“I will send you to Paris. You’ll live there, you’ll chat a little, we’ll get you cleaned up. We’ll make you a portfolio, I’ll show your pictures to a rich man.”

One of the lesser-known shadowy figures linked to Jeffrey Epstein and his sex ring of teenage girls and young women is Ukrainian-born Peter Listerman, who has worked as a businessman and television presenter but is most known for his “match-making” abilities. What match-making really means is that Listerman procures women, often underage, for the jet-set society to use for sexual purposes. His “clients” include Russian oligarchs and American businessmen and seems to have also included Jeffrey Epstein.

After his convictions for soliciting prostitution from underage girls during the early 2000s, Epstein reportedly stopped looking for local high schoolers to use as sex objects, but his appetite for young girls still had not been quenched. Realizing that the American authorities were aware of his scheme and that he could no longer continue to operate as he had been before, a 2016 New York Post article reported Epstein turned his sights to greener pastures: Russia. The Post article wrote:

But instead of having his assistants troll local high schools, the billionaire money manager — and registered sex offender — is importing his playmates from Russia, my source says. A recent visitor tells me Epstein has a house full of young beauties at his East 71st Street mansion. “Half of them are from the former Soviet Union and the other half are a mix of Americans and Europeans,” said my source.

The Post article continued on and referenced Listerman as a “procurer” and reported that either he or someone who looked exactly like him was spotted entering Epstein’s mansion in January of 2016.

Russia and Eastern Europe are known as areas with a high degree of sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls with the purpose of sending them to different countries to be used for sexual purposes. According to Listerman’s own words, women from this part of the world are typically considered to be sexually desirable by individuals such as Epstein and his ilk, and further, the political and economic situation in these countries is fairly dire, forcing many women and girls to look for a way out.

Who is Peter Listerman?

In interviews, Listerman has boasted about providing women to men of power, fame and prestige around the world, but claims that he’s “not a pimp, just a matchmaker.”

Listerman is well-known among members of the Russian fashion and modeling world, and many pageant organizers and talent models have told news outlets they view the man with disgust due to his sordid reputation as someone who lurks around pageants and industry events attempting to lure and ensnare young models.

Tatiana Savchenko, who founded the first modeling school in Odessa, Ukraine explained to the Daily Beast the lengths she had to go to keep Listerman from getting his hands on young women and trafficking them for sex work. She claimed that he would frequently approach her students and attempt to lure them with promises of a luxurious lifestyle, and that “It took a lot of work to keep him from tricking our teen models in his traps.”

“I have heard him approach women at our agency with his usual, ‘Hey, beautiful, I have a client for you!’” Savchenko told The Daily Beast.

Savchenko also mentioned to the Daily Beast that her position in the European modeling and fashion world also led her to cross paths with Donald Trump at his Mar-A-Lago resort and that the current president grabbed her around the waist while making romantic remarks.

Pssst, while you're here...

Kristina Goncharova, one of Savchenko’s models, also confirmed the reputation of Listerman in the modeling world to the Daily Beast, telling the news outlet that “the world’s famous seller of young models to oligarchs”—Listerman—had been writing “What’s up, Bride-to-Be?” messages to her for years.

“I had enough of a brain to turn him down when I was a minor but many girls look for a chance to meet with him, say yes to his offers, as he is paying them much more than €300 [$334], the average of what we make per day working as professional models in Europe,” she told the Daily Beast.

Listerman, the Proud ‘Matchmaker’

Listerman reveled in his role as a predatory “matchmaker,” and if being a jet-set pimp for the rich and powerful doesn’t demonstrate obscene sexism in and of itself, his comments about the women he trafficked and sold do. Listerman frequently referred to these women and girls as “chickens” or “tyolki,” the Russian word for virgin cattle, and was supposedly very proud of his ability to procure the youngest and easiest to manipulate females for his clients.

Pictures on Russian social media websites and news outlets show photos of an overweight Listerman wearing glasses and smoking huge cigars while surrounded by beautiful women less than half his age. Listerman even gloated to Russian tabloid and former soviet media mouthpiece Komsomolskaya Pravda about his ability to secure docile and compliant women for his clients: “My Hollywood clients and oligarchs are sick of emancipated Muscovites, European and American women, who resemble robots. Everybody is sick of these evil women; they want gentle and romantic!”

Listerman has been very open about his profession, and in interviews, he often appears eager to share the secrets of his sordid, depraved world. When asked how he goes about grooming girls to be the future wives of wealthy oligarchs and other elites, Listerman explained that he tells them:

“I will send you to Paris. You’ll live there, you’ll chat a little, we’ll get you cleaned up. We’ll make you a portfolio, I’ll show your pictures to a rich man. And if he likes you, he’ll give me the money to introduce you. You’re going to play around with him a bit, and importantly, listen to Uncle Peter [Listerman’s nickname for himself], you are not to let him have you immediately. Because if you decide to give it to him, then he has to pay more. And then, if he likes you and he decides to keep you with him, he has to pay even more. Moreover, Uncle Peter will teach you how to live.”

One picture shows Listerman surrounded by no fewer than ten topless females, some of whom appear to be younger than 18. Listerman holds up a cardboard placard with the words “Usual Suspect” written on it while closing his eyes and smiling in a way that would be chilling were it not for Listerman’s hairy sagging chest and flabby paunch hanging over his boxer shorts.

Is Listerman on His Way Out?

Listerman may be laughing now, but given the way the Epstein case caught the international media’s attention and doesn’t look to be dying off despite Epstein’s suicide, it is very likely that Listerman finds himself the usual suspect in a far more serious sort of lineup, the one that takes place in a police station and is not primarily made up of half-naked females.

In fact, the same tabloid that published Listerman’s remarks about his clients being tired of American women later reported that when sighted outside Moscow’s opulent Borvikha Concert Hall, one of the venues of the Miss Russia 2019 contest, “The scandalous matchmaker was not allowed even to cross the threshold.”