"A strange thing happened when Jeffrey Epstein came back to New York City after being branded a sex offender: His reputation appeared to rise"

NYT:

Powerful female friends served as social guarantors

...

The positive online notices appeared to have been paid for by Mr. Epstein: A writer employed by his foundation churned out the news releases, and the supposed author of a Forbes story calling Mr. Epstein “one of the largest backers of cutting edge science” conceded in an interview that he was given $600 to post the pre-written article under his own name.

...

Of all the names Mr. Epstein dropped, perhaps the most frequent was Harvard’s.

Though Mr. Epstein never attended Harvard or even got a college degree, the university has been a recurring theme in his self-styled image as a Renaissance man of finance and science. He found Harvard’s doors open to him once he opened his wallet, with donations starting in the early 1990s that eventually totaled at least $7.5 million.

He took to wearing Harvard sweatshirts, gravitated to mingling with celebrity scientists

...

Although he was often described as a billionaire, Mr. Epstein did not come close in his philanthropy to other superrich people. His charitable foundations rarely gave away more than $1 million a year during the 2000s, according to tax records, and much of it was money others had given him.