When Jeffrey Epstein died in prison in 2019, he took many secrets with him. One was how a sexual predator and college dropout managed to forge bonds with an astonishing number of the world’s richest and most powerful men, like Britain’s Prince Andrew and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Another was why Epstein owned a rare Italian cello. It was the only nonfinancial asset listed on his foundation’s annual tax forms, described simply as “cello” and carried on the books at a value of $165,676. Ep
Yoed Nir, the son-in-law of the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, plays the cello as part of a Labor Day concert in New York, Sept. 2, 2011.
Epstein’s Manhattan mansion was filled with curiosities. There was a portrait of Bill Clinton in a blue dress, a stuffed giraffe, prosthetic breasts in the master bathroom. At Interlochen, to which Epstein became a significant donor and regular visitor, he met and befriended a 14-year-old cellist, Melissa Solomon, in 1997. According to her account in a 2019 podcast, he insisted she apply to Juilliard and agreed to pay her tuition there. She said he never attempted to have sex with her , but after she declined to attend a party with Prince Andrew, Epstein cut ties and stopped paying her tuition.
After she began dating DeRosa, Epstein insisted on checking him out. “Be nice,” DeRosa recalled Epstein warning him. He seemed fascinated by DeRosa’s musical talents. He once suggested they play together, but DeRosa brushed him off. He said he had never heard Epstein play the piano. At first DeRosa didn’t take Epstein’s command seriously. But Epstein kept calling, as did members of his staff, asking if he’d made any progress. DeRosa got to work tracking down a cello.
DeRosa tried the cello. He was smitten. He said he considered it “one of the greatest modern cellos in existence.” With an asking price of $185,000, he also considered it a bargain. When Epstein refused to buy an economy class ticket to fly the instrument back to New York — the usual method for transporting a valuable cello — DeRosa sent him an angry email accusing him of being a cheapskate. “I’m done,” he told Epstein.Weeks later, when DeRosa was back in New York, Epstein’s assistant called and said DeRosa should be at his house the next morning at exactly 7:30 a.m. There, Epstein gestured toward a large unopened cardboard box.
So confident was the seller that a deal would come together that DeRosa took possession of the instrument. But Epstein balked at the asking price of $14 million, refusing to pay more than $10 million, according to DeRosa. The deal unraveled, and DeRosa returned the cello. It later sold for more than the asking price, DeRosa said.DeRosa and Ferguson were shocked in 2019 when Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking.
Julian Hersh, a cellist and co-founder of Darnton & Hersh violins in Chicago, thought the cello might be useful to a company he was starting with Jonathan Koh, a music faculty member at University of California, Berkeley. There Koh had witnessed Silicon Valley’s fascination with the blockchain, cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens.
At first Hersh removed the reference to Epstein from the cello’s description, but he then decided the provenance shouldn’t be concealed. He removed the listing from their website altogether. He hopes to re-list the Soffritti NFT in the future. “So what if Jeffrey owned it?” Hersh said. “It’s still one of the best 20th-century cellos in the world.
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