Epstein Data Wiki

Barry J. Cohen

Properties2
tagsperson, leon-black, elysium-management, apollo-management, family-office, trusts, art, tax, aircraft, correspondence
aliasesBarry J. Cohen, Barry Cohen, Cohen, Barry, Barry J Cohen

45 min read

Barry J. Cohen

⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not

Barry J. Cohen was a trustee of Leon D. Black’s family trusts and, by 2017, president and special counsel of Elysium Management, LLC, the Black family office. He signed a $33,000,000 promissory note as a trustee of the Black Family 1997 Trust, art dealers addressed their invoices to him as trustee of two Black trusts, and he corresponded directly with Jeffrey Epstein about the family’s tax position, its aircraft and its investments from 2014 to 2018. He appears nowhere in the litigation or investigative record read for this page: nothing read for this page places him in a deposition or under subpoena.1 No allegation against him was found in the material reviewed for this page and none is made here. No telephone number, e-mail address, bank account identifier, sort code, routing line or IBAN appearing in any document cited here is reproduced on this page, and no member of his family is named. The surname “Cohen” in this release belongs mostly to other people, and the partition is set out below.

Role, 2018President and special counsel, Elysium Management, LLC, 445 Park Avenue Suite 1401, New York, the family office of Leon D. Black; his own signature block, read at the image2
Role, 2012 to 2014Trustee of the Black Family 1997 Trust; trustee named on the APO1 and APO2 trusts; signing from Apollo Management, 9 West 57th Street3456
First dated appearance27 March 2001: a fax from John J. Hannan of Apollo Management addressed to “Barry Cohen / Bear Stearns”, asking him to wire $685,000 for art bought for the Black children7
Last dated appearance2 October 2018: he writes to Epstein that “Leon asked if we could get your thoughts on an investment the family is seriously considering”2
Reach in the full textBoth full forms of his name are well represented and neither contains the other, so a page built on either alone would miss much of the file8
Share of the surnameThe surname “Cohen” in this release belongs mostly to other people, and he is not the largest of them: Larry Cohen of Bill Gates’s private office is the largest9
Act rateHe is the sender of a substantial part of his own file; the decisive documents for him, being instruments, invoices and schedules, carry no sender field at all1011
Litigation recordNone found in the material read for this page1

Barry J. Cohen occupies a position the rest of this cluster does not. Richard Joslin was the family office’s chief financial officer, Ada Clapp its chief legal officer and Eileen Alexanderson the officer who executed its wires. Each of them worked for the structure. Cohen was, on the documents read for this page, simultaneously a trustee of the trusts that owned the assets and the president of the company that administered them. A trustee owes fiduciary duties to beneficiaries; an officer of a service company does not. He was both, and the documents say so in his own signature blocks.

Trustee or staff: the question the brief for this page asked, and what settles it

The dichotomy is false, and four documents settle it.

He is a trustee. A promissory note for $33,000,000, dated as of 3 October 2012, recites that “the undersigned, DEBRA R. BLACK, BARRY J. COHEN, JOHN J. HANNAN and RICHARD RESSLER, in their capacities as trustees of the BLACK FAMILY 1997 TRUST, promise to pay to BLACK FAMILY PARTNERS” the principal sum.3 Four counterparts of that note sit in one run, and each carries exactly one ink signature: Debra Black’s on the first, Cohen’s on the second, Hannan’s on the third, Ressler’s on the fourth.3 Two art dealers addressed invoices to him in the same capacity: SternArts Ltd of London, on 18 July 2014, to “APO2 Trust” at a line reading “c/o Barry Cohen, Trustee”;4 and the Robert Miller Gallery of New York, on 9 September 2014, to “APO1 Agreement” at a line reading “c/o Barry Cohen, Trustee”.5 And the six decanting notices of 26 February 2014, set out on Ada Clapp, name him as one of three Independent Trustees who created a new trust and appointed the principal of another to themselves.12

He is also an officer of the family office. His own signature block, read at the image on a message of 2 October 2018, gives six stacked lines: his name, “President and Special Counsel”, “Elysium Management, LLC”, the office’s Park Avenue street line, its city line, and a line whose telephone and cell values are covered by bars.2 ⚠ The stacked-line count includes the barred line, on the convention stated at 2. The same title stands in his signature on messages of 2017.13

And earlier he signed from Apollo. The notes of the trustees’ meeting of 21 November 2014 close on a four-line block reading his name, “Apollo Management”, and a West 57th Street address.6 Thirteen years before that, a fax of 27 March 2001 is addressed to him at Bear Stearns.7 ⚠ No document read for this page states when he moved from Apollo Management to Elysium Management, or whether the two roles overlapped. The earliest Elysium block found here is of 2017 and the latest Apollo block of 2014; the gap between them was not searched exhaustively and is left open.

⚠ What this page does not establish. No trust instrument, letter of appointment, trustee resolution or engagement letter for him was found in the material reviewed for this page, so the date he became a trustee of any Black trust, the identity of every trust he was a trustee of, and whether he was compensated in either capacity are all unsettled here. A task list prepared inside the office records an item to “Provide B. Cohen information re Fiduciary liability insurance”. ⚠ The item beside it is a task, not a finding: it directs someone to “Review all trust agreements and Foundation documents to determine whether (i) successor Trustee appointments are in place and appropriate, (ii) compensation agreements need to be put in place.” Nothing on that sheet says the appointments were in place. The sheet was read at the text layer only and no such agreement was found.14

The name forms, and the surname partition

⚠ The bare surname cannot be used for this subject without partitioning it first, and once it is partitioned most of it is not him. Ahead of him stands Larry Cohen of Bill Gates’s private office, who is named also on Boris Nikolic; behind the two of them a long tail of others, none of them this subject. So “Cohen” in this release is a measurement of the surname and not of him.9

And the two full forms of his name are not nested. Neither contains the other, and they are different records. The middle-initial form is almost entirely e-mail headers: the operational record, the mail he wrote. The plain form is Epstein’s daily schedule, his assistant’s call slips, the estate-planning charts and the art invoices: the record other people kept about him. A page built on either form alone would lose a large part of the file.815

⚠ A further form of his name was tested for this page and is not reproduced on it.

