The same Russian money network that seeded Scientologist-owned GPB Capital’s first assets — reputed Russian mobster Michael Chernaya’s cash flowing through his daughters Rina and Diana Chernaya, his attorney Robert Kessler, and the CKGF holding company — intersects with the same network that Jeffrey Epstein was cultivating through Peter Mandelson, Sergey Belyakov, and his repeated attempts to reach Vladimir Putin.

When the Department of Justice released approximately three million pages of Epstein-related documents on January 30, 2026, analysts, journalists, and investigators began the painstaking work of cross-referencing names.

Among the connections that surfaced was an anomaly that initially seemed clerical: a March 2021 email chain about victims of the GPB Capital Holdings fraud — a $1.8 billion Ponzi scheme run by a Long Island accountant named David Gentile — had been placed into the Epstein files.

How did a victim notification list for a private equity fraud end up in the archives of a convicted child sex trafficker?

The conventional explanation was administrative error. InvestmentNews reported that the email chain was heavily redacted and that there was “no link between Epstein and the three former GPB executives.” The series of emails simply got caught in the dragnet of a massive document collection. Case closed. Move on.

But that explanation grows less convincing the deeper you look. What emerges from a careful examination of court filings, corporate ownership records, the Epstein black book, flight logs, the Jmail email archive, and this blog’s years of investigative reporting is something else entirely: a web of overlapping connections between the GPB Capital fraud and Jeffrey Epstein’s network that converges from multiple independent directions.

The connections run through a biotech company called Dor Biopharma, through the daughters of a Russian oligarch alleged to head the Izmailovskaya crime syndicate, through a Moscow apartment shared with Vladimir Putin’s cousin, and through a second Russian oligarch — Oleg Deripaska — whose name appears throughout the Epstein files.

This article maps those connections using publicly available documents. The thesis is narrow: the GPB Capital victim list was likely included in the Epstein files because the FBI had identified an overlapping connection between the two cases. Whether that overlap was ever actively investigated remains an open question.

• • •

The most direct link between David Gentile and Jeffrey Epstein is an email. Dated August 6, 2010, and sent to Epstein’s personal Gmail account (jeffrepstein@gmail.com), the email confirms a 12:30 meeting with Epstein.

The attendees listed are Mark Zeff, Mike Haley, and David Gentile, with a note that David Mitchell was also being contacted. This meeting occurred two years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida and three years before GPB Capital began raising money from investors.

As the Scientology Money Project first reported, the identity of the “David Gentile” in the email has not been conclusively confirmed as the GPB Capital David Gentile — but the site’s editor, who has investigated GPB Capital since its inception, states they have “reasons to believe it is due to the date and other information.”

II. March to August 2010: Epstein and the Chernaya Network

Three documents from the Epstein files establish that Jeffrey Epstein was not merely aware of Michael Chernoy — he was being briefed on Chernoy’s network, warning associates about Chernoy’s toxicity, and casually discussing the Chernoy-Deripaska partnership, all in the five months leading up to his meeting with David Gentile.

March 21, 2010: A redacted correspondent emailed Epstein’s jeevacation@gmail.com account with a pointed warning: “Correction. Reuben bros have very murky past in ex Sov Union with Michael Chernoy. Semi sanitised now. Huge assets.” The Reuben brothers — David and Simon — co-founded Trans-World Group (TWG) with Michael Cherney, the same aluminum empire where Robert Kessler prepared trading records beginning in 1992 and where Oleg Deripaska first rose to power. Epstein’s circle understood who Chernoy was, what he represented, and the scale of assets involved.

May 30, 2010: Epstein himself used Chernoy as a benchmark for toxicity. In an email to a redacted correspondent, Epstein wrote: “good, careful, he talks… re alistair. not a very class act to follow. the risk is that he has now set up the standard of trash, i would like you as far away from that as i would from chernoy.” The correspondent had written that someone “wants to ‘guide’ me, he says.” Epstein’s response was unambiguous: he regarded Chernoy as so dangerous that proximity to him was the standard against which other reputational risks should be measured.

