19+ Things Les Wexner Said Under Oath About His Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein

Les Wexner sat for a five-hour Epstein deposition. Here’s what he said, in his own words.

Les Wexner built an American retail empire from a $5,000 family loan, scaling from one store in 1963 to roughly 10,000 across 20 brands, including The Limited and Victoria’s Secret. He retired as a long-serving Fortune 500 CEO with a reputation for meticulous, exacting control.

On February 18, 2026, under subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, he sat for a nearly five-hour deposition about Jeffrey Epstein. It was the first time he had been compelled to answer, under oath, the questions that had followed his name for more than a decade.

What emerged was a portrait of a man who, by his own testimony, handed near-total control of his personal finances, his estate, his foundation, and his aircraft to a con artist he barely knew, asked almost no questions, and says he was robbed blind.

What follows is what Wexner told the committee. This article makes no judgment about the accuracy or credibility of his account. It simply reports what he said.

1. Wexner grew up with no money and became one of the richest men in America. He was raised, in his words, in a “very poor family.” His aunt loaned him her life savings, $5,000, so he could show a bank enough cash to borrow more. He opened his first store in 1963. Within six years he had six stores and took the company public, giving stock to nearly everyone who worked there, including cleaning staff. That origin story matters because it shapes how he described being conned: a man who built everything himself couldn’t conceive of someone dismantling it from the inside.

2. Wexner first met Epstein by accident in the early 1980s, in the back seat of a car. He was in Florida for the first time, being driven around by his friends Bob and Wendy Meister. Bob pulled over, pointed out a man on the street, and said he was “a really smart, savvy guy named Jeffrey.” Wexner met him through the car window. They drove off. That, he testified, was essentially it. He had never heard of Epstein before that moment and had no idea what he did for a living.

3. A Vanity Fair report claimed Bob Meister later warned Wexner to stay away from Epstein. Wexner denied it, repeatedly and flatly. The 2021 article stated that after the introduction, Meister began hearing “disturbing stories about Epstein’s sexual proclivities.” Wexner’s response to multiple variations of that question was a single word: “Never.” He also noted that Meister was not at his 60th birthday party, which was attended by Senator Lieberman, John Glenn, Shimon Peres, and Max Fisher.

4. Wexner hired Epstein to manage his personal finances after a casual referral from the same Meisters. He told the committee that his existing financial person “wasn’t doing a good enough job.” The Meisters suggested Epstein. Wexner called him. Epstein came, looked things over, said nothing was critically wrong, and offered to clean it up. When Wexner asked what he owed, Epstein declined payment. That refusal, Wexner said looking back, “was part of the con.”

5. Wexner testified that he never considered Epstein a friend. “I never went to lunch or dinner or a movie or had a cup of coffee with Jeffrey,” he said. He compared the relationship to the one he has with his attorney: professional, friendly in manner, but not personal. When pressed on why so many people described them as close friends, he had a direct answer: “He would tell them that.”

6. Wexner sold Epstein the nine-story Manhattan mansion at 9 East 71st Street for roughly $20 million. He had originally purchased the property, which was a school at the time, in the 1980s. The renovation took three years. Epstein approached him about buying it. Wexner testified he believed he received a fair price. His own lawyers later told the Department of Justice that Epstein had in fact acquired the property at a “deeply discounted” price. Wexner told the committee he had “never heard that before.”

7. Wexner’s company sold Epstein a corporate 737 airplane for $6 million, which he described as fair market value. He testified that Epstein never used Wexner’s personal aircraft, never brought guests on flights using Wexner’s plane, and that Wexner himself never flew on any aircraft owned or operated by Epstein.

8. Wexner visited Epstein’s island, his Palm Beach home, and his New Mexico ranch, and thought all three were underwhelming. The Palm Beach house was “pretty modest.” The Virgin Islands property, which would later become infamous, he described as “a pile of rocks” with no trees, no sand, and “like a pueblo building, maybe a one-room and a bathroom” when he visited around 1998. Each time, Wexner said, the visit followed the same pattern: Epstein wanted him to see it, they flew in, looked around for an hour, got back on the plane, and went home.

9. Epstein used Victoria’s Secret as a cover story to approach women, and Wexner confronted him about it at least once. When he heard Epstein was telling women he was a Victoria’s Secret talent scout, he called him immediately. Epstein denied it and said, “Do you think I’m stupid?” Wexner said he warned him he “would be dead” if it was true, and believed the denial. In 1997, a model named Alicia Arden reported that a man identifying himself as a Victoria’s Secret scout invited her to his hotel room to audition for the catalog and then grabbed her and tried to undress her. When the committee asked about a second similar incident in 2004, involving a woman named Elizabeth Thai, Wexner said he had never heard that story.

