CLEVELAND, OH – Starting with Cedar Road in Beachwood or in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and in the hushed corridors of the Jewish Community Federation, or perhaps in New York, Washington, DC, Connecticut, Los Angeles or Palm Springs, members of the Ratner family are watching the news out of Columbus about fellow Russian Jew and billionaire Leslie Wexner with dread.
Wexner, the 88-year-old founder of Victoria‘s Secret, and once the most powerful businessman in Ohio, sat for a grueling, five-hour deposition before the House Oversight Committee on February 18, 2026. Five days ago, from the date of this news story, he admitted to giving the late Jeffrey Epstein over $1 billion.
Wexner was summoned under subpoena and forced to explain under oath his decades-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The unsealing of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein Files (the EFTA DataSets) had identified Wexner as a potential “unindicted co-conspirator,” a label that has triggered a series of institutional purges, board resignations, and a full-scale trashing of his “Blue Chip” legacy with calls for his name to be removed from institutional buildings.
Wexner sat in his New Albany estate and told lawmakers he was “conned by the World Olympic, all-time con artist.” He called himself “naïve, foolish, and gullible”. He claimed he never witnessed Epstein’s crimes, that he cut ties nearly twenty years ago, that he was “completely blind” to the monster in his midst. It was the floundering performance of a man desperately telling an audience not to believe their lying eyes and ears.
The Ratner family of Beachwood may have watched and wondered not if, someone will read the Epstein files and see their names as I did. Wexner is not the only rich Ohio Russian Jew who was close to fellow Russian Jeffrey Epstein. He is simply the one the media has highlighted.
Columbus has its oligarch in Wexner, but Cleveland has the Ratner’s (Ratowczer before they changed their Russian surname) and the newly unsealed files prove that their connection to Epstein was not peripheral, not accidental, and not “cancelled” after his 2008 conviction. It existed even after the “20 years ago” Wexner said he cancelled Epstein in 2006.
Only Hollywood producer Brett Ratner’s name has been in the spotlight. But in the middle of the Epstein files that name Brett Ratner, are those that name specific members of the Forest City Ratner’s of Beachwood. Forest City Enterprises no longer exists, having been sold to Brookfield Asset Management, Inc. for $11.4 billion in July 2018. Ratners have divided themselves into various new entities that are not as publicly-known. The Max Collaborative. Jon Ratner, Kevin Ratner. Uplands Real Estate Partners. Deborah Ratner Salzberg, Brian Ratner. RMS Investment Group. Albert Ratner, Deborah Ratner Salzberg. Forest City Ratner. Bruce Ratner.
Across 123 internal documents where the Ratner name is referenced, and 16 emails between Lesley Groff and Kelly Garvey-Ratner, a picture emerges not of a casual acquaintance between the Forest City Ratner’s, Jeffrey Epstein and his organization, but of a deeply “blended” social and financial alliance that persisted long after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution.
At the center of that alliance stands Bruce Ratner’s arm of the former Forest City Enterprises. Forest City Ratner.
Albert Ratner’s son: The New York Ratner “Godfather”
While his cousin James provided corporate affirmations, and his nephew Kevin’s wife, Kelly (Garvey) Ratner, managed the social calendar with Epstein’s Leslie Groff, Bruce Ratner occupied a different category entirely. He was one of the major players in a business dealing that involved Epstein after his 2008 conviction.
The DOJ files include a document identified as EFTA_R1_02214161, dated November 16, 2010. It is a “Confidential Draft” titled “Fund Investment Overview,” outlining the deployment of the first $250 million for an “activist growth fund” focused on the “disruptive intersection of technology and media.”
This was less than a year or about 8 months after Epstein was released from prison on July 22, 2009, for soliciting sex from a minor. They were weaponizing a pool of capital to seize control of emerging markets such as payment solutions, ad networks, social media, and mobile applications.