July 31, 2010: Epstein exchanged emails (EFTA00737300) in which a redacted correspondent asked: “Do you know Beny Steinmetz?” — a reference to the Israeli diamond billionaire later convicted in Geneva of corruption related to mining rights in Guinea. Epstein’s reply: “ive never met him.. ehud barak likes him, and he is close to chernoy, derpaskas ex buddy.” In a single sentence, Epstein demonstrated casual familiarity with the Cherney-Deripaska relationship — the same Russian oligarch partnership whose money, flowing through CKGF Holdings, would become the foundation of GPB Capital.

He discussed them in the same breath as Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister who appears extensively throughout the Epstein files. The same email chain references “Leon” — likely Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, who later acknowledged paying Epstein over $150 million in advisory fees — and Tim Collins of Ripplewood Holdings.

The pattern across these three documents is clear. Epstein knew the Chernaya network. He knew it was dangerous. He told associates to stay away from it. And yet six days after the July 31 email, a “David Gentile” sat across from Epstein at a 12:30 meeting in the company of Mark Zeff and David Mitchell. The man whose future $1.8 billion fraud would be built on Cherney family money was meeting with the man who regarded Chernoy as the gold standard of people to avoid — and who had been tracking the Chernoy-Deripaska-Reuben network in his private correspondence since at least March.

Whether Epstein knew about Gentile’s Cherney connections at the time of that August 6 meeting is unknown. But the question itself is significant: if Epstein did know, the meeting takes on a very different character. And if he didn’t, it raises the question of who arranged the introduction — and why.

III. The Shared Attorney: Matthew Menchel

One connection strongly supports the identification. David Gentile hired Matthew Menchel of Kobre & Kim to defend him at trial. Menchel was the former chief criminal prosecutor in the Miami U.S. Attorney’s office who spearheaded Jeffrey Epstein’s 2007 sweetheart plea deal — the deal that allowed Epstein to escape federal sex trafficking charges that could have carried a life sentence, and which granted immunity to unidentified co-conspirators.

The relationship between Menchel and Epstein went beyond prosecutorial discretion. Documents released by the House Oversight Committee — over 8,500 pages from Epstein’s estate — reveal that Epstein’s calendars and emails reflect multiple appointments, phone calls, and dinners with Menchel in 2011, 2013, and 2017, years after Menchel had left the DOJ in 2007. This was not a former prosecutor who walked away from a case; it was a continuing personal relationship.

Menchel was a top deputy to Alexander Acosta, who oversaw the Miami U.S. Attorney’s office and was later appointed Secretary of Labor by President Trump in 2017. A 2018 investigation by the Miami Herald, “Perversion of Justice,” detailed how federal prosecutors in South Florida minimized Epstein’s abuse of nearly 100 underage girls and worked closely with Epstein’s attorneys to keep the scope of his crimes secret. Following publication of the series, federal prosecutors in New York re-examined the case, and Epstein was arrested again in 2019 on more serious sex trafficking charges. He died in federal custody shortly thereafter.

That David Gentile chose Epstein’s own former prosecutor — a man who had multiple personal meetings and dinners with Epstein over a six-year period — as his defense attorney is a connection that deserves scrutiny. Despite a seven-week trial, the jury convicted Gentile and Schneider in a matter of hours. Menchel lost, but the choice of attorney adds another thread to the web linking Gentile and Epstein. It also raises the question of how Gentile came to retain Menchel in the first place — a question whose answer may trace back to the August 2010 meeting.

The other men in the room are well-documented Epstein associates:

Mark Zeff is a South African-born, New York-based luxury interior designer and architect who founded MARKZEFF in 1985. He appears in Epstein’s black book on page 59 with one phone number. His high-profile clientele includes Hilary Swank and Annie Leibovitz; his design work spans luxury residences, hotels, and yachts — the kind of world Epstein inhabited.

