THE NETWORK WAS ALREADY WORKING

In December 2003, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sent a package to André Desmarais at the Montreal headquarters of Power Corporation of Canada. Two years later, SEC filings place Dan Friedberg, the father of Henry Friedberg from the Chi Phi research set, inside that same corporate structure as a Power Corporation officer while he ran Sagard Capital. Power now sits above insurance, retirement, wealth-management, and investment businesses spanning North America, Europe, and Asia. At the end of 2025, the group reported roughly $3.6 trillion in consolidated assets and assets under administration and more than forty million client relationships. Those records predate the Cornell controversy by more than twenty years.

Sagard, the investment business Dan Friedberg once led, has grown into a global alternative-asset manager reporting more than $46 billion under management across venture capital, private equity, private credit, and real estate. Those businesses buy ownership stakes, lend directly to companies, finance property, and place large pools of institutional money outside public stock markets. Henry Friedberg’s later finance career begins inside a family environment already tied to private capital, Power Corporation, and formal Cornell advisory bodies. Desmarais appears in released Epstein material from 2003.

Across the sixty-four-person screen, names recur in highly selective Cornell finance organizations, major investment firms, family businesses, Cornell advisory bodies, and employers with reach far beyond Ithaca. The same set reaches firms managing hundreds of billions of dollars and, in two cases, more than a trillion.

Those firms sit inside pensions, insurance, lending, corporate ownership, restructuring, real estate, and the movement of institutional money around the world. Their capital reaches companies and households far beyond Cornell. Several students in the screen were moving toward those institutions before the Chi Phi case became public. The fraternity’s professional world was already extending far beyond campus.

Cornell owned the Chi Phi house, and its police had been inside the property for a drug-related arrest roughly twenty-two hours before Jane Doe arrived. The university later built an investigative file far larger than the material the local prosecutor says his office reviewed before declining charges. Cornell’s 2025 survey reported sexual assault among 35 percent of responding undergraduate women and 52 percent of responding Greek-affiliated undergraduate women. Those figures came after years of reforms, monitoring, training, and recurring crises inside Greek life. Jane Doe entered a system that already knew the scale of the problem.

Banking at Cornell is built around investment-banking recruitment. Its analyst program uses several interview rounds, ten weeks of technical and behavioral training, and a sophomore recruiting series focused on the hiring process used by major banks. The organization’s own guide says many Cornell finance groups receive hundreds of applications and often admit fewer than ten students in a semester. Members learn accounting, valuation, networking, interview technique, and the customs of a profession that recruits students years before graduation. By the time those students reach formal interviews, much of the unwritten language of Wall Street has already been taught on campus.

Cornell Finance Club runs a ten-week new-member program covering finance, market knowledge, technical skills, interview preparation, mentorship, and professional development. Its placement page lists recent graduates entering Evercore, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Ares, and other firms near the center of investment banking and private capital. Cornell Hedge Fund uses an alumni network, recruiting guidance, investment research, industry mentorship, and its own training program to prepare students for finance careers. Together, these organizations give undergraduates early entry into the relationships and recruiting calendar that determine who gets a first chance at major firms.

Chinedu Okasi’s 2024 LinkedIn post captures that system while it was happening. He thanked Xavier DaCosta and Joshua Figueroa for helping him through recruiting at a time when both men held leadership roles inside Cornell finance organizations and all three names appeared in the Chi Phi research. DaCosta had served in recruitment and professional-development roles before becoming president of Cornell Hedge Fund, and Figueroa led Cornell Finance Club and BlackGen Capital before joining Evercore. Okasi’s post documents fraternity assistance inside that recruiting system.

Banking at Cornell also places Okasi, Aaron Seth, and Ryan Shim together in its Class of 2026 analyst cohort. The wider research set later reaches J.P. Morgan through Seth, Okasi, Liam Gormley, Nicholas Hoge, Tadeo Mendive, and Fermin Mendive across different divisions and years. J.P. Morgan operates across investment banking, private banking, asset management, commercial lending, and securities markets and reported about $5 trillion in total assets in mid-2026. The same names recur across Cornell social circles, finance organizations, and later employment at J.P. Morgan.