March 2001: the earliest sheets, and what the run records

A one-page fax, read at the image, carries four stacked labels down its left edge, To, From, Re and Date. The To value is his name over “Bear Stearns”; the From value is John J. Hannan’s name over “Apollo Management”; the Re value is “Wire Transfer” and the date is March 27, 2001. Those values are described rather than quoted, because they are a stacked field block and a contiguous string joining them exists on no sheet. The body reads:

“Would you please wire transfer $685,000.00 ($171,250 for each of the Black children) as shown below. This amount represents the purchase of a Calder painting and a Giacometti Table. The cash should be available from the sale of Cendant stock last week.”7

Beside Hannan’s name a cursive signature is written across the block.7 A handwritten annotation at the top right of the sheet reads “Black Grantor Trust DTD 11/30/92”.7 The beneficiary account lines printed beneath the body are not reproduced here.

⚠ On this sheet he is the person being asked, not the person acting, and the arithmetic is exact: $171,250 multiplied by four is $685,000, which is what the four Black children’s trusts were each being charged one quarter of.7

⚠ But the run does not stop at the fax, and p. 1 carries an annotation asserting the act. On p. 1, read at the image at 900 dpi for this page, a handwritten annotation in a hand the sheet does not identify reads “wired by B. Cohen end of March 2001”.16 It records the wire as made “by B. Cohen”, at the end of the month in which the fax asked him to make one, and that is the tier of this page’s own timeline row for the same event. ⚠ The words stand on the sheet, read at 900 dpi; that the wire occurred is what they assert. ⚠ It is an unattributed hand: the sheet does not say who wrote it or when, and no other sheet read for this page says who made the wire. p. 6 is a second copy of p. 1 and carries the same annotation, which is a duplicate and not a corroboration. ⚠ None of the handwriting on p. 1 is in the extracted text layer, which is why a reading taken from that layer cannot see any of it.16

⚠ The run is mixed and must be cited by page. EFTA02672888 is fifteen sheets. Its first sheet is a Paris gallery invoice of 7 March 2001 to the Black grantor trusts, care of John Hannan as trustee at Apollo Management, for an Alexander Calder iron wire sculpture at 925,000 USD. The fax is at p. 3.

The two prices reconcile, and it is p. 4 that reconciles them. A worked sheet there sets out “Calder” at 925,000, “Giacometti Table” at 240,000, a subtotal of 1,165,000, a “Credit for Derain” of 480,000 deducted, and a total of 685,000, which is the figure the fax asks him to wire.16 ⚠ That is the run’s own arithmetic on its own figures, and no sheet read for this page says who prepared it.

Sheets 5 to 15 are the New York use-tax filing made on that purchase in 2002. Four Form ST-130 returns, one for each of the four Black children’s trusts, give the taxpayer as “D. BLACK, B. COHEN & J. HANNAN TRUSTEES FBO” that child, against the date 11/30/92; each reports a quarter of the purchase price and $22,185.12 due, and a second handwritten line on p. 1 records four times that figure, $88,740.48, paid on 25 June 2002.16 ⚠ Those returns name him as a trustee of those four trusts in 2002. They are tax filings, not instruments of appointment, and they do not establish when he became a trustee of anything.

3 October 2012: the $33,000,000 note

On one day in October 2012 five wire instructions moved $67,067,000 between Black entities, a sterling purchase of £41,000,000 followed, and the stated purpose was an investment in Phaidon. That sequence is set out in full on Eileen Alexanderson and is not re-derived here.17 What this page adds is the signature.

The $33,000,000 leg of that day ran from Black Family Partners to the Black Family 1997 Trust, and it is papered by a promissory note at 3.0% compounded annually, due the day before the fifth anniversary, dated “as of October 3, 2012”.3 Four copies of the note sit at pp. 13 to 16 of the same run, and this desk rendered all four. They are not duplicates. They are counterparts, and each bears one ink signature over one of the four rules:

SheetRule bearing inkRules blank
p. 13Debra R. Black, TrusteeCohen, Hannan, Ressler3
p. 14Barry J. Cohen, TrusteeBlack, Hannan, Ressler3
p. 15John J. Hannan, TrusteeBlack, Cohen, Ressler3
p. 16Richard Ressler, TrusteeBlack, Cohen, Hannan3

⚠ Eileen Alexanderson cited these four sheets and said the question needed the image and that the sheets had not been opened. They have since been opened, and the answer is that all four trustees executed, one counterpart each. Checked on 24 September 2026, that page carries the corrected reading and its own checked-on date; it is not re-derived here.3

⚠ A producer bar follows the payee’s name on all four sheets, identically. Nothing is recovered from any copy and no copy differs from another in what it covers.3

2014: the trustees’ meeting, and he wrote the notes

On Saturday, 22 November 2014 at 1:46 PM he sent a message under the subject “Notes from 11/21/14 Trustees meeting” to Eileen Alexanderson, Richard Joslin, Ada Clapp, John Hannan, “Richard Ressler” and Leon Black.6 Read at the image, it is not a circulation of somebody else’s minutes. It opens “Here are a few notes from yesterday’s meeting:” and is his own composed text, six bulleted items long, closing on his Apollo Management block.6 Four of the six name an individual and give that person something to do, namely the first, third, fourth and fifth:

”* Rich Joslin will look into what is entailed in selling Vector for all the trusts, given the certificated and restricted nature of its holdings.

