[imagesource: Jay LaPrete / AP]

The murkiness and madness behind Victoria’s Secret and its shady former CEO Les Wexner are being pushed further into the spotlight with Hulu’s new documentary, Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons.

Charting the rise and fall of the lingerie company, the doccie also delves deep into the “mysterious relationship” between billionaire Wexner and his “close personal advisor”, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Revealing how the “truth is not what it seems”, the three-part docuseries features chats with a few former Angels, per I-D, and details, most chillingly, about how Epstein and his sickening antics were largely funded by Wexner.

The podcast Fallen Angel already revealed some of the secrets of the lingerie company, but it merely scratched the surface of the ties it and Wexner had to the certified paedophile.

The Daily Beast reminds us how The New York Times published an exposé detailing Wexner’s ties to Epstein a few weeks before Epstein died in his prison cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges:

The report revealed, among other things, that Wexner was Epstein’s only publicly known billionaire client; that Epstein had acquired his Manhattan townhouse, private jet (later dubbed the “Lolita Express”), and other properties from Wexner at a heavy discount; that Wexner allegedly waited 18 months to cut ties with Epstein after he was busted for child prostitution in 2006; and that an Oregon attorney general’s investigation said that Victoria’s Secret had directly aided Epstein’s legal defense in 2006, voluntarily providing intel against one of Epstein’s accusers, who had worked for Victoria’s Secret.

As soon as it became increasingly clear that Wexner was one of Epstein’s biggest clients, Matt Tyrnauer, director of Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, says that “more troubling details emerged”. This includes the fact that Epstein had managed to wrangle power of attorney that “gave him access to vast amounts of Wexner’s wealth”.

The Times reported on this business move when it happened in 1991, revealing how it “enabled Mr Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties and borrow money” on Wexner’s behalf, and that Epstein was granted “full power and authority to do and perform every act necessary” for him:

Tyrnauer is still confused as to how Epstein, a former high school math teacher who was dismissed from Bear Stearns over finance violations and was then connected to the Towers Financial Corp. Ponzi scheme, was able to gain the trust of Wexner to the point where he had power of attorney and control over large sums of his wealth.

Image: AP

Besides getting off scot-free when girls who had been assaulted “behind the very dignified Georgian façade” of Epstein’s guest house went to the police (because local police had connections to the Wexner family, who “basically ran the town”), he also took advantage of his friendship by posing as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models:

Cindy Fedus-Fields, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret Direct, says in the film, “In the spring or summer of ’93, it was reported to Les [Wexner] that a man was going around New York City portraying himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret catalog models. It was Jeffrey Epstein. And Les said he would stop it. I don’t believe the behavior stopped. I believe it continued.”

When Epstein died in 2019, he left behind an estimated $600 million fortune. Only $125 million of that has been given to his victims.

Despite the Wexner Foundation claiming that the sex criminal had “misappropriated vast sums of money” from him totalling around $46 million, Sarah Ellison, a Washington Post reporter interviewed in the doccie, estimated that Wexner actually paid Epstein around $400 million over the course of their business relationship:

“Wexner is known as being litigious, and yet he won’t pursue Epstein for stealing millions upon millions of dollars?” asks Ellison in the film. “To allow that level of betrayal and dishonesty to happen unpunished is entirely unexplained.”

Is it unexplained, or just hard to say out loud?

Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons will drop on Hulu on July 14.

[sources:dailybeast&i-d]