Just how did Jeffrey Epstein get so rich so fast — and operate with such impunity for most of his career? Rumors have swirled that Epstein gained his wealth the old-fashioned Machiavellian way — by either finding secrets among the uber-wealthy and threatening to expose them, or setting them up for extortion schemes at Pedo Island and elsewhere. Until now, those have mainly been rumors and speculation.

Yesterday, however, the Wall Street Journal offered a clear look at the Epstein business model. In 2013, Epstein uncovered an affair between Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a young Russian bridge player that started in 2010 and attempted to extort access to Gates’ wealth on that basis:

Jeffrey Epstein discovered that Bill Gates had an affair with a Russian bridge player and later appeared to use his knowledge to threaten one of the world’s richest men, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Microsoft co-founder met the woman around 2010, when she was in her 20s. Epstein met her in 2013 and later paid for her to attend software coding school. In 2017, Epstein emailed Gates and asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the course, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The email came after the convicted sex offender had struggled and failed to persuade Gates to participate in a multibillion-dollar charitable fund that Epstein tried to establish with JPMorgan Chase. The implication behind the message, according to people who have viewed it, was that Epstein could reveal the affair if Gates didn’t keep up an association between the two men.

Everyone who’s still alive insists that they didn’t know about Epstein’s crimes, including Gates. The Russian bridge player, Mila Antonova, says Epstein’s crimes “disgusted”. The man who introduced her to Epstein was Bill Gates’ top science advisor at the time, Boris Nikolic, who told the WSJ that his contacts with Epstein revolved around Gates’ philanthropic work. Antonova had an idea in 2013 for an online bridge site that would teach people to play the game, and Nikolic connected her with Epstein for possible funding, a project that ended up going nowhere.

However, this seems rather odd, considering her relationship with someone with orders of magnitude more wealth than Epstein. Why not ask her boyfriend for the start-up investment rather than Epstein? And why would Bill Gates’ “science advisor” introduce Antonova to Epstein at all for a pitch on an online game site, of all things? It seems very unclear why Antonova’s briefly stayed at one if Epstein’s NYC flats the following year without any apparent business relationship in place. And even more inexplicably, Epstein paid her tuition for coding school despite hardly knowing her and — as Antonova insists — without any conditions or strings attached.

None of this makes a lot of sense, except for the affair between the wealthy man and the beautiful young woman. That may be why the extortion attempt — Epstein demanded a reimbursement for Antonova’s tuition — didn’t work. It’s so mundane as to be hardly even a threat, and Gates made the wise choice to ignore it.

Reading between the lines, it certainly seems as though Epstein was culling Gates’ secrets for later leverage. He didn’t get anything juicy enough on the Microsoft founder to work, but that doesn’t mean Epstein always failed. His success over decades to burrow into the financials of the rich and famous always seemed mysterious, and this might explain why some of the others in his orbit never fully distanced themselves from Epstein, even after his first conviction in Florida. And i may be why so many of them have refused to explain their association with Epstein or even admit to it even to this day.

Someone has to have the dirt Epstein collected. Is that someone still leveraging it for financial purposes — or are the people whose names might be in Epstein’s ledgers afraid that it might get used at some point? This revelation from the WSJ hints that it will come out one way or the other. At the very least, it serves to confirm at least one of Jeffrey Epstein’s business models.