On March 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order called “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.” It directed agencies to give officials chosen by the president or agency heads “full and prompt access” to unclassified government records, data, software and information systems.
It also directed agencies to consolidate information across departments and remove rules that interfered with sharing. The order extended that demand to state program data, including information held in private databases.
Hold onto that, you’ll understand why it matters more than it seems right now. The Epstein files contained more than 3,000 search results for Informa, a British company known for publishing, research and business events. Some results are part of the word “information” but there are plenty related to the business itself. I found this company while researching another one of Epstein’s companies. Instead of what I was looking for, I found a proposed system for collecting government medical and social insurance information across China. Local centers would process the information and send copies to central warehouses. Informa would receive the exclusive right to exploit the data outside China.
Then I found the company Epstein incorporated in the United States. Financial Infomatics proposed identifying American internet users across imperfect databases. It would combine those identities with biomedical, DNA, customer, behavioral and transaction information. Approved clients could then use the combined information to predict outcomes, choose investments and apply artificial intelligence to financial decisions.
So what happened if Epstein died in 2019, but the companies, investments and intellectual property did not end with him?
Financial Infomatics later became Southern Trust which invested in AdFin with Howard Lutnick. It was also an investor in Ehud Barak’s investment company that later financed the emergency technology company now called Carbyne.
AdFin’s patent for a system that collects real-time online advertising data to predict prices, value ad space and select winning bids, was granted in 2021, two years after Epstein died. Carbyne’s emergency-response platform may give government agencies access to callers’ voice communications, text messages, live video, precise location and movement information, incident histories and AI-assisted analysis. The company continues selling this infrastructure to American governments. In March 2026, it was selected as an approved next-generation 911 vendor for local governments across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region. The final disposition of Southern Trust’s shares, code, contracts, models and data remains unknown.
These businesses removed barriers between databases, matched people across them, turned behavior into predictions and limited the results to approved users. So what does any of this have to do with Edward Snowden? The things Snowden leaked show these functions first developing inside the government before Epstein pursued private versions of them.
What did Snowden actually show us?
After September 11, the phrase “connect the dots” became a government mandate. Agencies held information in separate offices and databases, often under different names or identifiers. The goal was to find the same person across those systems, map that person’s relationships and determine what they might do next.
Snowden’s disclosures revealed how far that work had advanced. ICREACH allowed approved analysts across multiple agencies to search communications and location information gathered from numerous databases. CRISSCROSS and PROTON connected telephone records, devices, locations, travel, visas and intelligence reports. CO TRAVELER analyzed movement and association. DISHFIRE processed text messages. Identity Intelligence combined communications, biometrics, travel records and social relationships to identify people even when names or source records did not match cleanly.
PRISM obtained communications with the compelled assistance of American internet companies. Upstream programs collected information through companies controlling the telecommunications backbone, and OAKSTAR was part of the same corporate access system. The government supplied authority, targets and money, while private companies supplied access to the infrastructure carrying the information.
Across the programs, analysts collected information from separate sources and determined which records belonged to the same person. They then mapped relationships and movement, predicted what mattered and restricted the results to be accessed only by approved users. Epstein’s private companies were designed to perform each of those steps.
Public policy was moving in that direction too. In April 2011, the Obama administration released its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. It called for an online “Identity Ecosystem” that could support banking, government services, commerce and other transactions. Under the strategy, the private sector would lead, the federal government would support the effort and government would become an early adopter to stimulate demand. Seven months later, Financial Infomatics was incorporated.
I am not saying there is anything that directly links Financial Infomatics to an order from an intelligence agency. The government was nevertheless building the ability to resolve identities across enormous databases while asking private industry to create the identity system used for digital transactions. Why was Epstein creating a private company that combined both functions and added investment selection?
Why was Informa buying access to government medical data?
Before Financial Infomatics, Epstein was already advising David Stern on China Medical Data Services.
Stern called Epstein his boss and mentor. He described himself as Epstein’s soldier and repeatedly sought his approval. In February 2010, Sarah Ferguson wrote that Epstein had introduced her to Stern, who had an extensive network in China and came highly recommended by Epstein. Stern also traveled with former Prince Andrew on official trade missions to Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. He relayed Andrew’s information to Epstein and discussed using the prince’s “aura and access” in private ventures.
On March 18, 2010, Informa offered $3 million for 50.1 percent of China Medical Data Services and contemplated as much as $16 million in working capital.
An April 30 acquisition plan shows the venture being moved from a British Virgin Islands structure into Hong Kong. Informa would receive 501 of the company’s 1,000 shares, four board positions and approval rights involving data and intellectual property. One provision gave the Hong Kong company the exclusive right “to exploit the data outside China.”
The value lay in the data system. Local collection centers would connect to medical and social insurance systems, while extraction software would clean, validate and standardize the information. Language processing would help make inconsistent records usable. A Beijing processing center would send the results to a central warehouse, replicated recovery warehouses and potentially a separate warehouse selected by Informa. Later correspondence described 36 regional centers financed at $200,000 each.
