Inside Leslie Wexner's third and least-known sex abuse scandal
The Eastern District of New York says former Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries and associates sexually trafficked male models. Jeffries got his big break from Leslie Wexner.
As a man of a certain age, I’m old enough to remember when Abercrombie & Fitch took America by storm.
The brand reached such a fever pitch that I once witnessed my best friend’s lacrosse-loving father beat him with a wired(!) telephone in a rage that my friend had “tricked” his mother into buying “jeans with cartoon characters on them” (read: JNCOs) when he spent all day working so the family could afford to put him in Abercrombie.
Like an alarming number of once-respected institutions from my teenage years, Abercrombie appears to have been run by a cabal of wealthy sex traffickers who flaunted their depravity in broad daylight.
The Eastern District of New York charged former Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries, his life partner Matthew Smith, and their middleman James Jacobson with sex trafficking and interstate prostitution in Oct. 2024.
The investigation likely started after former Abercrombie photgrapher Bruce Weber settled sexual abuse claims from six male models.
After Jeffries caught a convenient case of alleged dementia, prison doctors ruled in Dec. 2025 that he could stand trial. Prosecutors hope to try the case later this year.
Jeffries got his big business break in 1992, when then-Limited CEO Leslie Wexner hand-picked him to resurrect the flailing Northeastern-based lacrosse clothing brand that his company had purchased four years prior.
Less than a decade later, Jeffries had the company operating at such heights that it thought selling children’s thongs emblazoned with “eye candy” and other sexual innuendos was a savvy business move.
From Karla Dial of Boundless in 2002 (brackets mine):
She didn’t know that last year, Abercrombie, the company’s division for 7- to 14-year-old children, started selling thong underwear for girls with the words “eye candy” and “wink, wink” emblazoned near the crotch.
Parents called it disgusting and appealing only to pedophiles.
[Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman Hampton] Carney called it “cute and fun and sweet,” the “modern-day version of Underoos.”
Jeffries is the type of rich pervert who could have a wife and a British-born male “life partner” in Smith.
The wife almost “certainly knew,” according to one connected source, but spent most of her time in California taking tennis lessons until the holiday season, when she would come into Central Ohio, and Smith would go into exile to “be sad.”
Jeffries and Smith, hosting “party boys” for weekend orgies, were an open secret to high-level employees.
Though hard stops of work at 10:30 a.m. on Saturdays were designed to prevent employees from crossing paths with the party boys, other lower, unfortunate employees were tasked with the misery of cleaning the aftermath.
Despite the unorthodox sexual lifestyle, multiple sources have confirmed to The Rooster that the common thought at Abercrombie’s Home Office in New Albany was that everything happening was consensual.
In fact, the most surprising part of the arrest, at least to those familiar with Jeffries at work, was that he was apparently willing to regularly look upon Jacobson, more commonly known as “the Noseless Man.”
According to prosecutors, Jacobson scoured the country looking for men to hoodwink with the lure of a modeling contract, only to funnel them directly into parties where many allege they were drugged before suffering sexual abuse.
Jeffries, while looking like a melted candle himself, was all about appearances, according to anyone who worked with him in any capacity. The Columbus Dispatch, for example, ran an entire article about Jeffries’ multiple fat-shaming quotes in 2013.
But Jeffries was apparently able to put all that aside when working with someone willing to provide him with the fuel for his sexual depravity.
Jeffries would resign from Abercrombie in 2014, roughly four years after we know Wexner and his lawyer, John Zeiger, were working overtime to bury Wexner, the then-chairman of the Ohio State Board of Trustees, being served in a Jane Doe case against Epstein.
Wexner and Jeffries do not appear to be close personal friends.
Every year, Jeffries would tier his Christmas gifts to friends, family and business associates. Wexner was on the “card” level, which was the lowest honored on the curated list.
However, Wexner was a notorious micromanager throughout his business career, and Jeffries was his direct report with a home office in New Albany.
If Wexner didn’t know anything, his head of security, Randy Bowie, certainly did:
