page_title: Les Wexner
section_title: Jeffrey Epstein association
hierarchical_section_title: Les Wexner / Career / Jeffrey Epstein association
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking northeast across 71st Street
context_page_description: Leslie Herbert Wexner is an American billionaire businessman, the founder and chairman emeritus of L Brands. Wexner grew a business empire after starting The Limited, a clothing retailer with a restricted selection of profitable items, and later expanded his holdings to include Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie and Fitch, Express, and Bath & Body Works. Wexner announced, in February 2020, that he was transitioning from CEO of L Brands into the role of chairman emeritus.
context_section_description: Wexner had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein that began in the 1980s and continued until at least 2007.  He was the primary billionaire client of Epstein, a financier that claimed to only work with clients with a net worth of one billion USD or greater. Epstein became Wexner's financial manager in 1987.  Wexner purchased the New York property, the Herbert N. Straus House, in 1989 and later transferred it to Epstein in the mid-1990s following his marriage to Abigail. In July of 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney and also instated him as a trustee on the board of the Wexner Foundation.
  Wexner has been accused of failing to take action when complaints were raised against Epstein, including after executives of L Brands reported (in the mid-1990s) that Epstein was abusing his power and connection to Wexner by posing as a recruiter of Victoria's Secret models.  The artist Maria Farmer contacted local and federal authorities about an assault she allegedly endured by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell while working as an artist-in-residence on Wexner's Ohio property in 1996.  Within a year of Farmer's complaint, the actress Alicia Arden filed a police report in Los Angeles detailing that Epstein had misrepresented himself as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret prior to another alleged assault.
  In early 2006, Epstein was charged in Florida with "multiple counts of molestation and unlawful sexual activity with a minor."  The New York Times reported that it was 18 months after the charges were raised that Wexner cut his ties to Epstein. 
  In August 2019, following Epstein's second incarceration and prior to his death, Wexner addressed the Wexner Foundation in writing, releasing a statement that his former financial advisor, Jeffrey Epstein, had “misappropriated vast sums of money” from him and from his family. Wexner retained services of criminal defense attorney Mary Jo White of Debevoise & Plimpton.
  Wexner faced additional public scrutiny in late 2019 (and again in early 2020) when a group of wrestlers who are survivors of the Ohio State University abuse scandal publicly called on state and federal officials to conduct further inquiry into Maria Farmer's allegations of sexual assault at the Wexner property.  The wrestlers called for accountability surrounding the Wexner family's involvement in Epstein's abuse and raised the issue of the continuing influence of Abigail and Leslie Wexner serving as the "biggest and best-known benefactors" of the university.
caption: The Herbert N. Straus House in Upper East Side
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