Page four of the document contains a section titled, “A partial listing of the strategic relationships/networks that we will leverage in our investment work.” The list reads like a roll call of the global power elite: Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Eric Schmidt (Google), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Michael Bloomberg, David Rockefeller, Mort Zuckerman, Carl Icahn, Rudy Giuliani. And then, embedded among them, is this entry. “Bruce Ratner (Forest City Ratner)”
Forest City enterprises chairman emeritus Albert Ratner’s son, Bruce Ratner, is not listed as a passive investor or a casual contact in the FBI’s Epstein file and the $250 million deal they were developing. He is described in the document where his name is connected to Epstein’s as a “strategic relationship” to be “leveraged.”
The Ratner’s also came to the investment table gifted with a “get out of jail free” card as they were operating out of the Southern District of New York under U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. After leaving the U.S. DOJ, Bharara joined WilmerHale law firm’s white collar crime division doing the same thing for a huge paycheck that he did for the Ratner’s on a federal government paycheck. WilmerHale sells legal services to corporations that gets their bribery-minded officials out of U.S. DOJ white collar crime investigations and sends the officials they bribed to prison.
Bruce Ratner and Forest City Enterprises in March 2011, escaped being connected by Bharara to a bribe that was delivered allegedly through its employees and consultants to a member of New York city council, Sandy Annabi, in exchange for her vote on a $600 million development contract she initially opposed. Forest City was identified by Bharara as only “Developer 2” in the indictment that led to the convictions of Annabi and Zehy Jereis. Jereis received a $60,000 “consulting” contract from Forest City after he bribed Annabi to change her vote.
Jereis appears to have been a “bagman” for more than one developer and contractor on the project as well as the chairman of the Yonkers Republican Party. Their federal indictments did not reveal if he delivered money and favors to other New York city council members besides Annabi. Language from the USDOJ news release explaining the indictment that led to Annabi’s 6-year prison sentence and $1.3 million in restitution, as well as Jereis’ 4-year prison sentence and $287,000 in restitution beginning in 2013 tells it best.
“The Ridge Hill Project was a proposal by developer Forest City Ratner to develop an 81-acre tract of land into retail, restaurant, and office space with hundreds of residential housing units, a hotel, and a conference center. Annabi was an outspoken critic of the proposed Ridge Hill Project and voted against both the project and legislation that would allow it to move forward over her opposition. Annabi and others also filed a civil lawsuit to effectively block the project. As the City Council was considering the Ridge Hill Project, Forest City Ratner made repeated and unsuccessful efforts to convince Annabi to vote in favor of the project.
On June 2, 2006, after being introduced to representatives of Forest City Ratner, Jereis advised them that he could arrange a meeting for them with Annabi. Jereis and representatives of Forest City Ratner also had an agreement in which the developer would give him a consulting job sometime after Annabi formally voted in favor of the Ridge Hill Project. After two meetings with Jereis and Forest City Ratner’s representatives, which were held five days apart, Annabi reversed her opposition to the Ridge Hill Project. On June 15, 2006, she issued a press release—drafted by Jereis and representatives of Forest City Ratner—informing the public of her support for the project. One month later, at a City Council meeting on July 11, 2006, Annabi voted in favor of the zoning change necessary for the Ridge Hill Project. Shortly after Annabi changed her vote on the Ridge Hill Project, Jereis received the promised consulting contract from Forest City Ratner worth $60,000 over one year.”
The Jereis/Annabi bribery scandal wasn’t the only bribery scandal demanding the attention of Forest City Enterprise’s family members and attorneys while they were engaging with Epstein in November 2010. The next month, on December 28, 2010, Forest City vice president Bruce Bender was heard in one of 30,000 federal recordings negotiating with New York State Senator Carl Kruger for state money for three specific Ratner projects: $9 million for the Carlton Avenue Bridge. $4 million for a skating rink in Prospect Park. $2 million for a retail development in Mill Basin.
When Kruger confirmed he was moving on the funds, Forest City’s vice president of government affairs, Bender, told him, “I love you. I really do, actually.”
Forest City lobbyist Lipsky funneled approximately $252,000 in “referral fees” to shell companies controlled by Kruger’s intimate partner, Michael Turano (Olympian Strategic Development and Bassett Brokerage). Since he was a third-party lobbyist, Forest City officials were able to maintain “plausible deniability,” claiming they paid Lipsky for lobbying, and what he did with that money (paying Kruger’s “referral fees”) was his own criminal choice.
