THE GREATEST HEIST: Part 1 Recap
How Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein pulled off the biggest crime in history
For 40 years, a criminal network systematically looted $44.7 trillion from the American economy, ascended to the US presidency, and plunged the world into chaos that threatens us all to this day.
This is an ongoing real-time investigation series
PART ONE:
Chapter 1: The Olympic Tower Convergence (1981)
A single party at Olympic Tower brings together the architects of America’s destruction. Donald Trump meets arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Jeffrey Epstein, expelled from Bear Stearns for insider trading, finds new employment laundering Iran-Contra money. Robert Maxwell coordinates from across the street. The networks converge, the money flows begin, the heist launches.
Chapter 2: The Soviet Money Pipeline (1976-1991)
KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov directs Robert Maxwell to “infect capitalism with our money.” Maxwell builds the infrastructure—7,000 bank accounts, 84 shell companies—to move billions from the collapsing USSR into Western banks. When Maxwell dies mysteriously in November 1991, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell inherit not just his network, but potentially $600 million in CIA slush funds.
Chapter 3: The Extraction Method (1991-2004)
The methodology emerges: create crisis, position for profit, extract value, move money offshore. Epstein perfects the formula—$450 million at Towers Financial, repeated at Drexel Burnham, Pan Am, Bear Stearns. Always the same amount, always the same protection. What prosecutors call Ponzi schemes are actually systematic extraction operations.
Chapter 4: The Palm Beach Break (2004)
Trump and Epstein’s friendship dies over real estate, not trafficking. Trump knew about the Mar-a-Lago recruitment for four years—it wasn’t enough to end their partnership. But losing the Maison L’Amitié auction was. The property’s sale to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for a $53 million profit during the 2008 crash exhibits every hallmark of money laundering.
Chapter 5: Black Monday’s Architects (1987-Present)
October 19, 1987: Markets crash 22.6%. Trump, Epstein, Leon Black, and Tom Barrack are perfectly positioned—they didn’t predict the crash, they triggered it. The pattern repeats: position for collapse, extract during chaos, profit from taxpayer bailouts. Each cycle transfers wealth from American families to offshore accounts.
Chapter 6: The Concorde Deception (1991-1992)
Ghislaine Maxwell’s $4,000 Concorde flight to New York wasn’t an escape—it was a carefully orchestrated arrival. The “broke heiress” narrative concealed the truth: she and Epstein had worked together since the early 1980s, inheriting Robert Maxwell’s $3 billion criminal empire. The offshore accounts, PROMIS software backdoors, and intelligence files didn’t disappear with Maxwell—they got new management.
Chapter 7: The Cultivation of Donald Trump (1977-1989) The KGB spent 12 years constructing Trump as their perfect asset. Starting with Ivana in 1977, through surveillance networks in the 1980s, to the 1987 Moscow activation where Trump published anti-NATO ads the KGB celebrated as successful “active measures.” By 1989, standing barefoot on Maxwell’s yacht, Trump had been fully verified as reliable—vain enough to never realize he’d been built for this purpose.
Chapter 8: The $50 Billion Russian Laundromat (1991)
As seven Communist Party finance officials die from “window disease” after the failed August coup, $50 billion in Soviet assets hemorrhages West. Maxwell’s death leaves a treasure map: $780 million in stolen CIA funds, $600 million in Israeli slush funds, billions in Soviet commissions. The money doesn’t disappear—it needs new management. Trump Tower becomes the laundromat, Epstein becomes the architect, and American taxpayers become the unwitting funders of their own destruction.
Chapter 9: The $450 Million Windfall That Saved Trump (1996)
Trump stood negative $100 million in debt, radioactive to every American bank. Six years later he’s back on Forbes with exactly $450 million—the precise amount Epstein stole through Towers Financial. The resurrection happened at Moscow’s Baltschug-Kempinski Hotel, where Trump met Felix Sater, Leon Black, and Mogilevich’s network. The Chemical-Chase bank merger created chaos perfect for washing hundreds of millions. Trump’s pre-2000 banking records have vanished completely. The money appeared through Epstein’s Virgin Islands entities, blessed by Russian intelligence who saw their perfect American asset. He had sold himself.
Chapter 10: Too Big To Fail (1991-1998)
Vyacheslav Ivankov walks into Trump’s Taj Mahal with suitcases containing millions. Trump’s casinos rack up over 100 money-laundering violations but escape prosecution—Manhattan DA Morgenthau’s 1991 case simply vanishes after Trump donates to Giuliani’s campaign. William K. Black’s term fits perfectly: “control fraud”—using legitimate business to defraud shareholders while extracting real cash. Trump, Epstein, and Maxwell all operated through Bear Stearns’ Ace Greenberg, who arranged the junk bonds funding the Taj. The casinos became industrial laundries processing billions while “losing money” on paper. Intelligence protection from CIA connections kept them all untouchable. By 1996, billions had washed through, infecting stocks, real estate, banks—weaponizing American capitalism itself.
What happens when every financial crisis becomes an opportunity? When disasters aren’t predicted but manufactured? When the very systems designed to protect America become the weapons used against it?
How they pulled it off—again and again and again—and how they got away with it.
And it continues until today.
BOOK 2 Epstein, JP Morgan and The 2008 Collapse is here
The Greatest Heist investigation is a Narativ.org production. For corrections, clarifications, or to provide evidence: next@narativ.org
This is a living document, updated as new evidence emerges and new chapters publish.
Zev your graphics and music are wonderful. Reinvesting in the pod. ❤️
Looking forward to Part 2 🙌🏻