Jeffrey Epstein controlled a tight constellation of corporate vehicles that served three purposes: front-end investment and advisory work, asset-shielding ownership of real estate and aircraft, and tax-advantaged philanthropy.
Between his 1981 departure from Bear Stearns and his 2019 death, 46 separate legal entities have been documented in litigation, regulatory filings and tax returns. The tables below group every company that public records link to Epstein, noting date of formation, home jurisdiction and the role each played.
Primary Operating & Financial Firms
Real-Estate & Asset-Holding Vehicles
Philanthropic & Tax-Exempt Entities
Other Documented Vehicles
American Yacht Harbor
American Yacht Harbor in St. Thomas sat within IGY-AYH St. Thomas Holdings LLC, an equal partnership between Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Farkas's Island Global Yachting group.19 Because the estate only held units in that LLC, the marina did not appear as a direct asset in the initial probate schedule.21
The estate sold its stake to Island Global Yachting Facilities LLC on 26 August 2021.20 Local reporting noted that the board later removed Epstein's name from the tax-exemption certificates.22
Observations
Epstein's structure was remarkably compact for a man publicly valued at half-a-billion dollars. Six flagship companies — one early consultancy, two successive money-management firms, one offshore repo conduit, and the paired Southern entities—handled every documented business deal.
Real-estate and aircraft sat in single-asset corporations, a classic asset-protection design. Philanthropy ran through just two active foundations after 2012, streamlining tax reporting. Government complaints list dozens more names, but those usually prove to be narrow sub-LLCs or bare-bones nominee shells attached to the same core assets.
The timeline shows a clear migration: New York consultancies in the 1980s, USVI trust structures from 1996, and a bespoke USVI bank in 2014. Each move aligned with progressively larger tax benefits and looser disclosure rules, helping explain why investigators—and now creditors—must unwind such a dense lattice of small, single-purpose companies to follow the money.