The Greatest Heist Book 2 | Chapter 1 The Gathering

Ohio, 1995. Four men came together to rescue a failing real estate dream. 13 years later, the same four men were central to the worst financial crash in a century.

Every empire begins as a private geometry — a few men, a clean sheet of land, and the belief that rules are for someone else.

It’s the central lie at the heart of a conspiracy - one that took shape in the fog clinging to Ohio’s rolling hills in the spring of 1995

From the unfinished steps of his estate, Les Wexner stared into it. Fifty-seven years old. The undisputed king of Ohio—Victoria’s Secret, The Limited, Bath & Body Works. An empire built on understanding what American women wanted to buy and what American men wanted to see.

But his latest project was collapsing.

New Albany—ten thousand acres carved from cornfields. A gated enclave for the rich, white, and powerful—where people like him wouldn’t have to live among people who weren’t. Where democracy stayed outside the gates.

But the financing had fallen apart. His previous lawyer had met an untimely end in what one local newspaper called a mob hit. Then the police chief misplaced the case files.

Wexner needed someone with a knack for handling money - even if it wasn’t always lawful.

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Jeffrey Epstein entered Wexner’s life in 1986, at a party in New York. Five years later, Wexner granted him power of attorney over his personal fortune.

Now 37 years old, Epstein was a regular fixture around Wexner. Some whispered boyfriend. Others said protégé. Heir apparent.

Nobody quite knew where he came from. Nobody understood what he did but he had earned Wexner’s complete trust.

Epstein had a history or breaking the rules. He’d left Bear Stearns after violating regulations for his client Edgar Bronfman—a Wexner friend. He’d pulled off a Ponzi scheme at Towers Financial that sent Steve Hoffenberg to prison for eighteen years and disappeared $450 million.

If anyone knew how to game the system, it was Jeffrey Epstein. And now, he was gathering the people who could fix Wexner’s latest problem, New Albany.

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Jack Kessler was one of Ohio’s most connected lawyers. When Wexner stepped down from the Banc One (later renamed Bank One) board in 1991, he named Kessler his successor. Kessler was a partner in New Albany.

Bank One—the McCoy family’s empire—had backed New Albany from the start. The financing had become what lawyers delicately called “a total mess.”

Over three years, the mess was mysteriously cleaned up. Debt restructured. Development accelerated. Money flowed in through untraceable shell companies that attracted no regulatory attention.

And as New Albany emerged from near collapse, Jeffrey Epstein’s power grew.

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In 1996, Wexner installed Epstein in an executive office at The Limited’s headquarters—Three Limited Parkway in Columbus. Epstein was calling the shots at The Limited, including spinning off Abercrombie & Fitch (whose founders are also embroiled in a human trafficking scandal).

During that IPO, JPMorgan dispatched an equities banker named Jes Staley to Columbus. In a recently unsealed statement, Staley acknowledged this first meeting with Epstein—years earlier than their previously reported initial meeting in 2000 when Staley took over JP Morgan’s private banking division.

Their client relationship quickly turned into a friendship that lasted 20 years.

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Official State filings listed Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner as co-presidents of the New Albany Company in 1998, Kessler became chairman and simultaneously took on a special project in his capacity as a Bank One board member: finding a new CEO for the bank.

Behind the paywall: Meet the 4th man—and the lie at the center of the conspiracy.