The proposal defined the system, its ownership and its commercial use. It contains no evidence of how many centers opened, how many people were included or whether identifiable medical information left China. The contracts, server logs, company filings and data licenses that could answer those questions have not been released as far as I could find.
In a February 25, 2011 email, Stern told Epstein that he was completing the Informa health care deal in Beijing and proposed a strategic partnership with JPMorgan. Epstein warned that Asia Gateway, a small firm trying to connect JPMorgan with Chinese state-backed deals, could create legal or reputational problems for the bank if its conduct came under scrutiny. His solution was to place a JPMorgan lawyer, officer or accountant inside the structure. That person would provide “total transparcny, and effective oversight,” while “the chinese would see a small seperate operation.”
Epstein’s proposal would have given JPMorgan practical oversight while presenting Chinese participants with what he described as a smaller operation. Former Prince Andrew supplied official access, Stern operated the companies, Informa obtained the data rights and Epstein advised the people designing the arrangement.
By December 2011, Stern described himself as retaining 100 percent of the equity while Informa became a “normal lender” with “no voting rights, no control.” The revised terms described $3 million in cash, $16 million in loan notes carrying 10 percent interest compounded quarterly and continued financing for the regional centers.
Informa gave up its shares while retaining debt and data-related commercial rights. If a company surrenders its votes but keeps its licenses, financing and influence over the infrastructure, how much control has really disappeared?
What was Financial Infomatics built to do?
Financial Infomatics was incorporated on November 18, 2011, as the Informa relationship was being reorganized. Its application described a population scale information company under Epstein’s ownership.
The company proposed matching identities across databases that contained incomplete or inconsistent information. Once it determined which records belonged to the same person, it could combine that person’s internet activity, DNA, biomedical records, customer information, financial transactions and behavior. Its automated analysis could model disease and predict financial outcomes. It could also run what the application called financial genetic algorithms to help choose investments. The company would sell data, analysis, software and artificial intelligence to approved users.
Financial Infomatics became Southern Trust in September 2012. The following year, Epstein, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn approved another reorganization. Assets from Epstein’s older Financial Trust business moved into Southern Financial, a subsidiary of Southern Trust. This placed the old money business and the new information company in the same corporate family.
Southern Trust later received $158 million from Leon Black for tax, estate and family office work. The United States Virgin Islands alleged that approximately 85 percent of the company’s revenue came from one source and did not appear connected to informatics or data mining. The settlement acknowledged that Epstein used Black’s money to partially fund his Virgin Islands operations. The Senate Finance Committee later said the evidence showed that Black’s payments financed Epstein’s trafficking activities. The customer contracts, technical files and complete revenue ledger needed to determine what Financial Infomatics actually built are still not public.
Epstein was proposing a private business that could identify Americans across separate databases, combine intimate information about them and predict their behavior and financial value. The results would be reserved for selected clients. A capability used to find threats across government databases could also be sold to private customers and used to select investments.
How did information become something that could be traded?
Through AdFin, Southern Trust entered a business designed to turn advertising and behavioral data into financial products. In December 2012, Southern Trust and a Cantor-affiliated vehicle invested in the same AdFin financing round. Epstein signed for Southern Trust, and Howard Lutnick signed for the Cantor side. Cantor initially invested $350,000. Southern Trust invested approximately $500,000 and later held roughly $875,000 to $889,000 in the company.
AdFin was designed to convert advertising and behavioral information into pricing indexes and financial products. Its patent describes using aggregated information to create securities, futures, options and swaps. A 2016 recapitalization converted approximately $7.3 million in debt and gave Cantor effective control over board and shareholder decisions. By January 2018, Cantor held 60.32 percent while Southern Trust retained approximately 4.5 percent. The patent process continued after Epstein died and the patent was granted to AdFin Solutions on July 20, 2021. Its current public status is expired for failure to pay fees, but the grant confirms that the company’s intellectual property survived him.
Howard Lutnick now serves as Secretary of Commerce. Emails from Ehud Barak’s political intelligence circle includes Scott Bessent and meetings arranged through Barak’s office. Bessent now serves as Treasury Secretary. His name is not tied into the Financial Infomatics application and the Informa agreements. His connection here runs through the Ergo network, which converted political developments into probabilities, sanctions analysis and market consequences for private clients.
Epstein invested through Thiel-associated funds and discussed Palantir. Palantir built commercial systems that allow government clients to connect records, identities and relationships across databases. Carbyne’s current investor page lists Thiel’s Founders Fund.
What continued after Epstein died?
By 2019, the relevant assets were already held through companies, patents, contracts, debts and equity interests that could survive their creator. Financial Infomatics had become Southern Trust. Southern Trust had moved capital into AdFin and Barak’s investment network. Cantor had gained control of AdFin and the AdFin patent remained in process until it was granted in 2021.
Carbyne is still operating and selling to government agencies. The company now says its systems process more than 250 million data points each year. Its early financing came through Barak’s investment company after Southern Trust invested in it.
Epstein’s money flowed into a company that connects people, locations and communications to public agencies, and that company continued expanding after his death. Southern Trust also held approximately 4.5 percent of AdFin in 2018. What the estate did with that interest is not public.