Kruger got 7 years in prison. Lipsky got 3 months (after cooperating). Michael Turano, Kruger’s long-time companion, got 2 years.
Despite Bender being caught on tape and Lipsky admitting the bribes benefitted Forest City Ratner, the corporation was never charged under federal Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization laws. There is no record of Bruce Ratner, James Ratner, or any other family member being subpoenaed before a grand jury. Bharara’s office relied entirely on the testimony of the two Forest City “sacrifices”- Richard Lipsky and Bruce Bender.
By labeling Forest City as “Developer No. 2” in the indictments, Bharara created a legal shield for the corporation. Since the corporation itself wasn’t a defendant, the family could claim “cooperation” status. This allowed them to provide documents behind closed doors while avoiding the public cross-examination that would have exposed their history.
Just before the Yonkers trial (where the Ratners’ “no-show” job for a fixer was exposed), Bender and Scott Cantone suddenly “resigned” to start their own firm. By the time of the trial, they were no longer Forest City employees. They were “former employees” further distancing the Ratner name from the dirty details of the dirty deals done on their behalf.
The “Zionist” Infrastructure of Immunity
The Forest City spokesman at the time, Joe DePlasco, issued the ultimate defense when he declared their indictment “in no way says or suggests that we behaved in an inappropriate manner.”
This was a corporation controlled by the descendants of illegal Russian aliens who aligned with other illegal Russian aliens, mobsters like Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Cleveland’s Mickey Cohen, to fund the Soviet “Jewish” invasion of Palestine by arming Irgun and Haganah terrorists in 1948. Doing business with a convicted Russian Jewish pedophile was no big deal. Albert Ratner was interviewed bragging about his father Leonard’s loan of $25,000 to fund the Israeli government. He said his father didn’t want the money back.
Somehow, the Ratner’s appear to have been operating freely with the knowledge that others would be prosecuted and imprisoned for the crimes committed in the name of their family held corporation. The Ratner name was a stay-out-of-jail-free card for them. The former Forest City Enterprises was an entity with enough power and money to bribe elected officials to move governments and keep the contracts without accountability. Even New York’s media covered how prosecutors volunteered not to associate them with the crimes the corporation’s employees and agents committed.
The files confirm that Bruce Ratner and Epstein were in the same investor pipeline in 2010. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The man whose family was responsible for redeveloping Brooklyn, and whose family developed large swaths of Cleveland, was on an investment team with Jeffrey Epstein, mapping out the future of American tech and media. He was not on the periphery of Epstein’s world. They were at the table building a deal.
According to Lizzy Ratner, Bruce Ratner’s daughter, her father mentored Ivanka Trump to learn Forest City’s ways after she graduated from Wharton College in 2004. She explained how the president’s daughter worked the Ridge Hill project during her internship between 2004 and 2005.
Ivanka Trump left Forest City and joined her father’s corporation before Jereis delivered the bribe to Annabi in 2006 to change her vote.
James “Jimmy” Ratner validates the Ratner organization’s power
Bruce Ratner’s operational role as a powerhouse was reinforced by the involvement of his cousin, James Ratner. In May 2012, the network needed a “Blue Chip” credential to secure Epstein’s blessing for an introduction involving an individual named Heidi. Document EFTA02017848 (DataSet 10), dated May 16, 2012, captured the moment.
David Mitchell of Mitchell Holdings LLC wrote to Epstein: “This is who I will introduce Heidi to win your blessing Forest City is as blue chip as you can get.”
To authenticate this claim, Mitchell forwarded a message from James “Jim” Ratner, then-Chairman of Forest City Enterprises commercial group and son of patriarch Max Ratner. (District 10 U.S. Rep. Max Miller is named for his grandfather’s Max Ratowczer-Ratner and Samuel Minkin-Miller). In an email dated May 16, 2012 (found in EFTA00934747, DataSet 9), James Ratner confirmed the family’s operational reach. “As I think you know all of the work we do in New York City is conducted through our subsidiary, Forest City Ratner.”
