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1982 with billionaire clients, including Marvin Davis, a real estate developer who owns Twentieth Century Fox, and Herb Seigel, a major media investor in the 1980s. Epstein is dating Morgan Fairchild, a television star in the new mega-rich-family soap operas, Dallas and Falcon Crest (plot lines from which Epstein might easily step). Now begins the Concorde phase of his life—and the Concorde phase of the 1980s. If the 80s are happening pell mell in New York, they’re happening at double time and catch up speed in London. Epstein is 30 years old and living, in Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous fashion (he befriends the show’s star, Robin Leach), at English shooting parties at country estates with Saturday night black tie dinners, where he’s meeting the over-the-top families of Europe. “T didn’t take it seriously,” Epstein recounts. “I was not caught up in it. I wasn’t trying to make a billion dollars. There was no ultimate goal. It was just fun to meet smart people, interesting people. But no long-range plans. Often no short-term plans either. I would head to Kennedy and, on the theory that most important events in one’s life are purely a result of serendipity, I wouldn’t decide where I was going until I got there.” At the same time, he is developing a unique perception, or, at least a market differentiation: the hyper wealthy had signifcantly different problems than the very wealthy. Dealing with a billion dollars was different from dealing with $100 million: “If you had a billion dollars I would think the last thing you should be worried about was money, in truth money, was what they most worried about. How to make more of it, how to give away more of it, how to protect you children from it, how to hide it from your wife or husband, how to minimize your taxes on it. The traditional wealth service structure, an accountant, and investment advisor, a personal lawyer, and an idiot brother-in-law, became hopelessly outdated as fortunes eincreased exponentially . “You can’t spend a billion dollars, you can just reallocate it to a different investment classes. And you can’t give away a billion dollars without a vast staff, in effect going into the business of giving away money, yet another business you are likely not to know very much about” At just about this point in the narrative, the questions or the incredulity begins in social circles and eventually in the media. He begins to acquire the major symbols of riches but does this without position, public holdings, or transparent paper trails. How can a person have enough money to merit increasing attention, but no clear way of having gotten it? Epstein gets stuck in that tautology. He may be rich, but he is without institutional protection or bona fides. He isin a questionable substrata of wealth. He’s a freelancer. That’s the rub: he doesn’t work for anyone. Without institutional credentials HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022854