There is no complete public inventory of Southern Trust’s intellectual property, customer contracts, data licenses, source code or models when Epstein died. The missing inventory of what the estate inherited prevents us from following those assets.
Why does Trump’s order change how we read Epstein’s companies?
Trump’s 2025 order requires agencies to remove barriers to sharing and give presidentially designated officials access to records and software. It also directs agencies to consolidate information across departments and obtain data held in private databases.
In April 2026, the Government Accountability Office reported that one Treasury DOGE employee had access to three Bureau of the Fiscal Service payment systems and could view, copy and print the information. The employee was temporarily granted authority to create, modify and delete data in one system. Another employee transmitted unencrypted payment information outside the bureau without obtaining approval.
The government now has an official policy to eliminate information silos. Politically selected personnel have already obtained broad access to systems processing tax refunds, benefits, salaries and federal vendor payments.
Financial Infomatics was designed to identify the people represented in separate records, combine their transactions with other personal information and use automated analysis to predict outcomes. Companies such as Palantir can integrate the data, while artificial intelligence can analyze it. Emergency and communications companies can add location and real-time behavior.
World Liberty Financial applied to operate an uninsured national trust bank in January 2026 and it was approved just this month. Uninsured means the bank will not offer deposits protected by the FDIC. It will issue USD1, manage the assets backing it, process the creation and redemption of the tokens, and hold digital assets for customers. The public application identifies WLTC Holdings as the sole shareholder, but the complete ownership chart, capital structure and business plan are hidden in confidential exhibits. Zachary and Robert Witkoff are among the proposed directors.
The Senate Banking Committee’s published account says a Trump-affiliated entity controlled 60 percent of World Liberty and was entitled to 75 percent of certain revenues. A later Senate letter says a company affiliated with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan acquired a 49 percent stake for $500 million shortly before Trump’s inauguration. Sheikh Tahnoon is the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and the brother of its president. USD1 was then selected for the $2 billion MGX transaction involving Binance.
Emirati state-connected capital entered the company while the Trump administration was making decisions involving Gulf investments, advanced technology and American national security.
The same group of people and investors now reaches across government information, technology that can identify and predict people, public contracts and privately issued money. Some of the people who invested in or controlled these businesses now hold the offices responsible for regulating them.
Was Epstein privatizing what the government had built?
Snowden’s disclosures revealed something relatively simple beneath all the classified program names. American intelligence agencies had built systems capable of collecting information about millions of people, determining which records belonged to the same person, mapping relationships, tracking movement and searching information gathered by different parts of the government.
At the same time, federal policy was assigning private companies a related task: building the systems people would use to prove who they were online. The government was connecting information behind the scenes while private industry was being encouraged to build the digital identification used for banking, purchases and other transactions.
There is no released evidence that the NSA gave its technology to Epstein or that he worked to develop it directly. What I do have in these documents show that Epstein and the people around him were pursuing private businesses that could perform many of the same basic functions with government and commercial information.
The proposed Informa operation in China was designed to collect, standardize and sell access to medical and insurance information. Financial Infomatics described technology that could recognize the same person across separate databases, combine the information and use it to predict behavior. AdFin was built to collect live advertising data and calculate what online attention was worth. Epstein’s investment network also included companies working in political intelligence, emergency communications and financial technology.
These businesses did not need to possess classified NSA software to be valuable. They needed access to large amounts of information, a reliable way to match that information to individual people, and programs capable of finding patterns that ordinary analysts would miss.
Epstein’s businesses added the part a government intelligence agency did not need: private ownership and private profit. A company could own the code, keep its methods secret, sell the analysis, use it to guide investments and collect revenue every time the information became a business decision.
Those companies, patents and investments could also survive Epstein, and it seems they very much did.
The companies are connected through people, money and investments, but the complete trail of technology and ownership is still missing.
Did Epstein understand that the government’s ability to identify and predict people would become far more profitable if private companies owned the programs, contracts and payment systems built around it? If so, did the investments he placed into companies that survived him allow other people to continue that work?
The difference between government and private ownership is central, and part of what the Trump administration is working overtime on. Government agencies are subject to constitutional limits, public-records laws, congressional oversight and rules governing how information may be used, even when those protections fail. A private company can call its software, methods and customer information proprietary. It can sell the company, license the technology or transfer its assets without giving the public a clear account of who now controls them.
The government may still provide the information, contracts and legal authority. The private company owns the tool built around them and profits from its use. A public function can move beyond public view without ever officially leaving the government.
The missing records could show whether that happened here.
DOGE must account for the government information it copied, where that information went and whether any private company received it. World Liberty’s confidential ownership chart and business plan should be examined with the same questions in mind.
Those records would answer three basic questions: Who inherited what Epstein left behind? Who can combine and search this information now? Who gets paid when information about a person becomes a decision about that person?
We have spent years asking what Jeffrey Epstein collected about powerful people but we never considered what he may have collected about the rest of us. Was he helping build a private system capable of collecting, identifying and assigning financial value to entire populations? If so, who controls it now?
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By Kait Justice, see comments for sources, images and to support her work.
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