“It’s hard to believe that not so long ago people actually thought I was a good guy. And now people are ashamed to say they knew me.”

That’s what a desolate Jeffrey Epstein confided to me just weeks before his July 2019 arrest for sex trafficking of minors and his subsequent suicide in his jail cell.

Upon hearing the news, I wasn’t shocked that Epstein, a wealthy former master of the universe, had taken his own life. He had climbed to the peak of the finance world as a high-end wealth adviser, mingling with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and leading Wall Street financiers. He even had an office at Harvard, where he managed his philanthropic endeavors.

All of it was slipping away bit by bit that year as evidence arose that his initial 2008 plea deal for child prostitution failed to address the severity of his crimes, which were being uncovered almost daily, prompting my call.

Based on our conversations, it wasn’t hard to tell that Epstein was indeed a broken man; his life as he knew it was over. No more parties, clients had abandoned him, his friends in Palm Beach ran the other way.

When we spoke, he had not been charged, but it was just a matter of time. He complained how his victims had lawyered up and wouldn’t be satisfied until they took every cent of the enormous fortune he assembled over decades of working in finance. Law enforcement was circling based on these allegations.

The chances of him spending the rest of his life behind bars as a twice-convicted sex offender were pretty good, and prison isn’t kind to such people, so suicide was the easiest way out.

That was my take after he was found dead at the since-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, though at times I felt like I was a lone voice of reason.

A multitude of conspiracy theories over Epstein’s death swirled. He didn’t kill himself, the loons raved, but was murdered, possibly by someone in his powerful circle of friends who indulged in his perversity.

Crimes are mainly his

And yet now we’re back to square one — or maybe not. The Trump administration — some of the same people who had indulged in those conspiracies — last week released findings after a lengthy investigation. It found Epstein did in fact take his own life. Moreover, his crimes did not extend beyond his own sick behavior.

Sure, it’s always nice when people in power concede the truth. The fact that we need the White House to concede the obvious ­reality and that plenty of people still won’t buy the most logical evidence-based conclusion tells you we live in perilous times.

The Epstein conspiracy was enticing, and I guess still is for the die-hards, and they are legion. (Key members of the Trump administration are still bickering over it.) He rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful. He traveled the world. He was a college dropout but oddly became enormously wealthy by managing money. He got an improbable sweetheart deal when first convicted of sexual crimes with a minor.

Plus, he had dealings with powerful people who had the means to whack him.

It went further: Top government officials cut him that initial light sentence because for years he was a double agent, maybe a member of the Mossad. Deep state actors sanctioned his hit and then faked his suicide — he didn’t really hang himself in his cell back in 2019 — because of the dirt Epstein was about to expose on some of the most powerful people in the world.

Yes, enticing but also fantastical to a degree that I still can’t believe all of this percolated not just in the dark corners of social media but with some serious reporters, podcasters and other influencers.

Forget the difficulty of sneaking into a federal jail. Forget that there were cameras that would have caught the perpetrators. Forget that Epstein had every reason to kill himself, and had just moved his assets offshore to protect them from the trial lawyers once he was gone.

Forget that investigative journalists have been poring over various aspects of his life for years and never could prove that any of his high-end contacts engaged in his nefarious activities. Forget that he hired a legal dream team who worked to get him that infamous plea deal because prosecutors didn’t want to take a chance with not getting a conviction and because, quite frankly, some of the accusers’ stories didn’t seem to hold up.

And forget that while Epstein was a scumbag, he was also good at what he did — wealth management. He was an expert of tax avoidance, people who knew him told me, which is why some very rich people trusted him with their money, and looked away from his sleaze. He wouldn’t be the first guy to make it big on Wall Street without attending college.

There are many morals of this story, including how some rich people can rationalize disgusting behavior from someone who makes them richer. Recall how he rebuilt his business after his first child-sex conviction until the scrutiny of his activities turned white hot just before his second arrest. Another moral speaks to the lack of trust in our institutions that we used to rely on for unbiased information.

And for good reason. We’ve come a long way from trusted media ­voices like Walter Cronkite. We now live in a world where reporters label violent riots as “largely peaceful protests,” where top officials in the government assure us Joe Biden is sentient; men can be women; Don­ald Trump is somehow a Russia asset.

Put all that into context, and the Epstein conspiracy seems pretty prosaic.