https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/strange-saga-jeffrey-epstein-s-link-brock-pierce-1240462

The Strange Saga of Jeffrey Epstein’s Link to a Child Star Turned Cryptocurrency Mogul

How Brock Pierce ended up as an Epstein guest along with a NASA computer engineer, an MIT professor and a Nobel laureate in theoretical physics is a bizarre tale involving Steve Bannon and an international man of mystery who may or may not be dead.

Even before Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death Aug. 10, many people who knew him were hoping the world would forget or, better yet, never learn that they had any association at all with the notorious predator.

One such person may be serially self-reinventing entrepreneur Brock Pierce, who as a teenager co-founded the eventually infamous Digital Entertainment Network and who, in the mid- to late ‘90s, was associated with an alleged sex-abuse ring — this one involving young men. Several later contended in court filings that Pierce and two associates had drugged and assaulted them at parties in their Encino mansion. Pierce was never charged with any crime and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. He settled with one plaintiff, and two others dismissed their cases against him.

In early 2011, about a decade after the Digital Entertainment Network imploded, Pierce visited the Virgin Islands to attend "Mindshift," a conference of top scientists hosted by Epstein. A representative for Pierce says he didn’t even know who Epstein was when he flew (commercial) to the event, which the financier had arranged as part of his elaborate effort to launder his lurid reputation. It was not even 18 months after Epstein had completed his slap-on-the-wrist solicitation sentence in Florida and registered as a sex offender.

The rep for Pierce says he saw Epstein after that meeting "a few times over the intervening years at industry events, where many other prominent people were present." He adds that "the few communications that Mr. Pierce had with Epstein related to cryptocurrency" — an area in which Pierce established himself as a crypto centimillionaire, or maybe a billionaire, in the years following the conference.

Nothing suggests that anything of a sexual nature or anything untoward at all occurred at Mindshift. Pierce is only one of dozens of figures in Epstein’s dizzyingly vast network, and the link between the two may be nothing but a curiosity. But it is a strange tale: how a former child actor who never went to college ended up as an Epstein guest — a seemingly unlikely addition to a group that included a NASA computer engineer, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and a Nobel laureate in theoretical physics. “I don’t know what he had to do with science [or] why he was there,” says one person who attended.

Cryptocurrency was very much in its nascent stages when Epstein invited Pierce to Mindshift. His bio on a list of attendees reads "entrepreneur, creator of virtual currencies and goods." His rep says he accepted the invitation for “the opportunity to interact with major scientific thinkers” and participated in a panel discussion on cryptocurrency with prominent scientists (none of whom appeared to have any expertise in the area, based on their bios from the same document).

It's unclear what, if anything, Epstein expected to get from Pierce, who was unlikely to add to the prestige of the conference. Epstein’s activities in the area of cryptocurrency remain mysterious. In 2017, he gave an interview to website The Next Web in which he expressed a vague interest in the area, and The Wall Street Journal has reported that Epstein claimed that he worked for the U.S. Treasury Department on cryptocurrency.

Another strand may connect Epstein to cryptocurrency and indirectly to Pierce: In 2015, Joi Ito — then director of the MIT Media Lab — announced a Digital Currency Initiative. This came during a financially challenging time for the Bitcoin Foundation — the industry's first trade group, founded in September 2012 — and Ito hired cryptocurrency developers previously supported by the foundation. Just days after Ito’s announcement, Pierce was named the foundation’s chairman. (Ito recently resigned from MIT Media Lab following reports that he had accepted major donations from Epstein and attempted to conceal the relationship.)

Pierce was also in business starting in the mid-2000s with former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had his own ties to Epstein. Bannon did not respond to requests for comment but he apparently remains a fan of Pierce, who has popped up lately as an unlikely presence in Trump world.

Pierce’s name is familiar to people in Hollywood who remember the short-lived DEN, an ahead-of-its-time attempt to create online programming around the turn of the millennium, and the scandal surrounding it. Pierce’s childhood career blossomed when he appeared in Disney’s 1992 film The Mighty Ducks. But by the time he was 17, he had given up acting. According to extensive media reports when DEN imploded, Pierce had been making $250,000 a year at the company. He shared a 12,600-square-foot house with two other DEN co-founders, the then-40-something entrepreneur Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley, a Michigan man then in his mid-20s.

Shackley had lived with Collins-Rector since dropping out of high school at 16. Pierce had also been 16 when he met Collins-Rector, and although Collins-Rector already was in a relationship with Shackley, Pierce later told Rolling Stone: “He was definitely in love with me. There’s no question about that.”

Pierce has said he gave Collins-Rector the idea of starting a company to create online entertainment. At the time, the technology wasn’t in place to efficiently deliver digital content to consumers, but the company attracted investors including David Geffen and former congressman Michael Huffington, as well as Microsoft and Dell. The Encino mansion where the DEN trio lived became known for parties that drew A-list guests, among them alleged predators Bryan Singer and producer Gary Goddard (though neither has faced legal charges and both have denied claims against them).

But before DEN's founders could cash in on a planned IPO, things fell apart. A young man sued, claiming Collins-Rector had started molesting him when he was 13. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings-on at the DEN mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton, claimed that Collins-Rector, Pierce and Shackley had supplied him with alcohol and drugs even though he was under 21 and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser was said to have written a suicide note reading in part: "I can't go on. I let them use me as a sex tool." (The note was discovered before a suicide attempt could be made.) There were also accusations that Collins-Rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun.

Pierce later said in a statement, “The allegations against me are not true, and I have never had intimate or sexual contact with any of the people who made those allegations.” His rep says the allegations in the lawsuit were false.

In August 2000, Collins-Rector was indicted for transporting minors across state lines for sex, and the DEN trio took off for Spain. The sojourn there ended in May 2002 when Interpol showed up, finding weapons and thousands of child-porn images in their house. (Pierce has said he was unaware of the images.) While Pierce and Shackley were quickly released, Collins-Rector was was held in a Spanish jail until October 2003 when he was extradited to the U.S. In June 2004 he pleaded guilty to five counts of transporting minors for sex. After serving out his sentence — which, after credit for time served, only amounted to a few months — he left the country and renounced his citizenship. (BuzzFeed tracked him down in Europe in 2014.)

While the DEN trio was still in Europe, the young men who had sued over alleged sexual assault at the Encino house were awarded $4.5 million by default because the defendants could not be located. Pierce later returned to the U.S. and settled the claims against him. The settlements do not address any payment to the accusers and Pierce’s rep says none was made.

Even before returning to the country, Pierce already had a new line of work: In 2001, while living with Collins-Rector in Spain, he had created Internet Gaming Entertainment, a company that enabled devotees of online role-playing games to use virtual currency to buy virtual goods (such as weapons). Eventually the business branched into a practice prohibited by many gaming platforms: “real-money trading,” in which players offered real cash for virtual goods. In an online bio, Collins-Rector declared himself to be a “shadow founder” of IGE, but a rep for Pierce says Collins-Rector “was never involved in any way” with IGE.

Cont in comments: https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/3432409/20629159