That subsidiary of Forest City Enterprises Commercial Group was Bruce Ratner’s domain. James was attesting to the family’s New York infrastructure — the Barclays Center, the Atlantic Yards, the New York Times Building — as evidence of his power. The email was written four years after Epstein had been registered as a pedophile sex offender. The convicted pedophile was being handed the Ratner’s credibility as a bargaining tool.
“Ratner power” was on full display in 2012. Not only were they engaged with Epstein, Bruce Ratner and Forest City had months earlier been declared as not being subjects of ex-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation of the bribe a Forest City “bagman” delivered to a member of New York city council to change her vote against a $600 million project they wanted.
At the time of their Epstein dealings, the Ratner’s were doing “their thing” without fear. The bribery associated with the $600 million publicly funded project did not cause the contracts to developers and construction contractors to be voided and redone. They kept all the fruit from the poisoned tree.
Kevin’s wife Kelly Garvey-Ratner and Epstein’s girl Leslie Groff
The professional machinery that sustained the Ratner’s relationship with Epstein required a social infrastructure. That “soft power” appears to have been managed by Kelly A. Ratner (formerly Kelly Garvey), the wife of Kevin Ratner (grandson of Max). Her primary point of contact was Leslie Groff.
Understanding Groff’s role is essential. Federal filings, depositions, victim statements, and investigative reports consistently identify Groff as the absolute key to Jeffrey Epstein’s life. She was not a random assistant or a distant staffer. She was the central link in Epstein’s operational world — the person who managed his calendar, scheduled his meetings, coordinated his travel, handled his communications, and ultimately, controlled access to him. She was the gatekeeper. She was the filter and a tight link to the Ratner family.
The dataset reveals that Kelly Garvey-Ratner was in direct, recurring contact with this Groff. Across 16 distinct emails from 2016, Kelly Ratner maintained a constant, familiar dialogue with Groff. These emails prove that the two families were socially inseparable.
In EFTA00320155 (DataSet 9), dated August 18, 2016, Kelly wrote to Groff with the casual intimacy of a neighbor: “Great job today in group power class !! Hope you liked it. Hope to see you soon, Kelly P.s. Maybe we should start up our own ‘football moms’ social hour and pick the moms we want to hang with.”
Groff responded with enthusiasm, demonstrating that theirs was not a mere acquaintance but a genuine social bond. She wrote back: “Kelly! That is a GREAT idea! as would totally be ‘In’ To a football mom outing. – and thanks on today. I loved it! (However, I feel sore in lower back and hoping it will go away. I’ve decided it Sucks Getting old!!! ). We will be at pool tomorrow like 3-4:30 if y’all are around. (And not busy with dental stuff for 5!!!).”
This is a window into a world where the Ratner’s and the Epstein apparatus were not just in the same room, but in each other’s daily lives, discussing parenting schedules and coordinating leisure time. The warmth and frequency of this contact places the Ratner family inside Epstein’s inner social orbit, not on the periphery.
The evidence of this “blended” life is threaded throughout the 2016 correspondence. In EFTA00322519 (DataSet 9), dated July 14, 2016, Groff writes: “Fantastic on Declan!” (referencing Kevin and Kelly’s son by name).
Their social blending is included in emails about back pain (EFTA00320155), birthday wishes (EFTA02192757), and TRX boot camps (EFTA00322451). They normalize the presence of a predator in the Ratner family’s social and business dealings.
By “picking the moms we want to hang with,” Kelly Ratner was helping curate an insular social fortress that protected the network. Given Groff’s role as Epstein’s “filter”, this level of intimacy is not a peripheral detail. It is a material fact.
It proves that members of the Ratner family was integrated into the very heart of Epstein’s world, maintaining that bond years after his criminal status was a matter of public record.
There’s a parallel between the Wexner and the Ratner’s
The parallels between Wexner and the Ratners are unmistakable. Both families come from illegal Russian Jewish aliens who built empire-scale retail and real estate operations in Ohio. Both cultivated “Blue Chip” reputations that insulated them from scrutiny. Both provided Epstein with the one thing he craved above all else: legitimacy.
