In May 2017, Jeffrey Epstein received an exciting “proposal” from his former trusted private banker at JPMorgan.
Paul Barrett proposed setting up a new family office in New York “to help oversee and manage money for JE and his various legal entities”, according to emails released by the US Department of Justice last week.
By September that year, Barrett had left JPMorgan and established Alpha Group Capital in New York, to trade stocks, bonds and derivatives on behalf of the convicted sex offender.
Records of Barrett’s role in managing money for Epstein, which has not previously been reported, cast new light on the trading strategies of the deceased financier, who cut his teeth on Wall Street as an options trader at Bear Stearns before embarking on a path through high finance shrouded in mystery.
Emails showed that Barrett traded everything from currency options to shares in Apollo Global Management, the private capital firm whose co-founder Leon Black had close ties to Epstein. Barrett appears to have generated little in the way of trading profits, however, seemingly falling out with the financier due to his underwhelming performance.
The revelations also raise questions about the due diligence and screening processes at Citigroup, which hired Barrett in 2019, weeks after he wound down his trading for Epstein.
Barrett left Citi in 2023, shortly after details of his earlier meetings with Epstein at JPMorgan emerged in the press — reports that did not mention he had also managed money for the financier.
While Citi has claimed in litigation that it only discovered Alpha Group’s role in servicing Epstein “weeks earlier”, Barrett’s lawyers alleged that several bankers involved in his hiring process knew of his ties to the financier.
Barrett did not respond to requests for comment. Citi declined to comment.
Originally from South Africa, Barrett served in JPMorgan’s private bank for nearly two decades from 2000, working on a desk that catered to that subset of the ultra-wealthy who preferred high-octane trading strategies to sleep-at-night funds.
“Paul was well put together, he comes off as quite sophisticated, intelligent,” said one former colleague, adding that he was savvy when it came to markets and bore a “certain air of confidence”.
His duties there included acting as one of several “coverage” bankers to Epstein, who allegedly had hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits at the bank. Records released last week showed that Barrett pitched trade ideas across stocks, bonds and options, including various ways to bet against Israel’s currency after Epstein emailed him and JPMorgan’s then investment bank chief Jes Staley requesting ways “to short the Israeli market” in 2011.
JPMorgan had retained Epstein as a client even after he pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor in 2008, which required the Wall Street powerbroker to register as a sex offender. By 2013, however, JPMorgan had decided to drop Epstein because of the growing reputational risk, causing him to shift his finances over to Deutsche Bank.
Newly released files showed that Barrett continued to arrange meetings with Epstein and messaged him about trades as late as 2017, long after JPMorgan had dropped him as a client. In April that year, he emailed the financier: “Hi Jeffrey, Can we meet on Monday to review everything and finalize our agreement?”
The following month, he sent over the draft of an investment advisory proposal to manage money for Epstein from a “multi-family office” Barrett was planning to set up in New York under the name ESP Advisory. These investment firms typically manage the finances of several wealthy clients.
The draft terms noted that while the New York-based investment firm would disclose its number of clients and level of assets to the Securities and Exchange Commission, “only upon an audit will ESP Advisory be required to disclose client lists”.
By June 2017, Barrett had resigned from his role at JPMorgan in order to sign on as Epstein’s money manager.
“I left a great career at JPM to work with you,” he wrote to Epstein a year later. “We made a lot of money working together over the years and I strongly believe that this can continue.”
In July 2017, Barrett incorporated Alpha Group Capital as a multi-family office, while regulatory records showed his employment at JPMorgan officially ended in September.
On September 11 2017, he emailed Epstein requesting a meeting, adding: “We go live next Monday and would like to connect before then.”
Files released by the DoJ include a two-year “investment advisory agreement” between Barrett’s Alpha Group and Epstein’s Southern Trust Company dated that same Monday, under which Barrett was due to earn $500,000 a year. While the document is unsigned, Barrett wrote in a later email to Epstein that they had agreed a deal under which he would be paid $1.1mn over two years.
The advisory agreement granted Barrett trading authority over “all IPO and secondary trading activity”, limited to “a notional value of $5MM per bond and per equity position, $10MM notional for FX and $10MM for Swaps”. It also noted that “any trades recommended and implemented by Client will be excluded from performance attributed to PB”.
That month, he began trading on Epstein’s behalf, often placing orders to buy and sell stocks, bonds and derivatives through Deutsche Bank, where Barrett had “limited power of attorney” to trade out of several of Epstein’s brokerage accounts.
“In the summer, Jeffrey hired Paul Barrett to trade for him,” Deutsche Bank wrote in a 2017 document summarising Epstein’s relationship with the bank, describing him as a “talented full time trader” who had been “Jeffrey’s main coverage when he banked at JPM”.
In an email chain the following year, a senior banker noted that “Paul Barrett manages money for Jeffrey Epstein” and trades “across asset classes”. Epstein was particularly focused on technology stocks and had “owned a huge chunk of Apple for several years”, the banker added, also listing more complex products such as interest-rate and credit derivatives that Barrett was dealing in.