David Mitchell is a New York real estate developer and merchant banker who maintained extensive contact with Epstein. The Jmail archive documents 9,454 emails exchanged between the two men. Mitchell is listed in Epstein’s black book on page 76 with eight phone numbers and two addresses. He was close enough to Epstein to serve as a co-surety on Epstein’s proposed $77 million bail package in 2019, and he introduced Chelsea FC co-owner Todd Boehly to Epstein in January 2011.

Mike Haley remains unidentified. No public records connect a “Mike Haley” or “Michael Haley” to the Epstein files, black book, flight logs, or GPB Capital.

If the David Gentile in this email is the GPB Capital David Gentile, then the future architect of a $1.8 billion fraud was sitting in a room with a convicted sex offender and two members of that offender’s documented inner circle. That alone would warrant attention. But the meeting is only one strand in a much larger web.

IV. The Dor Biopharma Connection

The pathway from David Gentile to Jeffrey Epstein does not rely solely on a single email. It runs through a biotech company called Dor Biopharma, and a woman named Amanda “Mandy” Ellison. See our earlier reporting on Dor Biopharma. 

In 1995, Jeffrey Epstein and Amanda J. “Mandy” Ellison co-incorporated the Ghislaine Corporation in the state of Florida. The corporation was named for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion and later convicted co-conspirator. Mandy Ellison was the wife of Dr. Ralph Ellison.

Flight logs confirm the depth of this relationship. Mandy Ellison flew on Epstein’s private jet (tail number N908JE) alongside Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on September 8, 1998, traveling from West Palm Beach to Teterboro, New Jersey. On September 13, 1999, both Ralph and Mandy Ellison flew with Epstein and Maxwell on the same route. The Ellisons were also guests on Epstein’s private island.

Dr. Ralph Ellison became the CEO of Dor Biopharma, a small biotech firm. He resigned in July 2004, citing personal reasons. His tenure there was brief. But during the period of 2002 to 2012, a remarkable group of individuals converged at Dor Biopharma — the same individuals who would later form the core of GPB Capital Holdings:

David Gentile and his father’s business partner Bernard Pismeny (of the accounting firm Gentile, Pismeny & Brengel) invested in Dor Biopharma. Rina Chernaya, daughter of Russian oligarch Michael Cherney, purchased $2,280,000 in Dor Biopharma shares through a Securities Purchase Agreement dated January 12, 2009. Michael Cherney’s U.S. business representative, Robert Kessler, also invested. Evan Myrianthopoulos, who would become GPB Capital’s VP of Biotech, served as CFO and Director of Dor Biopharma.

The chain is specific: Epstein → Mandy Ellison (Ghislaine Corporation co-incorporator, flight log companion) → Dr. Ralph Ellison (Dor Biopharma CEO) → Dor Biopharma → David Gentile, Bernard Pismeny, Rina Chernaya, Robert Kessler, Evan Myrianthopoulos → GPB Capital Holdings. This is not a six-degrees-of-separation exercise. The same small company serves as the convergence point for both networks.

V. Not Just Business: The Pismeny-Cherney Personal Connection

The relationship between the GPB Capital principals and the Cherney family was not limited to corporate filings and securities purchase agreements. Social media research reveals personal ties that suggest these connections run deeper — and possibly older — than the business records alone would indicate.

Bernard Pismeny — David Gentile’s father’s business partner at the CPA firm Gentile, Pismeny & Brengel, and a co-investor with Gentile in Dor Biopharma — is married to Miriam Pismeny. Her Facebook profile lists her as living in Delray Beach, Florida, and originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Michael Cherney is also Uzbek-born, from the same city. Among Miriam Pismeny’s Facebook friends: Diana Cherney — Michael Cherney’s daughter and the holder of 23.4% of CKGF Holdings.