Evercore advises corporate boards and senior executives during mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, shareholder battles, and major capital decisions. The firm reports more than $5 trillion in announced transactions across its history. Its bankers are called when ownership changes, debt becomes unmanageable, or a board faces a decision that can reshape a company. Joshua Figueroa and Lucas Maley both entered Evercore through separate paths in the research set.

Blackstone operates on an even larger scale. In 2026 the firm reported about $1.3 trillion under management across real estate, private equity, credit, infrastructure, and other private markets. Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, insurers, and other institutions supply much of the capital Blackstone invests. Luke Verzella reached Blackstone after participating in Cornell Financial Analysts and the Cornell Real Estate Club.

Ares and Apollo belong to the same private-markets world, with Ares reporting about $671 billion under management in mid-2026 and Apollo reporting roughly $1.05 trillion. Their money comes from pensions, insurers, institutions, and wealthy investors and moves through lending, private equity, real estate, and other investment businesses. Apollo alone has become one of the world’s largest private-credit platforms, giving it influence as both lender and investor. Xavier DaCosta later entered Ares. Fermin Mendive registered with Apollo Global Securities in 2023.

General Atlantic manages about $130 billion and invests in growth companies and infrastructure. ClearBridge manages more than $208 billion in public equities for institutional and other investors. AQR builds investment strategies from economic research, data, and quantitative models. Luke Hartigan joined General Atlantic, Ryan Shim joined ClearBridge, and John Kowalczyk joined AQR.

Fermin Mendive entered finance with the industry already present at home. Greenwich Time identified Ignacio and Jackie Mendive with their son Fermin years before his own recruiting began, and SEC filings later identified Ignacio Mendive as a managing director and then chief executive of Santander Investment Securities. Ignacio’s current Morgan Stanley biography describes more than two decades advising senior executives and business owners through capital-markets, investment-banking, and wealth-management work. Fermin’s later path through J.P. Morgan and Apollo followed a household already familiar with the institutions he was entering.

Henry Friedberg’s family history reaches Cornell as well as private capital. Cornell identifies Dan Friedberg as Henry’s father and lists Dan, an MBA alumnus, on the Johnson Advisory Council and the SC Johnson College Leadership Council. Those bodies connect senior business figures to Cornell’s business school, its students, and the university’s development network. Dan’s history at Sagard and Power Corporation placed family capital and Cornell access in the same household.

Matthew Pilc’s family line reaches Epiq through his father, Roger Pilc, a Cornell graduate who served on university advisory bodies before joining the company in 2019 to lead Global Legal Solutions. Epiq administers class actions, mass-tort settlements, claims programs, notices, liens, and payments after large cases produce compensation for groups of people. The company has handled some of the legal system’s largest claims-administration programs. Matthew later moved through PwC and Strategy&, adding consulting to a family environment already connected to Cornell and global legal services.

Miles Bramwit came from another family with established legal and financial experience. Cornell’s alumni publication identifies Harry, Miles, and Simon Bramwit as the sons of Melinda Fellner, a Cornell graduate who chairs the tax department at Carter Ledyard and works across private equity, investment funds, mergers and acquisitions, and international tax. Harry Bramwit later moved from Goldman Sachs’ Workout and Restructuring group to Blue Torch Capital, while Miles worked at Palantir and later Amazon. The family’s professional world already included sophisticated tax work, restructuring, and private investment before Miles reached Cornell.

The Friedberg branch leads directly back to the 2003 package sent by Epstein and Maxwell to André Desmarais at Power Corporation. Dan Friedberg later ran Sagard and served as a Power Corporation officer during the same era that Desmarais occupied senior leadership. Power’s current group reaches insurance, retirement savings, wealth management, and investment platforms serving tens of millions of client relationships, with Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial among its central holdings. Henry Friedberg’s immediate family is part of that Power Corporation history through Dan Friedberg’s documented officer role.

Records from the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program identify Epiq Mass Tort as the firm retained to verify and resolve certain Medicare and Medicaid lien or reimbursement claims tied to survivor compensation. Roger Pilc led Epiq’s Global Legal Solutions business during that period.

The Bramwit branch runs through Near Intelligence and Blue Torch Capital. Near built commercial products from large stores of mobile-device location data, and its legacy platform later produced an analysis associated with devices observed at Little Saint James between 2016 and July 2019. Blue Torch became the administrative and collateral agent on up to $100 million in senior secured financing for Near beginning in 2022, with the loan secured against much of the company’s property. Harry Bramwit later worked at Blue Torch.

