexual activity at Epstein’s Caribbean island and was told by Maxwell and Epstein not to discuss it. Rizzo said he and his wife were dumbfounded. “We hear people approach and she just shuts up,” Rizzo testified. “Eva comes in and tells her that she will be working for Eva in the city as a nanny.”
But about a month later, according to Rizzo, the Dubins, along with the girl and the Rizzos, were on Dubin’s private jet back to Sweden and the girl was returned home. “We flew to Sweden,” Rizzo said in his deposition, “we stopped at an airport we didn’t usually stop at and she got off the plane.” The Rizzos left the Dubins’ employ in October 2005, following those events, he said in his deposition. “My wife and I had discussed these incidents, and this last one was just, we couldn’t deal with it,” he said.
The Dubins vehemently deny that any such incident had taken place. “There was never a 15-year-old Swedish nanny in the Dubins’ home and flight records for trips to Sweden on the Dubins’ plane do not include any minors other than family members,” said the spokesperson, who shared the records. The Dubins also provided the testimony of their longtime live-in nanny, who attested “with certainty” that the couple had never employed an underage nanny. (Attempts to reach the Rizzos were unsuccessful.)
The spokesperson did confirm, however, that Dubin and his family traveled with Epstein on his private jet. Flight records show that Dubin and his family occasionally flew on Epstein’s planes, often between Palm Beach and New York, where they both had homes. Ghislaine Maxwell also hitched a ride on Dubin’s plane, twice, alongside Dubin’s children, on that same route—once in 2004 and again in 2010, after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. “Epstein was not on either flight,” Dubin’s spokesman said. Jim Dowd, who piloted jets for both Dubin and Epstein, told me the men were “friends” and liked “vacationing together.” (The Dubin spokesperson disputed that characterization.) The private jets, Dowd said, gave the two men a way to avoid the delays and tedium of commercial travel. “The only thing money cannot buy is time,” he explained. “These planes are time machines. They save lots of time.”
The Dubins’ social circle overlapped with Epstein in New York, too. A source with knowledge of the matter said that Andersson-Dubin was “friendly” with Lana Pozhidaeva, the Russian model who was recently in the news for having received a $55,000 donation from Epstein for her New York-based nonprofit, Education Advance. (The Dubin spokesperson insisted the Dubins don’t know her.) Pozhidaeva worked for Brunel’s modeling agency, MC2 Model Management, and appeared to live in an Upper East Side apartment building where Epstein had been accused of housing underage models. (Pozhidaeva did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment.)
And then there is the Dubins’ link to Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder and CEO of L Brands—a retail empire that includes Victoria’s Secret—who was Epstein’s only known financial client. It’s not unusual, of course, for billionaires to flock together. Wexner’s infamous ties to Epstein have been well documented by now, although his friendship with the Dubins has never before been reported. Yes, it was true, Dubin’s spokesman told me, that Wexner had allowed the Dubins and their three children the exclusive use of Limitless, Wexner’s $100 million, 316-foot private yacht, for a Mediterranean vacation. (Wexner’s wife, Abigail, “graciously invited the Dubins to use their boat for four days while Eva Dubin was recovering from breast cancer surgery,” Dubin’s spokesperson explained.) But according to one source, it was quite unusual for Wexner to let anyone use Limitless when he was not on board.
The source recalled talking to Debra Rizzo, the Dubins’ onetime chef, about the trip. “She was telling me how magnificent this thing was,” this person said, “and she said that the captain came over to her and she said he goes, ‘I’ve got to ask you, what does your boss do? Who is he?’ And she’s like, ‘Well, it’s Glenn Dubin. He runs a hedge fund.’ He’s like, ‘Oh. I’m just baffled because nobody is allowed on this boat. Nobody. We’ve never had anybody on this boat other than the owner.’ So she said it was like a really, really big deal to them and they were shocked that Dubin was on this thing.” (A spokesperson for Wexner declined to comment.)