  • $6MM of Buckingham should be redeemed by year end, taking into account the advance notice period.
  • Rich or Eileen should produce a schedule showing redemption terms of all redeemable HF-type investments.
  • Rich will add appraisals of the Chinese Bronzes to the art inventory.
  • It was noted that trust art on loan to museums might be double insured. Rich or Eileen should investigate whether it is worth seeking a reduction in the premiums paid by the trusts. Might be too small to matter.
  • All trustees should sign up for Artspace!”6

Four days later Joslin replied to him, Hannan and Ressler that a deliverable the meeting had asked for would be deferred “In consultation with JEE”, meaning Epstein. That reply, and what it establishes about who settled the family office’s deadlines, is on Richard Joslin and is not repeated here.18

What he brought to Jeffrey Epstein

He was in direct correspondence with Epstein for five years, and the great bulk of his traffic falls in a single year, 2017. ⚠ The earliest row in that metadata is not Epstein correspondence: it is the welded cover of the 27 March 2001 fax described at 7, and 11 records it as a real 2001 document and not a year artefact. It is the row that ties this metadata to the earliest document on this page. The 2017 concentration is a concentration of subject matter: the subject lines that year are the family’s aircraft, its 2012 tax reconciliation, an Internal Revenue Service correspondence, draft returns and the sale of Phaidon.11

17 March 2017: a document request, and his answer. At 7:25 AM Epstein wrote asking for “latest bank art loan docs. BRH agreement . TRA agreement , agreement amongst shareholders. . , org chart for phaidon , art space and regan arts… , ownership only, . - list of invetsments , ownership of l.a. house.structure, / list of art by highest gain. . -” (the spellings and spacing are the sheet’s). At 8:07 AM Cohen replied to him, copying Brad Wechsler, Melanie Spinella and Ada Clapp, in two sentences: “I will organize. Copying Ada who has a lot of this.” At 11:10 AM Eastern, on a stamp reading “15:10:57 +0000” where the two messages above it carry local stamps, Clapp sent Cohen and Epstein five attachments, listing them as the executed version of the Agreement Among Principals, the most current draft, a redline of one against the other, and a summary.19 ⚠ Nothing read for this page says what the Agreement Among Principals is, and no characterisation of it is offered here.19

28 April 2017: an alternative letter to the Internal Revenue Service. At 21:52 UTC he sent Brad Wechsler a draft, writing “As I will be out of town Mon.-Wed., please hold on to this in case you need it.”20 Wechsler answered, on a stamp carrying no time zone, “Maybe forward to jee to think abt and/or edit?”20 At 22:03:43 UTC, eleven minutes after his own first message, Cohen forwarded it to Epstein with a Word attachment and the line:

“If we want to take the position that the second letter from the IRS obviates the need to send the package we just sent you, attached is an alternate letter we could send in response to the first IRS letter.”20

⚠ Wechsler’s stamp reads “5:59 PM” with no zone printed. The sequence is coherent if it is Eastern Daylight Time, and this page asserts nothing further about it.20

21 August 2017: the aircraft, and a line about Epstein’s standing. Under the subject “Plane Straw Man PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL”, Cohen sent Epstein at 2:03 PM “We just had a call with EY, where they suggested improvements. New draft out shortly.” Epstein answered at 2:23 PM “Barry why don’t you put dollars in your chart . Suggesting FETCeith no numbers is” (the sentence ends there on the sheet). At 2:28 PM Cohen sent the numbers, and agreed to the change Epstein had asked for:

“Big picture: FET is peanuts. He flies 300 hours a year. At $17,500/hr, that’s $400K per year of FET. Avoiding FET on half the flights would be $200K per year. Flying under Part 135 (and therefore incurring FET) better ensures full deductibility of the depreciation, which is big $. So for a small amount of FET, we solidify our position.

But we will show example transactions with numbers as you suggest.”21

Epstein replied at 2:51 PM, to Cohen and to Leon Black, “Feel free to leave me out of this”. At 19:10:56 UTC, which is 3:10 PM Eastern, Cohen answered both of them:

“We value your opinion, so we prefer to send you everything.”21

⚠ “FET” is the sheet’s own acronym and is not expanded anywhere on it. It is reproduced as printed and not translated here. ⚠ The arithmetic in his message is internally consistent: 300 hours at $17,500 is $5,250,000, of which $400,000 is 7.6%. That is arithmetic on his own two figures and is not an identification of any tax.21

2 October 2018: the last dated message, and the clearest statement of what he thought Epstein was for. At 4:24 PM he wrote to Epstein:

“Jeffrey: Leon asked if we could get your thoughts on an investment the family is seriously considering. It’s probably best if 3 or 4 of us come see you. Unfortunately the timetable is tight. Any chance of visiting you in the next day or two?”2

The business was one that “for 20 years has sourced and executed transactions that utilize federal and state tax credits”, and he added, in two consecutive paragraphs, “To be clear, we are looking to buy the business, not invest in the tax credits.” and “We will send you a deck in advance of our meeting.”2 Epstein replied a minute later: “im in middle east. not back until 16th. send docs. i will review. of course”. Cohen answered that evening: “Thanks.”2

⚠ This is an ARRANGEMENT, not an occurrence. Nothing read for this page shows a meeting taking place, a deck being sent, or the business being bought.2

