There's a good chance that outside of "rich pedophile," you barely knew anything about Jeffery Epstein before he died in prison and your social media feed lit up with wild speculation from self-proclaimed experts who once skimmed his Wikipedia page a few years ago. It didn't help that so many celebrities felt the need to weigh in -- ranging from the president, who suggested that the Clintons had Epstein killed, to the lead singer of Foster the People, who alleged that his death was faked so he could be flown to the Middle East and get plastic surgery. And while we don't mean to malign the expertise of the "Pumped Up Kicks" guy, it seems we could all use a primer on a man whose life was darker than any conspiracy theory.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department

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Perhaps unexpectedly for a man who dreamed of using his sperm to breed dozens of baby geniuses, Epstein wasn't born into money. He was a middle-class math nerd who skipped two grades in high school but dropped out of college, then was hired to teach at Dalton, an elite prep school. Turns out private school teachers don't actually need to be certified, and Dalton had a reputation for making offbeat decisions to give its sheltered students a taste of reality. They also may have also been facing an urgent staffing shortage. Whatever the reason, Epstein was in the right place at the right time, proving once again that good things happen to terrible people.

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Epstein quickly established himself as a hardworking and driven educator who also happened to creep on the school's teenage girls. And do you have any idea how much effort it took to stand out as a creepy guy in the '70s? Back then, statutory rape was considered a perk of being successful! That's the cause and effect to keep in mind here; when you become rich and powerful, you aren't automatically inducted into a shadowy cabal of sex offenders (as far as we know), but if you were always showing the signs, you can get away with a lot more for a lot longer.

Dalton claims they fired Epstein after two years for substandard work, but regardless of the circumstances, he then took a job at investment titan Bear Stearns. This is another role he had no real qualifications for, but he had met and impressed its CEO, whose son was a Dalton student. Remember, it's often not what you know, but who you know (and can disguise your sociopathic tendencies in front of). Epstein learned the ropes, earned a series of promotions, and was praised for his ability to both charm wealthy clients and grasp the mathematical complexities of the nascent field of options trading. Then in 1981, he left Bear Stearns under vague acrimonious circumstances and struck out on his own path of Wall Street madness.

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