A recent Forbes article provides a profile of Epstein's contacts since 2015, coinciding with the rise of the current surveillance state.
Epstein Could Have Made $100 Million On A Secret Police Tech Investment
Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender when he quietly became a major investor in a police technology startup that is now being acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The 2015 deal, in which he invested $1 million in startup Reporty, was brokered by the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, according to recently released Department of Justice emails.
Barak was an early investor and the board chairman of Reporty, later renamed Carbyne. While details of Epstein’s involvement in the company and his decade-long relationship with Barak have previously been reported, the nature and size of the investment have not.
At the time of Epstein’s investment, the company was worth $4.5 million, according to an email from Darren Indyke, one of Epstein’s personal lawyers. In November, police tech giant Axon announced it was acquiring Carbyne at $625 million. The deal has yet to close, but if Epstein had maintained his stake in the company, it could have been worth over $100 million.
Developed by former members of Israel’s elite spy units, Carbyne’s tech is designed for emergency responders. When a 911 call comes in, the software allows the caller to use their smartphone camera to stream video to police HQ so officers can see what is happening on the ground.
Epstein’s original $1 million investment was hidden by a holding company that Barak set up, the emails show. The holding company also included $500,000 from Nicole Junkermann, a German-born investor whom Epstein introduced to his sprawling network of wealthy dignitaries. The term sheets for the investments, which are included in the DOJ’s cache of 3.5 million files relating to the disgraced financier, do not include Epstein or Junkermann’s names. Together, the $1.5 million investment gave Epstein and Junkermann “not less than $25%” of the company, according to an email from Indyke. The emails also show they had warrants allowing them to buy more shares in the future.
Carbyne CEO Amir Elichai said he was not aware of Epstein’s investment. The emails do not show any direct contact between Elichai and the disgraced financier. He said Epstein’s estate did not keep any company stock.
The year of Epstein’s death in 2019, Barak left the board; Carbyne declined to comment on why he stepped down, though reports about their relationship had surfaced in 2019 when Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. Barak no longer has a stake in the business, Elichai said. Barak declined to comment but has previously
said he deeply regretted his relationship with Epstein.
Axon did not respond to requests for comment.
Junkermann took a more active role in Carbyne. She was listed as a director on the firm’s website up until 2020. Elichai said she is not and was never a board member, and that her presence on Carbyne’s website was a mistake by his marketing team. He said she no longer has a stake in the company, though didn’t respond to questions on when or why she divested her stake.
The DOJ emails show Junkermann advising Elichai and Barak on how to grow Reporty’s business. She also offered Barak access to former British prime minister David Cameron and billionaire oil and media tycoon Sir Len Blavatnik. “I had in mind introducing you to Len Blavatnik as discussed at our dinner he could be a potential investor in Reporty and David Cameron who I am sure you know but could be helpful as a business adviser in the UK,” Junkermann wrote in a 2017 email. Epstein was often copied on Junkermann’s emails to Barak, but not to Elichai or other Carbyne staff. Barak, using a non-Carbyne email, also sent company and board presentations to Epstein and Junkermann.
Epstein brokered Junkerman’s connection to Barak prior to their joint investment in Carbyne in 2015, but their relationship dates back to before his 2008 conviction, per the Justice Department emails. Between 2009 and 2019, Epstein introduced her to billionaire investor Leon Black, banker and writer Robert Kuhn and former treasury secretary Larry Summers, who wrote her a recommendation letter for an exclusive World Economic Forum club called Young Global Leaders on Epstein’s request. (She did not make it onto the program. Summers did not respond to requests for comment. He’d previously
said he was ashamed of his communications with Epstein, which he described as “misguided.”)
Today, Junkermann runs NJF Holdings, a venture capital firm that has invested in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Ryan Breslow’s Bolt. She did not respond to requests for comment. NJF declined to comment on her former role at Carbyne, or her relationship with Epstein. Spokesperson Michael Oakes said, “Nicole has invested in more than sixty early-stage technology companies, typically alongside dozens or hundreds of co-investors, venture partners, and founders. Nicole invested in Carbyne because she was impressed by its founder, Amir Elichai, and this was clearly the right call, so she is proud to have seen the company's success.”
The Carbyne investment is one of several checks Epstein quietly wrote to tech startups and venture capitalists,
as Forbes reported, including Coinbase and Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. Overall, he made surprisingly few investments, given his level of access to wealthy and powerful people in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Barak presented other opportunities for Epstein to invest in police tech. In 2018, he tried and apparently failed to convince Epstein to back a defense and anti-terror tech start-up called Levitection (the company went out of business in 2022 and previously
said Barak never became an investor). He also sought Epstein’s help with Tel Aviv-based surveillance business Toka, just before Barak publicly launched it in July 2018 with $12.5 million in funding from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz. While there’s no evidence Epstein invested, Barak suggested the financier could promote Toka to his government contacts, writing, “You can use it vis a vis senior officials or heads. It is built for governments as clients.”
Forbes was first to
report on the company, which offers law enforcement a service to hack into connected cameras and speakers like Amazon’s Ring, in 2018. Today it’s valued at $125 million and has raised nearly $80 million total.
Toka leadership told
Forbes they were not aware of Barak’s entreaties to Epstein. Toka spokesperson Ken Baer said Barak hadn’t been on the board since 2020, adding, “To the best of our knowledge, no one in the company knew that he was speaking with Mr. Epstein." He said that as a cofounder Barak still has shares in the company, but declined to specify his stake.
Meet Toka, the Israeli Cyber Firm Founded by Ehud Barak, That Lets Clients Hack Cameras and Change Their Feeds – Just Like in Hollywood Heist Movies
www.haaretz.com