Diana Cherney’s own Facebook profile lists her as living in Tel Aviv, Israel, and also originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She attended IDC Herzliya in Israel and Birch Wathen Lenox, a private school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The shared Tashkent origin between the Pismeny and Cherney families is significant. It suggests that the connections between David Gentile’s accounting firm and Michael Cherney’s daughters may not have begun with Dor Biopharma or CKGF Holdings but rather in the networks of the Uzbek emigrant community — ties that would predate any of the corporate structures documented in court filings.

Before GPB Capital Holdings existed, there was Gentile, Pismeny & Brengel — a Long Island CPA firm. The Cherney money didn’t arrive at GPB through a cold introduction. It arrived through personal relationships that may stretch back decades and across continents.

Rina Chernaya on Facebook:

VI. The Russian Money: CKGF Holdings and the Chernaya Empire

GPB Capital’s very first acquisition reveals the second pathway — one that leads through Russian organized crime to Oleg Deripaska and, from there, back to the Epstein files.

In October 2014, attorney James A. Prestiano wrote to Volkswagen of America detailing the ownership of the Lash Auto Group dealerships. The letter, filed as Exhibit 9 in Case 7:15-cv-01035-VB, laid bare the corporate structure behind GPB’s founding assets. The dealerships were owned by DJD Holdings, LLC. DJD was 85% owned by CKGF Holdings, LLC. CKGF’s ownership was as follows:

The acronym CKGF stands for Chernaya, Kessler, Gentile, Francese. Five of the six ownership stakes trace back to either Epstein’s network (through Gentile) or to Russian oligarch Michael Cherney’s network (through McAnna, the Chernaya sisters, and Kessler).

GPB Capital, where Gentile was sole manager, then purchased 100% of DJD Holdings from these same insiders for $3,337,000 in installments over approximately nine months (June 2013 to June 2014). This was a textbook self-dealing transaction: Gentile was on both sides, selling assets he partly owned through CKGF and buying them with investor money through GPB Capital. None of these transactions were disclosed to investors.

Correction & Clarification (February 26, 2026): The ownership table above reflects the CKGF Holdings ownership structure behind the original DJD Holdings, LLC, which owned the LAG (Lash Auto Group) VW Dealership. A second entity, DJD Holdings2, LLC (“DJD2”), owned the LAG2 VW Dealership. As detailed in attorney James A. Prestiano’s October 6, 2014 letter to Volkswagen of America (Exhibit 9-Part 2 in Case 7:15-cv-01035-VB), the CKGF Lash Group ownership of DJD2 was structured differently and included Jeff Lash as a 30% member:

Steven Adam separately held 10% of DJD2 directly (outside of the CKGF Lash Group’s 90% stake). The Cherney-linked interests (McAnna, Rina Chernaya, and Diana Chernaya) still controlled 50% of the CKGF Lash Group in this structure. GPB LLC acquired 95.1% of DJD2 in two transactions totaling $1,841,350, paid in installments between June 2013 and June 2014.

VII. Who is Michael Cherneya?

Michael Cherneya (also known as Mikhail Chernaya, Michael Chernoi, Michael Chernoy and other transliterations) is an Uzbek-born Russian oligarch who rose to power during the bloody Russian “aluminum wars” that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse.

His biography reads like a Cold War thriller: he shared a Moscow apartment in the 1980s with Vladimir Putin’s cousin Igor Putin. Russia’s Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov linked Cherney to the Izmailovskaya organized crime syndicate in 1997 — months before Boris Yeltsin removed Kulikov from his post.

The United States has denied Cherney a visa since 1999 due to alleged ties to the Russian mafia. He has been barred from Bulgaria. Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant against him on allegations of money laundering and organized crime. The Interpol Red Sheet on Michael Cherney a/k/a Michael Chernaya, keeps his living in exile in Israel:

Michael Cherney denies all criminal allegations. But the flow of his money into GPB Capital through his daughters and his U.S. business attorney Robert Kessler has been extensively documented in court filings, including the Barasch class action and the Peiffer Wolf complaint.