Gaps in this page, stated

  • No instrument of appointment. No trust deed, trustee resolution, letter of appointment or compensation agreement naming him was found in the material reviewed for this page. When he became a trustee is not established here, and the trusts named on the documents read for this page are not necessarily all of the trusts he was a trustee of.
  • No date for the move to Elysium. The latest Apollo Management signature block found for this page is of November 2014 and the earliest Elysium Management block is of 2017. The intervening period was not searched exhaustively.
  • Three documents were read at the text layer only and are relied on for nothing decisive: the fiduciary-insurance task list, the 2017 signature blocks carrying his title, and pp. 2 and 3 of the Robert Miller Gallery invoice.14135
  • Printed names on other instruments, now partly tested at the image. Two assignment instruments carry execution entries naming him over the title Trustee, for trusts other than the 1997 Trust. On the two sheets of one of them rendered for this page, every rule bearing his name is blank. The other was read at the text layer only, where ink cannot be seen either way. A printed name is not a signature, and neither sheet is offered as evidence that he executed anything.22
  • His own account is absent. Nothing in the material reviewed for this page records anything he said about Epstein to any investigator, journalist or court.1
  • Provenance is mixed and is stated at each footnote. Twenty-eight sheets were rendered and read as images: EFTA00591044 p. 1 at 700 dpi; EFTA00589888 pp. 13 and 14 at 400 dpi and pp. 15 and 16 at 300 dpi; EFTA00696094 p. 1 and EFTA00680654 p. 1 at 700 dpi; EFTA01748318 p. 2 at 500 dpi; EFTA02672888 p. 3 at 500 and again at 700 dpi, p. 1 at 900 dpi, p. 2 at 700 dpi and pp. 4 to 15 at 250 dpi; EFTA00598516 pp. 8 and 10 at 700 dpi; and EFTA00673978 p. 1, EFTA02621590 p. 1 and EFTA01198029 p. 1 at 600 dpi. ⚠ Three findings on this page exist only because sheets it had cited without rendering were opened: the handwriting on EFTA02672888 p. 1, the arithmetic on its p. 4, and the blank rules on EFTA00598516 pp. 8 and 10. A citation is not a reading. Everything else cited here was read at the extracted text layer only, and that layer is unreliable: on EFTA00591044 p. 1 it renders “c/o Barry Cohen, Trustee” as “do Barry Cohen, Trustee”, and on EFTA00673978 p. 1 it renders “Most Current Draft of AAP” as “Most Current Draft of MP”. Both were settled at the image.

Timeline

DateEventStatusSource
27 Mar 2001John J. Hannan of Apollo Management faxes him at Bear Stearns asking for a $685,000 wire for art bought for the Black childrenoccurred7
end of Mar 2001A handwritten annotation on p. 1 of the same run records the $685,000 wire as made “by B. Cohen”annotation only; the hand is not identified on the sheet and nothing else read corroborates it16
3 Oct 2012Signs, in ink, one of four counterparts of a $33,000,000 promissory note as a trustee of the Black Family 1997 Trustoccurred3
26 Feb 2014Named on six certified-mail notices as one of three Independent Trustees who decanted a Black trustoccurred12
21 Apr 2014Richard Joslin sends him the Black trusts’ art portfolio for two entitiesoccurred18
18 Jul 2014SternArts Ltd of London invoices the APO2 Trust, care of him as trustee, $1,600,000 for a 1949 Magritte gouacheoccurred4
9 Sep 2014Robert Miller Gallery invoices the APO1 Agreement, care of him as trustee, for twelve Peter Sacks works, $249,323.75 dueoccurred5
22 Nov 2014Writes and sends the notes of the 21 November trustees meeting to five colleagues and Leon Black, signing from Apollo Managementoccurred6
17 Mar 2017Answers Epstein’s request for the family’s structural documents: “I will organize. Copying Ada who has a lot of this.”occurred19
28 Apr 2017Drafts an alternative response letter to the Internal Revenue Service and forwards it to Epstein to “think abt and/or edit”occurred20
21 Aug 2017Sets out the FET arithmetic on the aircraft to Epstein; tells him “we prefer to send you everything”occurred21
2 Oct 2018Asks Epstein, at Leon Black’s request, for his thoughts on a tax-credit business the family was considering buyingoccurred; the proposed meeting is arranged only2