Wexner gave Epstein his start as a money manager, entrusted him with power of attorney, and allowed him to operate under the Wexner umbrella for years. The Ratner’s, in turn, gave Epstein something equally valuable. The Forest City brand, the “Blue Chip” stamp that signaled to other elites that it was still safe to deal with this man.
When Wexner sat before Congress and claimed he was “conned,” that he was “naïve, foolish, and gullible,” he was deploying the same defense every other powerful man used as an excuse when caught in Epstein’s orbit. I didn’t know. I was fooled. I cut ties.
The Ratner’s cannot make that claim. Any future dealing with Epstein were not forever voided in 2006 when he was arrested for soliciting a minor for sex and he was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in a state prison in 2008. The emails between Kelly Ratner and Lesley Groff are dated 2016. This was nine years after Epstein’s first conviction. The fund document listing Bruce Ratner as a “strategic relationship” is dated 2010. The James Ratner affirmation is dated 2012.
It seems impossible that they wouldn’t know.
Silence in Cleveland. Why?
The question for Clevelanders is why the local Ratner’s connection to Epstein is not being reported. The answer lies in the ownership structure of the city’s primary newspaper. The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
In March 1967, Samuel Isadore Newhouse (born Solomon Isadore Neuhaus in Belarus under the Russian Empire) purchased The Plain Dealer. For decades, the Newhouse family’s ownership has ensured that Cleveland’s ruling class — particularly its most prominent Zionist families — operate with a level of media protection that other cities do not afford their elites.
The Ratner’s fund the very institutions The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com covers. University Hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic, universities, foundations and institutions. They sit on the boards that approve the bonds, underwrite the expansions and shape the city’s political and social narrative.
A newspaper that depends on the goodwill of such families does not investigate their patriarchs’ connections to dead pedophiles. When Neuhaus purchased the Plain Dealer in March 1967 he buried the story of 34 U.S. sailors who were stationed aboard the USS Liberty being slaughtered by Soviet Israeli Defense Forces on June 8, 1967. 171 were wounded.
Nine months after he purchased the Plain Dealer, Neuhaus, a Zionist Jew, also buried references to December 25, 1967, being recognized as the birth date of Jesus the Christ as the newspaper had done the year before in 1966, and every year before then. Burying a story about the Ratner family’s relationship with a dead pedophile is no big deal for the owners of a newspaper who buried the annual celebration of Jesus’ celebrated birth date, and the slaughter of 34 U.S. sailors by the Zionist military they support.
The Ratner’s were in Epstein’s mix
The EFTA documents prove that some members of the Ratner family may not view criminal convictions as barriers to association. From their ancestor’s illegal Russian alien origins as Ratowczers navigating the restrictions of early 1900’s immigration laws that saw Eastern Europeans rounded up and deported in 1919, to Bruce Ratner’s seat at Epstein’s investment table, to Kelly Ratner’s intimate social bond with Epstein’s gatekeeper, some in the family appear to have operated according to what appears to be a single consistent principle. Relationships outweigh reputation. Access trumps accountability.
They may not have cared about Epstein’s pedophile conviction because, in their world, the “Blue Chip” status they had spent a century cultivating was the only law that mattered. So were their shared religious and political interests with Epstein as Russian Jewish Zionists living a nationalism of their own in another nation whose immigration laws their ancestors violated. Kalman Ratowczer’s (aka Charles Ratner) admission to the U.S. in 1905 was reportedly from his bribing a “friendly” American immigration official, according to Lizzy Ratner. Money for access is a way of life.
Wexner is now paying the price for affiliation with Epstein. There are calls to scrub his name from buildings. His testimony is being picked apart on YouTube. His legacy lies in ruins.
The relationship between the Ratner’s, Epstein and his inner circle isn’t one that could have only been cultivated in 2010, 2012 and 2016. President Donald Trump’s USDOJ has not released all the years of communications between the Ratner’s, Epstein and Groff which describe transactions that take years to cultivate.
What about their communications and dealings before and after 2010, 2012 and 2016 until Epstein’s death?