In some instances, Epstein suggested trades to Barrett that he then executed, such as a June 2018 request to buy 25,000 shares apiece of online car dealership Carvana and Canadian plane manufacturer Bombardier. In others, Barrett pitched trade ideas to Epstein, such as a 2018 proposal to buy $3mn of bonds in the heavily indebted French grocer Casino.
Barrett also canvassed Epstein for his macroeconomic views, potentially looking to draw on insights from the financier’s wide range of high-powered contacts in global politics and business.
“Are you worried about this Saudi-Iran issue getting worse?” Barrett asked Epstein over email in November 2017. “Watching Saudi CDS again. If not then oil likely a sell.”
Epstein responded: “yes likely to get worse. oil not yet a sale.”
Records also showed that Barrett held for Epstein a position in the stock of Apollo, whose co-founder Black counted Epstein as a trusted adviser. In October 2017, Barrett told Epstein that Alpha Group held $8.4mn of stock, sitting on gains of about $3.4mn.
“Do you have strong views here?” Barrett asked. “It is a bigger position than I would usually have on a stock.”
Epstein replied: “Keep.”
After a year of trading for Epstein, Barrett’s relationship with the financier appeared to come under strain.
In November 2018, Barrett sent Epstein an email chasing him for an answer on a revised proposal that he claimed would address the financier’s “concerns”.
“You have always been very generous and fair to me,” Barrett wrote. “Please can we find a solution.”
“Swamped at the moment,” Epstein replied. “Will get to it next week promise.”
The following month, however, Barrett sent an email declaring “it is obvious you no longer wish to work together” and chasing Epstein for allegedly overdue payments.
“I walked away from all my JPM stock and now my annual compensation is reduced by 66% until I can sign more clients,” Barrett wrote, going on to acknowledge that his trading profits had been underwhelming.
“I am sorry that the performance did not match your expectations,” he wrote. “Perhaps a better understanding of how you wanted the portfolio managed would have resulted in a different outcome.”
In a January 2019 email setting out Barrett’s “syndicate” profits, he stated that he had made $126,000 in his first month’s trade for Epstein between October and December 2017, going on to make $150,000 in 2018.
He blamed the performance on Morgan Stanley bringing “very poor quality deals” at the end of 2018, arguing that his $315,000 of gains between October 2017 and September 2018 was more representative.
In these emails to Epstein, Barrett repeatedly stated that he was happy to continue working for the financier in “any capacity” he needed.
Despite the issues, records suggested that Barrett continued to operate on Epstein’s behalf in early 2019, with the trader sending a $29,000 invoice for a “monthly management fee” to the financier’s longtime accountant Richard Kahn in May 2019.
The following month, however, Barrett signed a job offer letter from Citi to become a managing director in its private banking division. In July 2019, he began working at the bank, overseeing its family office business in North America.
Barrett terminated the SEC registration for Alpha Group the following month, weeks after Epstein died in federal prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The identity of Alpha Group’s other clients remains unclear. In its final statement to the SEC in January 2019, Alpha Group disclosed that it managed $252mn on behalf of 25 high-net-worth individuals.
Four years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Barrett was one of a number of JPMorgan bankers who had allegedly met Epstein at various times after his relationship with the bank was terminated. The April 2023 article did not mention Barrett’s trading on behalf of Epstein at Alpha Group.
Citi terminated Barrett’s employment three days later due to “reputational risk considerations” raised by the article, according to litigation filed by Citi against Barrett last year. In an April 2023 statement to the FT, which broke news of his departure, the bank said: “Until recently, Citi was unaware of Paul Barrett’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, which predated his employment at our firm.”
Shortly after his departure, Barrett established a new firm, River Road Advisors, whose website states it helps “borrowers navigate the private credit markets”.
In September 2023, Barrett commenced arbitration proceedings against Citi before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, alleging “defamation, libel and slander” and “breach of contract”.
In July 2025, Finra ruled against Barrett, denying all his claims. Citi filed a petition to confirm the arbitration award against Barrett in a New York court that same month.
In its legal filings, Citi claimed that at the time of the WSJ article, Barrett “was already the subject of an internal investigation because Citi had learned just weeks earlier that Jeffrey Epstein had been one of Barrett’s most significant clients at his own registered investment adviser”.
Barrett’s lawyers, in their opposition to the petition, claimed that various bankers at Citi “were well aware that Barrett worked with Epstein at JPMorgan and Alpha contemporaneous with his hiring”, however.
In a July 2019 text exchange between Citi bankers submitted as evidence in the court case, one banker asks the other “does mgmt know Paul Barrett’s anchor client was Jeffrey Epstein?”
The other banker responds: “Is that important? Epstein seems like a stand up guy,” followed by a laughing emoji.
Additional reporting by Akila Quinio and Peter Andringa