Will Ford and the Groff Circle

Status: Based on a reader tip
Date: March 24, 2026
Corpus hits: 154 pages mentioning "Will Ford"
Source provenance: All documents originate from Lesley Groff's email accounts, captured in DS9–DS11

Summary

In March 2011, Lesley Groff — Jeffrey Epstein's executive assistant of approximately 25 years — told her husband she'd been briefed the day before that a Daily Beast article about Epstein would be published. In April 2013, when a financial associate and family friend asked her husband via instant message why he hadn't "joined Jeff," Lesley's response was "wow....how incredibly interesting" — not confusion, not alarm, not "who's Jeff?" In July 2015, her husband sent her a Page Six item about Epstein. These emails undercut any portrait of Groff as someone wholly insulated from discussion of Epstein's public notoriety.

The friend was Will Ford, a financial professional whom Lesley described in a 2012 email as "a client of Ike's" — Ike Groff, her husband, who ran the brokerage firm Tourmaline Partners. The relationship is documented in Lesley's own words (EFTA02170494). The corpus contains eight years of Ford-Groff correspondence (2011–2019): dinners, a wedding invitation, business development leads, and a daily email list that kept the circle in constant contact. Within that correspondence, Epstein was a known, discussable, shared subject inside the Groff household — not a workplace secret Lesley kept from her personal life.

This report distinguishes between what the documents directly show, what they strongly suggest, and what remains unknown. The emails establish contact patterns, social familiarity, and explicit references to Epstein. They do not, on their own, establish criminal conduct by Ford or independent knowledge by Groff of specific abuse. Biographical details (Coast Guard Academy, CFA, Royal Capital Management) are sourced from Ford's obituary and email disclaimers in the corpus; they have not been independently verified against military or SEC records.

Will Ford

William Russell Ford (1972–2019) graduated with high honors from the United States Coast Guard Academy in 1994, served as a lieutenant until 1999, and earned an MBA from Boston University while still in uniform. He moved into trading at Lehman Brothers, earned his CFA designation in 2002, and rose to Chief Operating Officer of Royal Capital Management, LLC. He left Wall Street in 2017 and spent his final years owning and managing RV parks and cabin resorts in Northern California and New Jersey under the name GRRV.

His emails throughout the corpus carry dual institutional disclaimers — Royal Capital Management and Tourmaline Partners, LLC — indicating some form of ongoing affiliation with Ike Groff's Stamford, Connecticut brokerage. As late as April 2019, two years after leaving Wall Street, Ford sent emails under a Tourmaline Partners address (EFTA02285833). Whether his Tourmaline connection was a registered position, an advisory arrangement, or simply a legacy email footer is not established in the corpus.

Ford ran a daily mass email list — "tidbits & quotes" — sent to a BCC list of clients, friends, and professional contacts from at least 2011 through May 2019. The content was motivational quotes, trivia, financial commentary, journalism clippings, TED Talks, and commencement speeches. The list functioned as social glue: it kept Ford's network in daily contact and gave the Groffs a regular touchpoint with his world. Both Ike and Lesley received these emails, forwarded them to each other, and responded with commentary.

In the 2012–2015 emails, Ford's partner was Jenny Rogers, who sold Gulfstream jets. They planned a June 27, 2015 wedding at the Ford Family ranch near Arcata, California, and the Groffs and a recurring circle — Evan & Ingrid Wax, Seth & Alison Hoenig, Rich & Val Steiner, Ray & Carly Alvarez — were invited. By the time of his death in 2019, Ford's partner was Heather White of Brooklyn; his obituary also names a former wife, Lora Brown Ford, with whom he had three children.

2011: The Daily Beast Article

On the morning of March 25, 2011, Ford emailed Ike Groff a link to the Daily Beast article "Jeffrey Epstein: How the Billionaire Pedophile Got Off Easy." The subject line was two letters: "JE." Ford sent it from his Royal Capital Management email. (EFTA02190637)

At 1:24 PM, Ike forwarded it to Lesley.

Two minutes later, at 1:26 PM, Lesley replied:

"yes, he told me yesterday this would be in the Daily Beast"

(EFTA00436269, EFTA02190656)

The "he" is not identified by name. The most obvious candidate is Epstein himself — Lesley was his executive assistant, the article was about him, and she had been told the day before it would appear. The other plausible sources are narrow: Epstein's PR handler or an attorney monitoring press. No PR handler or media attorney appears elsewhere in Groff's correspondence, while Epstein does throughout. Managing awareness of incoming press is a standard function for someone in Lesley's role, and taken alone this would not be remarkable. What makes it significant is what follows in the next two years.

