One December evening in 2011, Silicon Valley power players appeared for an exclusive holiday party at a California country club. The annual fête was hosted by the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm at the Menlo Circus Club, an elegant Atherton escape known for polo matches, horse shows and weddings of the well-heeled.

That night, guests clutched glasses from the open bar and mingled under wreathed chandeliers, a few of them angling for photos with former Vice President Al Gore. Some crashed the event, noshing canapés and hoping to network, while others made the rounds on behalf of companies in the Kleiner portfolio. At the entrance, visitors grabbed name tags from a long table. One guest told The Daily Beast that Kleiner was rumored to collect the badges when the party was over; if yours was still there, you were axed from next year’s festivities. “I saw at least one person who was picking up someone else’s name tag as a favor to keep them from getting 86’d,” the party-goer recalled.

Among the swarm of investors and entrepreneurs, one notorious visitor slipped into this members-only soiree seemingly unnoticed—Ghislaine Maxwell, accused madam to convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. “I was shocked when I saw her there,” another eagle-eyed guest said of the disgraced socialite, who in 2011 was accused of recruiting underage girls for Epstein and is now facing criminal charges.