Notes

Footnotes

  1. The absence, scoped. Measured 21 September 2026: no document read for this page places him in a deposition, under subpoena, or before any investigator, and the released metadata records no message from him after 9 October 2018. This is a claim about the searches and the documents described on this page, not about the release as a whole, and not every document naming him was opened. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. The last dated message, and the title. EFTA02621590 p. 1, a two-sheet run, carrying three messages: his of “Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 4:24 PM”, Epstein’s reply of “Tuesday, October 02, 2018 4:25 PM”, and his of “Tuesday, October 2, 2018 9:30 PM” under the subject “RE: Black Family Investment”. Read at the image at 600 dpi. All three quotations above are the sheet’s text. His signature block is six stacked lines reading his name, “President and Special Counsel”, “Elysium Management, LLC”, “445 Park Avenue Suite 1401”, “New York, NY 10022” and a line whose telephone and cell values are covered by bars; it is described rather than quoted as one string, and the individual line “President and Special Counsel” is quoted because it is contiguous on the sheet. ⚠ One convention governs every stacked-line count on this page: count every line the block occupies, including the line whose telephone and cell values are covered by bars, and excluding the wrapped e-mail address that follows the block. On that convention this block is six and the sibling block at 20 is five; both were re-counted at the image at 700 dpi on 24 September 2026. Epstein’s address prints on this copy in the ordinary course of the header and is not reproduced here. ⚠ His description of the target business names four companies as that business’s clients. They are not reproduced on this page, being third parties to this subject. ⚠ No document read for this page shows the proposed visit taking place or the deck being sent. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  3. The promissory note, and the four counterparts. EFTA00589888 p. 13 reads “For value received on behalf of the BLACK FAMILY 1997 TRUST, the undersigned, DEBRA R. BLACK, BARRY J. COHEN, JOHN J. HANNAN and RICHARD RESSLER, in their capacities as trustees of the BLACK FAMILY 1997 TRUST, promise to pay to BLACK FAMILY PARTNERS” the sum of “THIRTY THREE MILLION DOLLARS ($33,000,000.00)” and is dated “as of October 3, 2012”. The same instrument stands at pp. 14, 15 and 16. All four sheets were rendered and read as images for this page, pp. 13 and 14 at 400 dpi and pp. 15 and 16 at 300 dpi. Each carries exactly one ink signature, crossing the rule captioned in turn DEBRA R. BLACK (p. 13), BARRY J. COHEN (p. 14), JOHN J. HANNAN (p. 15) and RICHARD RESSLER (p. 16); the other three rules on each sheet are blank. A producer bar follows the payee’s name on all four, identically. The sheets carry their own Bates numbers, running EFTA00589900 to EFTA00589903 for pp. 13 to 16. ⚠ Eileen Alexanderson cites these four sheets. Checked on 24 September 2026, that page carries the same counterpart-by-counterpart reading as the table above, together with its own checked-on date and an express note that its earlier wording — that the question needed the image and the sheets had not been opened — was true when written and became false once somebody opened them. Nothing here re-derives it, and this is an as-of statement about a live page. ⚠ The run is mixed: seventeen sheets holding a planning worksheet, a summary, five wire instructions, a bank statement and four counterparts of one note. Cite it by page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  4. The SternArts invoice. EFTA00591044 p. 1, a single-sheet run, an invoice of SternArts Ltd of London dated “JULY 18 2014”, invoice number withheld here — ⚠ this page’s standard is that invoice and facture numbers printed on the sheets it cites are not reproduced on it, whether or not the sheet is barred, because such a number is often the sharpest single string on a sheet and reproducing it buys a reader nothing the citation does not already give — for a 1949 René Magritte gouache on paper, Le bain de cristal II, at ”$ 1.600.000,00.-”. Read at the image at 700 dpi. The addressee block is five lines in the sheet’s left column and is described rather than quoted whole, because a two-column header is where this desk has previously stitched a quotation that no sheet carried; the single line “c/o Barry Cohen, Trustee” is contiguous on the sheet and is quoted as such. The five lines name APO2 Trust, then that line, then Elysium Management, then the office’s Park Avenue address over two further lines. The right column reads “Held by temporary import customs bond with: Dietl International. Warehoused at Day&Meyer, New York City.” The sheet also prints “Transfer of title will occur when payment has been received in full.” The remittance block, the seller’s bank, sort code, account number, SWIFT and IBAN, and the company and VAT registration numbers in the footer are not reproduced on this wiki. ⚠ The text layer of EFTA00591044 p. 1 renders that line as “do Barry Cohen, Trustee”, so a checker searching the text layer will report the quotation above as unlocatable. The pin is correct and the extraction is wrong. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. The Robert Miller Gallery invoice. EFTA01198029 p. 1, headed “ROBERT MILLER GALLERY”, dated “September 9, 2014”, addressed on two lines reading “APO1 Agreement” and “c/o Barry Cohen, Trustee”. Read at the image at 600 dpi. The invoice number printed on the sheet is not reproduced here, per the standard stated at 4. ⚠ The text layer of EFTA01198029 p. 1 breaks that line into “do B” and “Cohen Trustee” and loses the comma, so a checker will report the quotation above as unlocatable; the pin is correct and the extraction is wrong. Page 1 lists five works by Peter Sacks: AFTERMATH (MANDELA) at $130,000.00 and four ULYSSES works at $9,000.00 each. pp. 2 and 3 were read at the text layer only and carry seven further ULYSSES works at $9,000.00 each, a subtotal of $229,000.00, New York City tax of $20,323.75 and “Total Due” of $249,323.75. The arithmetic reconciles exactly: $130,000 plus eleven times $9,000 is $229,000, and $229,000 plus $20,323.75 is $249,323.75. That is a consistency check on the text layer’s own figures and not a reading of the sheet; pp. 2 and 3 were not rendered. The sheet also prints “Title does not transfer until invoice paid in full” and a clause making payment the buyer’s agreement to keep the terms confidential. The gallery’s wire instructions are not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. The trustees’ meeting notes. EFTA01748318 p. 2, carrying his message of “Saturday, November 22, 2014 1:46 PM” under the subject “Notes from 11/21/14 Trustees meeting”, to Eileen Alexanderson, Richard Joslin, Ada Clapp, John Hannan, “Richard Ressler” and Leon Black, and beneath it Richard Joslin’s reply of Wednesday, 26 November 2014 at 3:16 PM. Read at the image at 500 dpi. The six bullets are quoted whole above; the message opens “Here are a few notes from yesterday’s meeting:” and closes on a four-line block reading his name, “Apollo Management”, “9 West 57th Street, 37th Floor” and “New York, NY 10019”, which is described rather than quoted as one string. The sheet carries its own Bates number EFTA01748319. Five other copies of the same message exist in the release. Measured 24 September 2026: the subject phrase “Notes from 11/21/14 Trustees meeting” and the body phrase “Here are a few notes from yesterday” each return the same six documents, of which this is one. This copy was rendered because it carries the notes and the reply on a single sheet. Richard Joslin cites a different copy, EFTA00647932 p. 2, for the reply. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  7. The 2001 fax. EFTA02672888 p. 3, a “Via Fax” cover sheet dated “March 27, 2001”, whose left edge carries the stacked labels To, From, Re and Date against values naming him and Bear Stearns, John J. Hannan and Apollo Management, and “Wire Transfer”. Read at the image at 500 dpi. Those addressee values are DESCRIBED and not quoted, because the sheet sets them as a stacked two-column block and no contiguous string joining them exists on any sheet; this desk has previously published a quotation assembled from exactly that shape. The extraction welds the whole block into one run reading “To: From: Barry Cohen Bear Stearns John J..Hannan Apollo Management”, which is why the released metadata records that welded string as this document’s sender. The direction was settled at the image and it is the opposite of what the metadata implies: Hannan wrote, Cohen received. A pen stroke crosses the rule beside Hannan’s name. A handwritten annotation at the top right reads “Black Grantor Trust DTD 11/30/92”; it is handwriting and therefore absent from the text layer altogether, so a checker will report it as unlocatable on any sheet. The beneficiary bank, routing and account lines printed in the body are not reproduced here. The fax sheet carries its own Bates number EFTA02672890. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  8. Name forms. Measured 21 September 2026 against the full-text corpus, FTS5, phrase queries scoped to text_content, counting distinct documents. Both full forms of the name were run and neither is contained in the other. ⚠ “Barry J. Cohen” and “Barry J Cohen” are ONE query and return the same set, because this tokeniser splits on the full stop; the same is true of “Cohen, Barry” against “Cohen Barry”. They are not two corroborating forms. ⚠ A further form was tested and is not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2

