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Authorities confirmed on Friday that Steven Hoffenberg, a mentor of convicted sex offender and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead in a Connecticut apartment.
Hoffenberg was a wealthy financier who spent 18 years in prison for a Ponzi scheme. He was found decomposing in a Derby, Connecticut apartment on Tuesday. Police were performing a wellness check and said that Hoffenberg had likely been dead for a week before his body was found.
They identified the 77-year-old by dental records and his cause of death is still under investigation.
According to officials, there is no foul play in the evidence.
The wellness check was initiated by a private detective employed by a woman who said she has been sexually abused by Epstein and was in regular communication with Hoffenberg.
Truth Tent reported:
Hoffenberg, who has been described as a mentor to Epstein, employed the now deceased billionaire in the 1980s when a Ponzi scheme involving Towers Financial Corporation began. Epstein was found dead in a New York City prison cell in 2019 in what has been officially ruled a suicide.
Towers was a financial collection entity that purchased the debt from places like hospitals and phone companies, according to The New York Times. During his time running the company, prosecutors claimed that the Towers company issued more than $460 million in fraudulent notes and bonds. The company was also artificially inflated to make it appear more robust.
Hoffenberg called Epstein, who he had employed for about six years with Towers, a “criminal mastermind” in 2019.
I thought Jeffrey was the best hustler on two feet,” he told The Washington Post. “Talent, charisma, genius, a criminal mastermind. We had a thing that could make a lot of money. We called it Ponzi.”
Epstein never faced any criminal charges related to the Towers scheme, despite Hoffenberg’s claims that he was to blame.
Hoffenberg was released from prison in 2013 after being behind bars for 18 years.
Former acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Gary Baise told the Associated Press that the financier “was a good man.”
“He was too smart for his own good,” said Baise, who was a friend of Hoffenberg. “He thought he could get away with his Ponzi scheme but he could not. He did not have self-control. He always thought he was smarter than the next guy and that was one of his problems.”
Baise said that he had not had contact with Hoffenberg for several months, but that he wasn’t surprised by his death because Hoffenberg wasn’t taking very good care of himself.
Hoffenberg tried to gain control of the New York Post in the early 1990s and for a short time owned his own paper in 1993. The Post reported that Hoffenberg funded the paper for three months and rescued it from bankruptcy. His efforts to buy the paper were derailed by civil fraud allegations that led to the criminal prosecution of the Ponzi case.