Apollo’s own independent review documented Leon Black’s professional relationship with Epstein during 2012 through 2017. Fermin Mendive registered with Apollo Global Securities in 2023, after Black had left Apollo leadership. Ares co-founder Antony Ressler had been part of Apollo’s founding leadership before co-founding Ares in 1997. Xavier DaCosta later entered Ares.

Cornell’s Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault reported in 2026 that sexual-assault prevalence remained persistently high across every biennial survey from 2015 through 2025. Among responding undergraduate women, the rate ranged from 20 percent to 35 percent during that period. Responding undergraduate men reported rates between 6 percent and 9 percent. In the 2025 survey, 35 percent of responding undergraduate women and 8 percent of responding undergraduate men reported sexual assault during their Cornell careers. Cornell cautioned that the undergraduate response rate that year was 13 percent.

Among responding Greek-affiliated undergraduate women in 2025, 52 percent reported sexual assault during their Cornell careers, compared with 29 percent of responding women outside Greek life. Fraternity chapter houses accounted for 17 percent of identified assault locations in the same survey material. Cornell had been collecting this kind of data for a decade by the time Jane Doe’s case pushed Chi Phi into national coverage. Greek life was already a recurring part of the university’s sexual-assault record.

Only 24 percent of women and 10 percent of men who experienced sexual assault told Cornell’s survey that they had contacted at least one program or resource. Students included the belief that nothing would be done among the reasons for staying away from institutional help. Cornell spent those years cycling through training, monitoring, Greek-life reforms, and new task forces as the survey results remained high. Jane Doe entered a system that already knew how large the gap was between sexual violence and institutional engagement.

Cornell owned 107 Edgemoor Lane, CUPD had been inside the Chi Phi house for a drug-related arrest roughly twenty-two hours before Jane Doe arrived, and the incident had already been referred into Student Conduct. Cornell later built an investigative and disciplinary file far larger than the material the local prosecutor says his office reviewed before deciding against charges. The first charging decision came before Cornell’s administrative record reached its later size. CUPD and Cornell’s administrative systems controlled most of the evidence trail surrounding the case.

Cornell initially told the public that CUPD shared “all investigatory information” with the district attorney. The university later removed that language and replaced it with a narrower description involving Jane Doe’s sworn statement and Snapchat material. The district attorney disputed part of Cornell’s account and later said his office had not received the full picture. New York appointed the Attorney General as special prosecutor, and Cornell agreed to an outside review.

Jane Doe entered Cornell’s process as one student. Around the fraternity were families and alumni already at home in elite finance, law, corporate leadership, and Cornell advisory structures. Those networks carry institutional fluency, professional contacts, and years of experience navigating complex organizations. Transfer logs, internal communications, referral records, and decision timelines are where any role for those relationships would appear.

The public record already shows changing language about what CUPD shared, an unresolved dispute over what prosecutors received, and a Cornell file that grew far beyond the material described at the original charging stage. Internal records will show how those discrepancies were created and who made the decisions behind them. The special prosecutor and Cornell’s outside review now have access to records the public still lacks. Those records are where negligence, institutional self-protection, or deliberate concealment can be separated from one another.

Across the sixty-four-person review, fraternity relationships, family capital, Cornell professional pipelines, and older institutional histories overlap before Jane Doe’s allegations reached a national audience. Some lines stay on campus, and others continue into investment banks and asset managers operating at enormous scale. A smaller group reaches employers or corporate structures appearing in released Epstein records through parents and siblings. The records show how much institutional access surrounded the chapter before the scandal exposed it.

Cornell had spent years recording high rates of sexual assault, regulating Greek life, and building prevention systems before Jane Doe’s report. The Chi Phi case then produced a disputed evidence trail serious enough to bring in a special prosecutor and an outside review. Around the chapter, students and families were already moving through Cornell finance pipelines, corporate leadership, private capital, and university advisory structures. Those worlds were part of the environment in which Cornell made its decisions.

Jane Doe has already given Cornell, police, lawyers, and courts years of her life and an intimate account of what she says happened inside 107 Edgemoor Lane. The remaining questions sit inside transfer logs, internal communications, referral records, and decision timelines that Cornell and law enforcement have never made public.