Jeffrey Epstein wielded upper-crust cachet and an online PR storm to rehabilitate his image after registering as a sex offender more than a decade ago, according to a recent profile by The New York Times. But the latter tactic would be far less effective if he were to employ it today, reputation-management experts told MarketWatch.
The wealthy financier, who pleaded not guilty this month to sex-trafficking charges, reportedly “surrounded himself with prestige and counted on others to look past what he had done” after serving 13 months in a Florida county jail. Epstein, 66, had cut a controversial plea deal in 2008 after having been accused of sexually abusing underage girls.
He went on to launch a handful of websites highlighting his contributions to society — among them JeffreyEpsteinEducation.com and JeffreyEpsteinScience.com — as well as flood the internet with positive Epstein press releases and faux news stories. He also played up his benefactor connections to Harvard University, which he never attended, according to the Times.
“Jeffrey Epstein appears to be a natural at social engineering amongst high society. Thus, he was able to steadily re-ingratiate himself with the rich and famous, many of whom appear to be willing to simply look the other way about each other’s transgressions,” Jonathan Bernstein, a crisis-management consultant, told MarketWatch.
“Second, his online blitz of allegedly positive information was a classic tactic of spamming the internet for SEO benefits,” he added. “That was easier to do 10 years ago than it is now, because Google GOOG, -0.30% GOOGL, -0.41% has tightened its algorithms.”
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Experts argue that those seeking a reputation facelift should take a more holistic approach beyond Google search optimization. Besides, whatever tactics Epstein tried a decade ago are unlikely to work today, they said.
‘The search results that will come up when you search for Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein are going to be in legitimate news articles from legitimate news sources.’Jon Goldberg, founder of the strategic communications firm Reputation Architects
“The search results that will come up when you search for Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein are going to be in legitimate news articles from legitimate news sources that are going to be far more authoritative in the eyes of Google than anything that their PR people might try to pump out to distract the search algorithm,” said Jon Goldberg, founder of the strategic communications firm Reputation Architects.
The internet’s ability to amplify news “is exponentially greater now than it was 10 years ago,” Bernstein added. “He’d be mocked by the general public if he went out there [now] with a bunch of positive news about himself online.” – read more