  9. The surname partition. Measured 21 September 2026 over the corpus pages matching the token “Cohen”, by extracting the word standing immediately before each occurrence. Most of the surname is other people: Larry Cohen stands ahead of this subject, and a long tail of others follows the two of them. The partition is instance-derived and is a floor for each person, because a document naming someone only by surname is not counted to them. The released e-mail metadata gives the same shape independently.11 ↩ ↩2

  10. Act rate. Measured 21 September 2026 over the documents naming him, classifying each from its own first sheet. He is the sender of a substantial part of them, and that is a floor. It differs from the metadata picture because the metadata reads every message in a run while this classification reads only the document’s own top sheet, and because the decisive documents for this subject are instruments, invoices and schedules that carry no sender field at all. ↩

  11. Sender metadata. Taken 21 September 2026 from the released e-mail metadata at epstein-data.com, over emails_merged. The metadata reads every message in a run rather than only a document’s first sheet, which is why it and the classification on this page give different pictures of one file. Every spelling counted to him was hand-adjudicated; an edit-distance metric was used as a candidate generator only and never as an adjudicator, and it produced false positives on this name which were removed by hand. Two rows read “Kristen OConnell-Choate on behalf of Barry J. Cohen” and are excluded as an assistant’s act, not his. Three rows are other people’s messages whose subject line carried his name into the sender field; one of those subject lines reads “Barry J. Cohen, John J. Hannan and Richard Ressler, Trustees of the APO1 Agreement”. ⚠ The one 2001 message in that metadata is the welded fax cover described at 7 and is a real 2001 document, not a year artefact. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  12. The February 2014 decanting. The six certified-mail notices of 26 February 2014 on Elysium Management letterhead, which name Richard Ressler, John Hannan and Barry Cohen as the Independent Trustees who created the APO2 Declaration and appointed the principal of the Non-GST Exempt Trust to themselves, are quoted and cited in full on Ada Clapp from EFTA00623032 pp. 7 and 8. Not re-quoted or re-sourced here; the identifier is given so this footnote is traceable without a second hop. ⚠ The letter names the “APO2 Declaration”, a Declaration of Trust dated 20 February 2014 — not an “APO2 Trust”. The SternArts invoice of 18 July 2014, four months and three weeks later, is addressed to “APO2 Trust”; treating the two names as the same instrument is an inference of this page and is not stated on either sheet.4 ↩ ↩2

  13. The same title in 2017. EFTA02621655 p. 1, EFTA02339282 p. 2, EFTA02608360 p. 2, EFTA00934499 p. 1 and EFTA00934557 p. 1 each carry his signature block giving the title “President and Special Counsel” over “Elysium Management, LLC”. All five were read at the text layer only; the title is image-verified for this page on EFTA02621590 p. 1 alone. ⚠ The text layer of EFTA02339282 p. 2 renders his forename as “Barry 1.” and, on the same sheet, renders Leon Black’s initials as “LOB” where the sibling copy EFTA02608360 p. 2 renders them “LDB”; neither sheet was rendered and neither reading is relied on here. ⚠ The text layer of EFTA02608360 p. 2 renders the firm name “Elysium Management, LIC”, so a checker will report the company name as unlocatable on that sheet. A phrase search for “President and Special Counsel” returns 28 documents. ↩ ↩2

  14. The fiduciary-insurance task list. EFTA00619527 p. 11 and EFTA01114126 p. 11, two copies of one internal status table, are two copies of one internal “OPEN ITEMS LIST” headed “As of February 28, 2014”. Item 5 under “ADMINISTRATION OF TRUSTS AND FAMILY ENTITIES” reads “Provide B. Cohen information re Fiduciary liability insurance”, against the responsible party “Ada” and the status “Gathering information.” ⚠ Item 4 immediately above it is a task and not a finding. It reads, whole: “Review all trust agreements and Foundation documents to determine whether (i) successor Trustee appointments are in place and appropriate, (ii) compensation agreements need to be put in place.” Both parenthesised clauses are governed by “to determine whether”, so neither states a fact about the world, and the sheet lowercases “successor”. Text layer only; neither sheet was rendered for this page. No fiduciary liability policy and no compensation agreement naming him was found in the material reviewed here. ↩ ↩2

  15. The two strata. A hand sample drawn from each stratum was read at the text layer, and all of it is this subject and the Black cluster. The middle-initial-only stratum is almost entirely mail headers, “From: Barry J. Cohen” or “To: Barry J. Cohen”; the plain-form-only stratum is Epstein’s daily schedule, his assistant’s call slips, estate-planning charts, art invoices and the executor entries. This is a statement about the documents read and not about either stratum as a whole. A wider control found that almost every document naming him carries a Black-cluster term on its first sheets; of the few that do not, those read were still his, chiefly schedule lines and short call slips whose only other content is a time, while a small number are demonstrably other Cohens: a school transcript, two due-diligence reports and a computer-science bibliography. ↩

