Jeffrey Epstein's Florida plea deal was actually no big deal for his bank account.
During the 2008 economic crisis, Epstein's financial firm lost more than $150 million — a blow paired with his arrest on sex trafficking charges around the same time. Those charges were traded for one count of soliciting prostitution and Epstein's registration as a sex offender under a sweetheart plea deal, but neither of those things stopped Epstein from more than making up his losses in the years after, The New York Times reports.
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Financial Trust continued to report negative revenue for the next few years until Epstein ditched the business in 2012 and started a "DNA data-mining service" called Southern Trust, the Times reports. That business reported over $50 million in revenue in 2013, and continued to be profitable in the following years. Epstein "paid himself handsomely" throughout all of this, the Times documents, earning at least $400 million "in dividends and other payments" from his companies starting in 1999.
After reporting by the Miami Herald revealed how then-Florida prosecutor Alex Acosta — later President Trump's labor secretary — arranged a plea deal that helped bury Epstein's sex crimes, Epstein was arrested again in New York under similar charges. Epstein committed suicide in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.
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