Two weeks later, on April 6, Ford forwarded a New York Times article about Thomas Barrack Jr.'s Colony Capital to Ike Groff and a colleague named Neal Shah (EFTA00435939). This is the earliest evidence of Ford as a financial-content curator within the network — a role that intensified over the following years.

2012: The Relationship Deepens

By 2012, the Ford-Groff social relationship was well established and documented in Lesley's personal calendar and email.

March 1, 2012: A Google Calendar reminder — "Dinner w/Will Ford & Jennie" — sent to [email protected], Lesley Groff's personal Gmail. (EFTA02174012)

March 15, 2012 (Thursday): The first documented dinner — all four: Ike, Lesley, Will, and Jenny. The next morning, Lesley emailed her sister Ashley Taylor-Hull introducing Jenny for promotional merchandise work: "last night I had dinner with Will Ford (a client of Ike's) and Jenny (Will's fabulous girlfriend who sell's Gulfstream's for a living! cool :)" She described learning about the couple's RV park near the Redwoods: "Ike and I learned of the RV & Camp Destination park they have purchased." (EFTA02170494 p.1)

That parenthetical — "a client of Ike's" — is the only document in the corpus that explicitly names the direction of the Ford-Tourmaline relationship. Ford wasn't just a social friend who happened to know Ike from the industry; he was a client of Ike's brokerage. This reframes everything that follows: the daily emails, the dinners, the wedding invitations, the Lehman-colleague referrals. If Ford was an active client of Ike's, the relationship was not purely social.

April 12, 2012 (Thursday): A second meeting — this time just Ike and Will, without the women. The next morning, Lesley emailed Jenny: "Ike had a great time last night with Will...He is such a nice guy :)" Note the phrasing: "Ike had a great time," not "we had a great time" — Lesley was not present. Three days later, Jenny confirmed the pattern: "Will always loves going out with Ike - when Will texted me and said they ordered wine I knew they were having fun!!" (EFTA02170494 p.0)

Jenny's "always loves going out with Ike" implies the men were meeting regularly by April 2012 — not just the two documented dinners but an ongoing social-professional relationship. The women, meanwhile, were socializing independently: Lesley connected Jenny with her sister for business, and Jenny's tone ("Hope to see you both soon") reads as a separate friendship track from the men's outings.

November 7, 2012: Ford's election-night "tidbits" email prompts a reply from Jena Masquelier, who mentions she'd emailed Will and is now on "the list." The email chain shows Ford's BCC list was managed by opt-in, and that the Groffs were among its most engaged recipients. (EFTA02155569)

Through the fall and winter of 2012, Ford sent daily emails at a pace that left a dense trail in the corpus — political commentary, parenting pieces, financial newsletters. Ike and Lesley forwarded them to each other regularly. In one exchange, Ike forwarded Ford's Daily Dirtnap newsletter piece on "HUSTLE" with Jared Dillian CC'd directly — showing Ford's network overlapped with institutional financial media (EFTA00401875).

2013: "Why Wouldn't YOU Join Jeff"

January 31, 2013: Calendar alerts for "DINNER w/WILL FORD and Jennie" appear twice in Lesley's inbox. (EFTA02148405, EFTA02149948)

April 3, 2013: The most significant document in the set.

That morning, Ford and Ike exchanged instant messages. Ike forwarded the transcript to Lesley with the subject line "im from Will Ford this morning":

ROY Will Ford [10:27:03 AM]: question for you
ikegroff [10:28:32 AM]: yes
ROY Will Ford [10:28:50 AM]: why wouldn't YOU join Jeff
ROY Will Ford [10:29:01 AM]: have you thought that at all?
ikegroff [10:30:24 AM]: well that is a long story. but Tuesday night maybe great time for that

Lesley replied at 12:28 PM: "wow....how incredibly interesting"

Ike replied at 4:27 PM: "I agree"

(EFTA00392829, EFTA02142657)

Ford's IM handle — "ROY Will Ford" — is consistent with Royal Capital Management, placing the exchange in a professional context. "Jeff" is not identified by last name in the message, but in context "Jeff" strongly appears to refer to Jeffrey Epstein: Ike forwards the exchange to Lesley, whose employer is Jeffrey Epstein, and her response is engaged recognition, not confusion.