VIII. The Deripaska Bridge

Michael Cherney’s most famous business relationship was with Oleg Deripaska. In 1994, Deripaska, then an independent metals trader, won Cherney’s backing to take control of the Sayanogorsk aluminum smelter. The two men became partners through Trans-World Group (TWG), controlling vast swaths of Russia’s aluminum industry. Their partnership ended in litigation: Cherney sued Deripaska in London’s High Court for $6 billion in 2006, claiming Deripaska held 20% of RusAl shares on Cherney’s behalf. They settled out of court in 2012.

Robert Kessler, who held 2.94% of CKGF Holdings and was Cherney’s U.S. business agent, was directly involved in this relationship from its earliest days. Court testimony indicates that Kessler began working for Cherney in October 1992 and prepared trading records documenting extensive dealings with TWG, with contract numbers and vessels identified. Kessler wasn’t simply a lawyer — he was embedded in the operational mechanics of the Cherney-Deripaska aluminum trade.

In May 2009, Spain’s Supreme Court issued a detention order against Cherney. Along with Deripaska and Iskander Makhmudov, Cherney was suspected of laundering money. Spanish authorities claimed to have traced the organization’s money laundering operations, including Deripaska’s alleged participation.

This matters because Oleg Deripaska appears repeatedly in the Epstein files, creating a bridge between the Russian money that seeded GPB Capital and Epstein’s own operations.

IX. Three Pathways to the Same Place

The ownership structure of CKGF Holdings — the entity at the foundation of GPB Capital — now connects to Epstein from three independent directions:

From the bottom up: David Gentile → Dor Biopharma → Mandy Ellison (wife of CEO) → Ghislaine Corporation (co-incorporated with Epstein, 1995) → Epstein flight logs, island visits → Jeffrey Epstein

From the top down: McAnna, Ltd. / Rina & Diana Chernaya → Michael Cherney (alleged Izmailovskaya head) → Oleg Deripaska (former business partner) → Epstein files (visa requests, meeting attempts, advisory role) → Jeffrey Epstein

Through the attorney: David Gentile → Matthew Menchel (defense attorney at Kobre & Kim) → sweetheart plea deal architect for Epstein (2007) → continuing personal dinners and meetings with Epstein (2011–2017) → Jeffrey Epstein

These are not the same pathway. They converge from three different directions. The probability that all three lead to Epstein by coincidence diminishes with each additional documented link.

X. The FBI Victim List — Accident or Recognition?

Which brings us back to the March 2021 email chain in the Epstein files. The email, dated March 16, 2021, arrived approximately six weeks after Gentile, Schneider, and Lash were indicted on federal fraud charges. It was sent within the DOJ/FBI apparatus. The names of the officials are redacted, but the document contains five mentions of the EOUSA (Executive Office for United States Attorneys) and seven mentions of the FBI, including one email signed by a “Victim Specialist, FBI New York Office.” There are twelve citations of the “GPB Capital case.”

The opening line reads: “Hope you are well! I had this queued up to send you — attached is a list of investors in GPB Capital Holdings LLC that have victim notification rights, etc. Let me know if this makes sense or if you have any thoughts about the best way to handle stuff going forward.”

InvestmentNews reported there was “no link between Epstein and the three former GPB executives discussed in the emails” and that “it’s not clear why the series of emails about GPB investors was included in the Epstein files.” This was the consensus interpretation: administrative accident.

But consider what we now know about the overlapping networks. The FBI was investigating both the GPB Capital fraud and the Epstein case out of its New York office. The same office would have had access to both case files.

If investigators had identified any of the following connections — Gentile’s apparent 2010 meeting with Epstein; the Dor Biopharma/Ellison/Ghislaine Corporation chain; the flow of Cherney family money through CKGF into GPB; Deripaska’s documented presence in the Epstein files and his former partnership with Cherney — then the GPB Capital victim list would have a logical reason for being in the Epstein files. Not because of a filing error, but because the cases were recognized as sharing a common network.