10. Epstein name-dropped constantly, and Wexner found it credible every time. Wexner told the committee that Epstein would claim to know virtually anyone: “I know President Clinton, I know the Pope, I know God.” Looking back, Wexner said the endless name-dropping was itself part of the con, a way of making Epstein seem connected enough to be trusted.

11. Survivor Virginia Giuffre has accused Wexner of sexual acts with her on multiple occasions. He denied it flatly, saying she must be “confused” and adding, “How could I have contact? I don’t even know her.” He testified that neither Epstein nor Maxwell ever mentioned Giuffre’s name to him, and that the name meant nothing to him when the committee raised it.

12. Epstein survivor Maria Farmer reportedly spent a summer in a guest house adjacent to Wexner’s New Albany, Ohio property in 1996, where she says she was assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell. Wexner testified he never met Farmer and had no knowledge she was ever on or near his property. When the committee told him that at least one of his security staff had confirmed to the Washington Post that Farmer was guarded there, Wexner said he would “doubt that. It’s frankly impossible. Impossible.” He also denied that Farmer had to call his wife for permission to leave.

13. Epstein stole at least $100 million from Wexner, possibly several hundred million, and the full amount may never be known. Wexner’s own lawyers told the DOJ that Epstein’s theft and fees appear to account for “virtually all of Epstein’s wealth.” When the committee asked about a specific figure of $46 million, Wexner said the actual number was “at least $100 million.” He testified that he does not know the precise total and believes he never will. He said Epstein “probably stole from us more than we even know about yet because it was disguised.”

14. One method of theft reportedly involved Epstein moving more than a billion dollars in Limited stock through trusts, pocketing a portion of the proceeds. Wexner testified he had no knowledge of this. When the committee described the mechanism, his response was “I’m effing surprised. Shocked.” He added that his wife was the one who set up trusts for their children, and he had no idea of the amounts involved.

15. Around $20 million in stock and cash from two of Wexner’s charitable foundations was contributed to one of Epstein’s charities. Again, Wexner said he had no knowledge. “Effing shocked. I’m appalled. I never heard that.”

16. $25,000 quarterly payments were billed from Wexner’s accounts to Dr. Michael Landon, an OB-GYN and chair of the department at Ohio State University, for at least one year in 2005. The committee noted that Epstein was making these payments and they were traced to Wexner’s accounts. Wexner identified Landon as the doctor who delivered his children after a complicated pregnancy. He testified he never introduced Landon to Epstein, was unaware of any Epstein donations to Ohio State, and had “not till this moment” known about the payments.

17. An FBI PowerPoint presentation titled “Prominent Names” contained a claim that Epstein “earned his money from having homosexual sex with Wexner.” The committee asked Wexner directly about the allegation. He called it “wacky” and said he had never had a sexual relationship with any man. When separately asked if he had ever had sexual contact with any individual introduced to him by Epstein or Maxwell, he said no.

18. Epstein sent Wexner an unsent email, recovered in the DOJ files, that reads in part: “I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me.” Wexner said he never received the email and dismissed it as “a letter to the file, a memo to yourself, a cover-your-ass kind of thing.” The same email referenced “gang stuff for over 15 years” that Abigail was “unaware of,” claimed Epstein had protected Wexner in family and business disputes, and included the line: “I always told you I would never under any circumstances give it up or put you in harm’s way, no matter who, what, or when.” Wexner said he had no idea what any of it referred to.

19. Wexner signed a birthday note to Epstein’s 50th birthday book that read “Your friend, Leslie,” accompanied by a hand-drawn illustration of women’s breasts. “Sadly I did,” he told the committee when asked to confirm authorship. He read the note into the record. When pressed on why he signed it “your friend” after testifying repeatedly that they were not friends, he said: “I don’t know. I can’t explain why I would say ‘your friend’ because we weren’t friends.”

20. Wexner closed the deposition with a phrase that may be the most precise summary of what Epstein actually was: “Diabolical isn’t a big enough word.” He said Bernie Madoff was “a boy scout compared to Jeffrey.” He said that he has asked himself over and over whether there were clues and cannot find a single one. He said he looked in the mirror and saw an honest person who was “completely blind.” Then he added: “Bank robbers don’t rob one bank. There’s more there.” The committee’s investigation is ongoing.