What "join" means is not specified. The interpretive range includes: (1) employment with Epstein or one of his entities, (2) investment alongside Epstein, (3) entry into some form of social or advisory orbit, or (4) Ford floating an idea he had no formal basis for. The documents establish that Ford raised the prospect; they don't establish what the prospect was, or whether Ford had his own relationship with Epstein or was simply a friend who thought it made sense.

Ike's response deserves attention on its own terms. "Well that is a long story" is not the answer of a man with no connection to the person being discussed. It presupposes familiarity — a history with the subject that would take time to explain. His deferral to a face-to-face conversation on Tuesday suggests the topic was sensitive enough to take offline but not surprising enough to reject.

Lesley's "wow....how incredibly interesting" is the reaction of someone processing a development within a familiar frame. She does not ask what "join Jeff" means. She does not ask who Jeff is. She does not express alarm. She finds it interesting.

Whether the Tuesday meeting took place, and what was discussed, is not documented in the corpus.

July 11, 2013: Calendar reminders for "dinner in city w/Will Ford, Jenny, Evan & Ingrid" at 7 PM. (EFTA02133826, EFTA02134123)

July 22, 2013: Ike forwards one of Ford's "tidbits" emails about Detroit's bankruptcy to Lesley. Lesley: "Wow. Not good." Ike: "No very bad." (EFTA02133528). The back-and-forth is mundane, but it illustrates how Ford's daily emails served as a shared reference point for the Groffs — a thread of ordinary life running alongside the Epstein connection.

2014–2015: Weddings, Business, and More Epstein Press

January 24, 2014: Ford announces his wedding to the social circle — June 27, 2015, at the Ford Family ranch in Arcata, California. Recipients include Evan & Ingrid Wax, David & Waverly Smith, Seth & Alison Hoenig, Rich & Val Steiner. Ike: "Looks like we are going back to Cali." An unnamed recipient: "Oh my. Sounds difficult to get to. June of 2015. Ok." (EFTA02115670)

April 1, 2014: Ike emails the group: "Any interest in doing this. Will Ford is going." The event is a Lobster Roll Rumble. (EFTA02109653)

February 17, 2015: Jenny Rogers sends detailed Sitka, Alaska travel information — fishing, hiking, WWII bunkers, whale watching — to the wedding guest network. She signs as Jenny Rogers with a cell number. (EFTA02083363)

July 28, 2015: Ike emails Lesley a link to a Page Six article: "Jeffrey Epstein isn't looking too hot these days." Subject line: "from yesterday page 6." Sent from his Tourmaline Partners email. (EFTA02074606)

This is the third documented instance of the Groffs sharing Epstein press coverage between themselves — and the second time Ike initiated it. Together with the 2011 Daily Beast exchange, it establishes a pattern: the Groffs tracked Epstein's media exposure as a couple, not just as a workplace matter for Lesley alone. Whether they discussed the substance of the articles beyond forwarding the links is not documented.

September 28, 2015: Ford pastes the full text of a New York Times piece ("Stop Googling. Let's Talk.") into an email for Ike, who'd hit his "10 free stories for the month." Ike forwards it to Lesley. (EFTA00338868). The texture of the relationship is visible in small moments: Ford pasting an entire article into an email so Ike wouldn't have to hit a paywall.

2016–2017: Business Leads and Career Transition

March 11, 2016: Ike lunches with Deric Senne, whom he logs in Tourmaline's CRM system as "a colleague of Will Ford at Lehman prop many years ago." Senne is joining a Dubai family office. Ike documents the meeting as a business development lead — the family office could become a Tourmaline client. (EFTA02058003)

This is the clearest evidence that Ford's network was actively monetized for Tourmaline's benefit. Ford's former Lehman colleagues were being steered toward Ike's firm. Whether Ford was compensated for these introductions is not in the corpus.

June 3, 2016: Ford emails about acquiring "Emerald Forest," an RV park in California, and a second park near Philadelphia. The email goes from "Will GRRV" — his new venture identity. He's still sending to the same social-professional network. (EFTA00324111)

November 18, 2016: Ford sends a Peggy Noonan column, "What to Tell Your Children About Trump," to his mass list. (EFTA00439470)

February 2017: Ford circulates "The Coyote Principle" — conservative political humor comparing California and Texas governance — to the full list. It gets relayed through multiple contacts, one of whom writes: "I don't know about the CA part, but it is a TRUE STORY about Rick Perry, our new energy secretary." (EFTA00444292, EFTA02204262). Separately, Ike forwards a Ford email about athlete aging to Lesley. (EFTA00444375)

By 2017, Ford has nominally left Wall Street for the RV park business, but his emails still carry Tourmaline Partners disclaimers. The daily "tidbits" continue. The social circle persists.