XI. The Leaked FBI Intelligence Bulletin

There is additional context suggesting the FBI was aware of GPB Capital’s Russian money connections. In July 2020, Reuters reported on a leaked FBI Intelligence Bulletin expressing concern about money laundering through private equity. The bulletin described “threat actors,” including criminals and foreign adversaries, using private placement funds to launder money. One passage referenced wire transfers exceeding $100 million from a Russia-based company flowing into a New York City private equity firm.

We reported on the FBI leaked memo and asked about possible connections to GPB Capital.

The bulletin did not name GPB Capital. But as the Scientology Money Project noted at the time, the description — a New York-based private equity firm with ties to a Russian group — matched GPB Capital’s known profile. The bulletin also noted that private equity afforded virtually the same protections as religions when it came to money, citing the lack of financial accountability and the secrecy inherent in the market.

Whether the FBI’s bulletin referred specifically to GPB Capital remains unconfirmed. But the timing (July 2020, six months before the GPB indictments) and the specifics (Russian wire transfers to a New York private equity firm) are consistent with the network described in this article.

XII. The Schneider Thread: Paradigm, Stanford, Ponta Negra

GPB Capital’s co-founder Jeffry Schneider does not appear in the Epstein files. But his pre-GPB career illuminates how the scheme’s principals operated in overlapping financial fraud networks long before GPB existed.

Schneider joined Paradigm Global Advisors, the fund of hedge funds owned by Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden, in 2004 as a senior vice president. While working out of Paradigm’s offices, Schneider simultaneously operated his own company, Onyx Capital. He marketed a dual-branded fund with Texas financier R. Allen Stanford (later convicted in an $8 billion fraud). He also marketed the Ponta Negra fund, a scam run by a 27-year-old named Francesco Rusciano, from inside Paradigm’s offices using Paradigm’s phone number and address.

Schneider met David Gentile in 2007, while still at Paradigm. They founded GPB Capital together in 2013. Schneider was convicted alongside Gentile in August 2024 and sentenced to six years. He remains in prison. The Scientology Money Project has speculated that Schneider’s connection to the Biden family may explain why Trump commuted Gentile’s sentence but not Schneider’s.

XIII. The Commutation

On November 14, 2025, David Gentile reported to federal prison to begin serving his seven-year sentence. Twelve days later, on November 26, President Trump commuted his sentence. Bloomberg reported that it was “not clear if Gentile had connections to Trump or his supporters.” The White House did not respond to press inquiries.

The commutation occurred two months before the DOJ released three million pages of Epstein files on January 30, 2026. Whether anyone in the Trump administration understood the network connections between the man they were freeing and the files they were about to release is unknown.

Former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock wrote: “MAGA Justice: Trump screws the little guy again. Gentile served 7 days in jail. His thousands of defrauded victims included small business owners, farmers, veterans, teachers and nurses.” Alice Marie Johnson, Trump’s pardon czar, responded that she was “deeply grateful to see David Gentile heading home to his young children.”

The DOJ had received over 1,000 victim impact statements from investors including veterans, teachers, and nurses. One stated: “I lost my whole life savings. I am living from check to check.”

XIV. Timeline

XV. Summary

The GPB Capital fraud and the Epstein case share a common network of people and money at multiple levels: a meeting, a biotech company, a corporate ownership structure, a Russian oligarch partnership, and a recurring cast of characters who appear in both storylines. These connections are documented in federal court filings, SEC records, corporate incorporation documents, the Epstein black book, flight logs, the Jmail archive, and the DOJ’s own Epstein file release.

The question the FBI may have already answered — quietly, in a heavily redacted email chain from March 2021 — is whether these two cases were connected. The victim list was not filed in the wrong place. It was filed exactly where it belonged.