Jeffrey Epstein named a rotating cast of top Wall Street executives, as well as former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, to serve as executors of his estate, according to copies of his last will and testament that were released by the Justice Department.
Various versions of the will included in the document release provided a real-time glimpse of the power players who were coming in and out of Mr. Epstein’s circles over the years.
Jimmy Cayne, the chief executive of Bear Stearns, was named as one of the executors in versions of his will that Mr. Epstein signed in 2003 and 2004. Mr. Cayne, who died in 2021, mentored Mr. Epstein when he worked at the Wall Street firm decades earlier, serving as a springboard for Mr. Epstein’s ensuing career.
In subsequent versions of his will, Mr. Cayne was no longer listed as an executor. Instead, Mr. Epstein named James Staley, a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, as one of the executors, alongside some of Mr. Epstein’s other acquaintances. During Mr. Epstein’s 15 years as a customer of JPMorgan, Mr. Staley was his chief advocate, repeatedly thwarting attempts by other employees to cut ties with the sex offender, The New York Times has reported.
Mr. Epstein’s 2012 will included a new name: Andrew Farkas, a billionaire real estate mogul, who was named an alternate executor in the absence of any of the three primary executors.
Mr. Farkas co-owned a marina in St. Thomas with Mr. Epstein for more than a decade, just a few miles north of the private island that stood at the center of Mr. Epstein’s trafficking operation. This week’s document release from Congress also included several photographs showing Mr. Farkas and Mr. Epstein together.
In a 2014 version of Mr. Epstein’s will, Mr. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president, was named as a backup executor. Mr. Summers is one of a handful of high-profile men who have been forced out of public life after a chummy relationship with Mr. Epstein was revealed; in Mr. Summers’ case, emails released by Congress showed that the pair traded notes about how to pursue women in the final months of Mr. Epstein’s life.
Representatives for Mr. Staley, Mr. Farkas and Mr. Summers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In later years, Mr. Epstein cycled through another round of executors. A previously released version of his will from January 2019 listed Kathy Ruemmler, a former top Obama aide who is now general counsel at Goldman Sachs, as one of the will’s backup executors. A Goldman spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
David Enrich is a deputy investigations editor for The Times. He writes about law and business.
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