Long before Jeffrey Epstein became the world’s most notorious sex offender, he committed an act that foreshadowed a lifetime of manipulating women — and his first victim was his own mother.
According to a researcher examining Epstein’s early years, the disgraced financier’s pattern of exploiting women began decades before his sex-trafficking empire came crashing down.
“His mother Paula adored him,” CUNY sociology professor Thomas Volscho, who is researching a book on wealthy sex traffickers, told The Post. “Both his parents were remembered as hardworking, well liked people from a simple Brooklyn family.”
Yet, one of the earliest documented controversies involving Epstein centered on his leaving his family in the lurch while a student at NYU.
According to a May 1976 report by Fidelifacts, New York University took Epstein to civil court in December 1975 after receiving an invalid tuition payment.
“He wrote a check on his mother’s checking account for his tuition and the check bounced,” Volscho told NYU student newspaper Washington Square News.
“When NYU sent a debt collector to his address, his brother answered the door and said he’d gone off to Europe and then coughed up like three or four hundred dollars of the thousand-odd dollars owed.”
The NYU lawsuit was later settled, but the incident is an early glimpse into a pattern that would define Epstein’s life.
Survivors revealed that Epstein — who left NYU without a degree and lied to prospective employer Bear Stearns about his education — repeatedly used promises of admission and tuition payments at New York University and other elite institutions to lure and control his victims, according to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
He would dangle the prospect of an education to entice young women into his orbit, and in some cases he or his associates arranged scholarships or paid tuition, then threaten to pull funding if they failed to comply with his demands.
As despicable as Epstein’s manipulation tactics were, he was the grand master at them. Even after his mother’s death, he exploited her for his own benefit.
Source : https://nypost.com/2026/06/20/us-news/epsteins-first-victim-was-his-own-mother-biographer