  16. The run around the fax is mixed and fifteen sheets long, and all fifteen sheets have now been read as images. EFTA02672888 p. 1 is a Paris gallery invoice of 7 March 2001 for a 1930 Alexander Calder iron wire sculpture, Portrait de Fernand Léger, at “925 000,00 USD”. Read at the image at 900 dpi for this page; it was previously relied on at the text layer only. ⚠ The text layer of this sheet recovers none of its handwriting. The cursive annotation produces nothing in the extraction at all; the two printed hands survive only as unreadable fragments, “OR D” and ”/// 3492” where the trust initials and date stand and “NY USE FAX 418 / 1y0,9fici” where the use-tax line stands. ⚠ The extraction also loses the gallery’s accents, rendering the footer “GALERIE CAZEAU •BERAUDIERE” and the letterhead “JACQUES DE LA BERAUDI ERE”, so a checker will report both quotations below as unlocatable on p. 1; the accented forms are what the image prints, and the pin is correct. The letterhead reads “PHILIPPE CAZEAU” over “JACQUES DE LA BÉRAUDIÈRE” and the footer “GALERIE CAZEAU-BÉRAUDIÈRE”; the gallery’s name is spelled here as those two lines spell it, read at 900 dpi. The fax at p. 3 prints it without its accents, as “Cazeau-Beraudiere”. The sheet is addressed to “BLACK GRANTOR TRUSTS” over four “FBO” lines for the Black children and then, on four further lines, John Hannan’s name over the word Trustee, a care-of line for Apollo Management, a street line and a city line. ⚠ That addressee block is DESCRIBED and not quoted: it is a stack of separate lines, running them together into one string requires commas the sheet does not print and recasing a word the sheet sets in capitals, and no contiguous string joining those lines exists on any sheet. 7 declines to quote the same shape on p. 3 and the same rule is applied here. ⚠ The four forenames on the “FBO” lines are not reproduced on this page, and the same standard is applied to the two trust titles at 22. Three separate hands appear on p. 1, none of them in the text layer: beside the printed addressee, “UAD 11/30/92” — ⚠ this is not the same abbreviation as the “DTD 11/30/92” on p. 3, and the accountants’ sheets at pp. 5, 9 and 13 of this run give the client as “Grantor UAD 1992 Trust”, which is what the initials on p. 1 track; across the lower right, in cursive, “wired by B. Cohen end of March 2001”; and along the lower left, in print, “NY USE TAX $88,740.48 pd 6/25/02”. The hand is not identified anywhere on the sheet and this page attributes the annotation to nobody. p. 2 continues the invoice with the sculpture’s provenance and a six-item bibliography — counted entry by entry at the image at 700 dpi on 24 September 2026; an earlier draft of this page said seven and was wrong — and carries the gallery’s own banking block, none of which is reproduced on this page. p. 4 carries the underlined heading “Jacques de la Beraudiere” over a short typed column setting out “Calder” 925,000, “Giacometti Table” 240,000, a subtotal 1,165,000, “Credit for Derain” −480,000 and “Total” 685,000, and beneath a rule the same beneficiary bank block as p. 3; it is the only sheet read for this page that links the invoice price to the amount the fax requests. p. 6 is a second copy of the p. 1 invoice carrying the same cursive annotation. pp. 5, 9 and 13 are three copies of the accountants’ filing instructions, dated “June 20, 2002”; pp. 5 and 13 are annotated by hand “pd 6/25/02”, “$22,185.12 × 4 = $88,740.48”, four cheque numbers, and, against the printed instruction “Please sign where indicated”, “(John Hannan as Trustee)” — p. 9 carries no handwriting. pp. 7, 8, 10 and 11 are four New York Form ST-130 use-tax returns, one per Black child’s trust, and pp. 14 and 15 duplicate two of them. p. 12 is a certified-mail receipt and return receipt addressed to the New York State Tax Department, postmarked 1 July 2002 and receipted 5 July 2002. p. 2 was read at the image at 700 dpi and pp. 4 to 15 at 250 dpi, which is legible for their printed matter and for the annotations described here. Each ST-130 gives the taxpayer as “D. BLACK, B. COHEN & J. HANNAN TRUSTEES FBO” one Black child, against “(11/30/92)”, reports 231,250 subject to tax — one quarter of 925,000 — and 22,185.12 due. The trusts’ federal identification numbers, the preparer’s identity number and the beneficiary bank, routing and account lines printed on pp. 3 and 4 are not reproduced on this page. The sheets carry their own Bates numbers, running EFTA02672888 to EFTA02672902 for pp. 1 to 15. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  17. The wires of 3 October 2012. The five transfer instructions, the planning worksheet, the summary sheet headed “Summary of money transfers in advance of Phaidon investment:” and the bank statement that closes the arithmetic to the cent are set out, with their citations, on Eileen Alexanderson from EFTA00589888, the same seventeen-sheet run that carries the four counterparts of the note at its pp. 13 to 16, the summary sheet at its p. 2. Not re-derived here; the identifier is given so this footnote is traceable without a second hop. ↩

  18. The chief financial officer’s traffic to him. The art inventory of 21 April 2014, the spreadsheet of 23 April, the deferral told to the three trustees “In consultation with JEE” on 26 November 2014 and the tax returns of 13 April 2017 are set out, with their citations, on Richard Joslin; the art inventory from EFTA00663612 p. 2 and the deferral from EFTA00647932 p. 2. Not re-derived here; the identifiers are given so this footnote is traceable without a second hop. ↩ ↩2