2019: The Final Documents

April 27, 2019: Ford emails a Bloomberg article — "The Meteoric Rise of Billionaire Len Blavatnik" — to Evan & Ingrid Wax and Ike & Lesley Groff. The email carries a Tourmaline Partners institutional disclaimer. It is forwarded on May 9. (EFTA02285833)

This is the last known document in the Ford-Groff correspondence, and its distribution is narrower than usual — Ford's daily "tidbits" went to a large BCC list, while this went to four people. No documented connection between Blavatnik and the Ford/Groff/Epstein network has been identified in the corpus; the article may simply have been something Ford found interesting and shared with close friends. The date is ten weeks before Epstein's arrest on July 6, 2019.

May 9, 2019: Ford's last documented email to the mass list: a Medium article by Ryan Holiday titled "Will You Choose Alive Time or Dead Time?" — about what to do when circumstances are outside your control. (EFTA00495067)

Then silence. In the corpus, Ford's eight-year email trail simply stops.

September 2019

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019 and found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10. The medical examiner ruled suicide by hanging.

Will Ford died on September 26, 2019, at age 47. His obituary, published in the Eureka, California Times-Standard, says he "died suddenly" in Mountainside, New Jersey — consistent with where his partner Heather White lived (Brooklyn) and the New York metro commuter belt. He is survived by three children, his partner, his parents, two siblings, and a former wife. Memorial donations were directed to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and to Imagine Center for Coping With Loss in Mountainside. (Obituary)

The AFSP memorial donation is a strong public signal of manner of death, though not an official confirmation. No public cause-of-death record has been located. An OPRA request to Mountainside Police Department or Union County Medical Examiner would yield the incident report; neither has been filed.

This report does not assert any link between Ford's death and Epstein's. What it establishes is the documentary record: Ford was close enough to the Groffs to raise the prospect of Ike joining Epstein in some capacity, professionally intertwined with Ike's firm for nearly a decade, and embedded in a social circle where Epstein's name, press coverage, and orbit were openly discussed.

The answer to what Ford knew is not in these files.

What This Means for Lesley Groff's Testimony

Lesley Groff is scheduled for a transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee on June 9, 2026 (Oversight.house.gov). Her lawyers have stated that she "never witnessed anything improper or illegal," and she has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein's abuse (CT Insider).

The Ford correspondence complicates that posture.

She had advance notice of a Daily Beast article headlined with the word "pedophile" and told her husband she'd been briefed the day before. Two years later, when her husband showed her an instant message in which a friend asked why he hadn't "joined Jeff," she responded with curiosity, not confusion. In 2015, Ike sent her yet another Epstein article, and she apparently received it without comment — or at least without comment preserved in the corpus.

None of this proves criminal knowledge or knowledge of trafficking. Managing media awareness is part of being an executive assistant. Finding a friend's career question "incredibly interesting" is not a crime. But the cumulative picture — advance press briefings, engaged reaction to a conversation about joining Epstein's orbit, repeated Epstein media monitoring as a couple — documents awareness of Epstein's notoriety and a degree of normalized discussion around him inside the Groff household. That is hard to square with any portrayal of Groff as isolated from the broader implications of Epstein's public scandal.

Congressional staff preparing for the June 9 interview should consider the following questions:

1. "Who told you the Daily Beast article would be published?" — referencing EFTA00436269, March 25, 2011.
2. "What did you understand Will Ford meant when he asked your husband why he hadn't 'joined Jeff'?" — referencing EFTA00392829, April 3, 2013.
3. "Did your husband meet with Will Ford on the Tuesday night referenced in the instant message? What was discussed?"
4. "In what capacity did your husband interact with Jeffrey Epstein, if at all?"
5. "Were you or your husband aware of any financial relationship between Ike Groff — or Tourmaline Partners — and Jeffrey Epstein or any Epstein-controlled entity?"
6. "How often did you and your husband discuss Epstein's media coverage or legal exposure?"

People

EFTA Document Index

Primary Evidence

Network and Business

Representative "Tidbits & Quotes" (selected from 154 pages)

All citations verified against full_text_corpus.db (1,416,711 documents, 2.91M pages). EFTA links resolve to justice.gov.