His start-up, Southern Trust, reported more than $200 million in revenues over the next five years, according to a review of previously unreported financial statements filed in the Virgin Islands.

Despite a name that calls to mind a financial services firm, the fledgling company with a handful of employees said it was developing a DNA data-mining service. Southern Trust was trying to gauge customers' predisposition to cancer by "basically organizing mathematical algorithms," Mr. Epstein told Virgin Islands officials as he sought a lucrative tax break in 2012. -New York Times

According to documents for Southern Trust and Epstein's earlier business, Financial Trust, the latter "peaked at the end of 2004, when it reported $563 million in assets and net income of $108 million." Southern Trust, meanwhile, reported $175 million in retained earnings in 2017.

What isn't made clear from the documents is where all that money came from, or as the Times notes: "Nor do they offer an explanation for why customers would hand over money to a man who had apparently switched from financial services to DNA research."

Perhaps rumors that Epstein was running an international blackmail scheme involving sex-trafficked minors aren't so far fetched.