  19. The document request of 17 March 2017. EFTA00673978 p. 1, a single-sheet run, carrying Ada Clapp’s message of “Fri, 17 Mar 2017 15:10:57 +0000” to “Barry J. Cohen” and Epstein, copying Brad Wechsler, under the subject “FW: request for docs - AAP”, and beneath it Cohen’s message of “Friday, March 17, 2017 8:07 AM” to Epstein, copying Wechsler, Melanie Spinella and Clapp, and beneath that Epstein’s message of “Mar 17, 2017, at 7:25 AM”. Read at the image at 600 dpi. Epstein’s request and Cohen’s two-sentence reply are quoted above exactly as the sheet prints them, spellings, spacing and stray punctuation included. Clapp’s numbered list of four attachments and the five attachment filenames stand in the header and are described rather than reproduced in full. ⚠ Nothing on this sheet says what the Agreement Among Principals is, and no document cited on this page characterises it; none is offered. ⚠ The confidentiality footer sits at the foot of the whole chain, beneath Epstein’s quoted message and not under Clapp’s covering message, and it is itself two disclaimers run together: one asserting the communication is “the property of JEE”, and after it a second closing “Apollo Global Management, LLC”. Whose footer it is is not settled on the sheet and is not inferred here. ⚠ The text layer of EFTA00673978 p. 1 renders item 2 of Clapp’s list as “Most Current Draft of MP”; the image reads “Most Current Draft of AAP”. A checker searching the text layer will therefore report the image reading as unlocatable; the pin is correct and the extraction is wrong. The attachments themselves are not in the release and have not been read. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  20. The alternative IRS response letter. EFTA00696094 p. 1, a single-sheet run, carrying his message of “Fri, 28 Apr 2017 22:03:43 +0000” to Epstein under the subject “FW: Alternative IRS Response Letter” with the attachment “IRS_Response_Alt.docx”; beneath it Brad Wechsler’s message of “Friday, April 28, 2017 5:59 PM”; and beneath that his own message of “Fri, 28 Apr 2017 21:52:14 +0000” to Wechsler, copying Yvonne Berger. Read at the image at 700 dpi. All three quotations are the sheet’s text. ⚠ Wechsler’s stamp carries no time zone and the two Cohen stamps carry +0000; the ordering above is the sheet’s own and no conversion is asserted. His signature block on this copy is five stacked lines giving his name, “Elysium Management, LLC”, the office’s street line, its city line, and a line whose telephone and cell values are covered by bars, and carries no title; it is described rather than quoted. Counted on the one convention stated at 2 — the barred line included — and re-counted at the image at 700 dpi on 24 September 2026. The attached Word document is not in the release and has not been read, so what the alternative letter said is not established here. Seven further copies of the 21:52 message exist in the release. Measured 24 September 2026 on the body phrase “out of town Mon”, which returns eight documents including this one. ⚠ The subject phrase “Alternative IRS Response Letter” returns nine, a wider set; the body phrase is the measure given here because it reaches the message rather than the thread. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  21. The aircraft thread of 21 August 2017. EFTA00680654 p. 1, a two-sheet run, carrying his message of “Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:10:56 +0000” to Epstein and Leon Black under the subject “RE: Plane Straw Man PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL”, and beneath it Epstein’s of 2:51 PM, his of 2:28 PM, Epstein’s of 2:23 PM, his of 2:03 PM and two of his own forwards of 12:12 and 12:13 PM. Read at the image at 700 dpi. All quotations are the sheet’s text, including Epstein’s sentence “Barry why don’t you put dollars in your chart . Suggesting FETCeith no numbers is”, which ends there on the sheet; the apparent weld in “FETCeith” is printed on the sheet and is not an artefact of the extraction. ⚠ “FET” is not expanded anywhere on the sheet and is reproduced rather than translated. His 12:12 PM forward separates a To line from a Cc line, and every address on both is covered by a bar. The To line names two people, John Cook and Ruth Wimer, and carries three further recipients whose name and address are both barred. The Cc line names five: Joe Avantario, John Castrucci, Bradley J. Wechsler, Joseph Vinciguerra and Richard Joslin. ⚠ Nothing is recovered from any bar and the three barred To-line recipients are not identified here. The chart and the “straw man” document are not in the release and have not been read. p. 2 of the run was read at the text layer only. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  22. Printed names, not signatures — and where the image settles it, no signature at all. EFTA00598516 pp. 8 and 10, of a seventeen-sheet run, are signature pages of a Black Family Partners assignment and assumption agreement, identified as such by a three-line italic footer on each naming that party, that agreement and the words Signature Page; the three lines are described and not quoted as one string, for the reason given at 7. Both sheets were rendered and read at the image at 700 dpi for this page. The heading of each reads WITH RESPECT TO APOLLO PRINCIPAL HOLDINGS II, followed by a producer bar and a colon. ⚠ The entity carries a numeral and the bar follows it, and the extraction drops both, so a heading quoted from the text layer of p. 8 alone gives an entity name the sheet does not print; the extraction of p. 10 keeps the numeral but as the digits “11”. The phrase “APOLLO PRINCIPAL HOLDINGS II” returns 52 documents, measured 24 September 2026, so the numeral is not incidental. ⚠ A checker searching the text layer will therefore report the heading as unlocatable on pp. 8 and 10; the pins are correct and the extractions are wrong. Beneath a line reading “Assignors:” each sheet sets out three separate blocks: Leon D. Black in his own name, then two 1992 trusts for two of the Black children, each of those two carrying three execution entries over the title Trustee, for Debra Black, Barry Cohen and John Hannan. ⚠ The forenames in the two trust titles are not reproduced here, for the reason given at 16. ⚠ These are stacked blocks and are DESCRIBED rather than quoted, for the reason given at 7. ⚠ “Assignors:” is a standalone line, Leon D. Black is one assignor and each trust is another; a string quoted across those breaks would name a trust that stands on no sheet. The two sheets are not duplicates. They are counterparts, and the image settles who signed each. On p. 8, Leon D. Black has signed in his own hand, and Debra Black has signed in both trust blocks. On p. 10, John Hannan has signed in both trust blocks and every other rule on the sheet is blank. ⚠ Both of the rules bearing Barry Cohen’s name are blank on p. 8 and blank again on p. 10, read at 700 dpi. On the two sheets read, he executed neither. The sheets carry their own Bates numbers EFTA00598523 (p. 8) and EFTA00598525 (p. 10). EFTA01185830 p. 5, of a five-sheet run, carries a block naming the APO-01 Declaration above two execution entries for John J. Hannan and Barry J. Cohen, each over the title Trustee; that sheet was read at the text layer only, a text layer cannot show ink, and nothing is asserted about execution on it. A printed name, a title and a date are each compatible with nobody having signed, this desk has published that error before, and neither instrument is offered here as evidence that he executed anything. They are recorded because they name him as a trustee of trusts other than the 1997 Trust. ↩ ↩2

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