A former associate of Jeffrey Epstein who was involved in a 1990s fraud scheme is believed to have died in Connecticut.
The body of a man believed to be Steven Hoffenberg, 77, was found in his Derby, Connecticut, home, according to the New York Post.
Police had been called to Hoffenberg’s home for a wellness check and found the body in the house.
“Every indication is that it is Mr. Hoffenberg,” a Derby Police Department spokesman said. “There’s nothing to suggest that it isn’t. We believe it’s him. We’re just waiting for dental records.”
Derby police issued a statement on Facebook.
“On Tuesday, August 23 at approximately 8 PM Derby police officers responded to 201 Mount Pleasant Street in Derby, CT on a requested welfare check. Upon arrival the body of a white male was found deceased and in a state where a visual identification could not be made,” the statement said.
“The initial autopsy revealed no trauma sustained by the decedent. Official cause of death is pending further toxicology study,” the statement said.
In the 1990s, Hoffenberg ran Tower Financial Corp. At the time, he said, Epstein worked for him.
The Late Steven Hoffenberg:
“He was my best friend for years. My closest friend for years,” Hoffenberg told CBS News, speaking of Jeffrey Epstein. “We ran a team of people on Wall Street, investment people that raised these billion dollars illegally. He was my guy, my wingman.” pic.twitter.com/WBuDLcH340— charlie tango (@charlie_tango98) August 25, 2022
Hoffenberg was convicted of using the firm to run a Ponzi scheme and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Although Epstein was involved in the scheme, according to Hoffenberg, he was never charged.
Hoffenberg told The Washington Post in 2019 that Epstein was “the architect of the scam.”
The Post report noted that Epstein was initially linked to the crime, but that his name was eventually purged from the records.
“Jeffrey Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions,” Hoffenberg said in a 1993 grand jury proceeding, The Washington Post reported.
“I thought Jeffrey was the best hustler on two feet,” Hoffenberg said. “Talent, charisma, genius, criminal mastermind. We had a thing that could make a lot of money. We called it Ponzi.”
Epstein was the mastermind of that Ponzi Scheme and, while Hoffenberg went to prison for that and related financial crimes, Epstein instead got involved with Clinton presidential fundraisers.
Crime that pays is crime that stays https://t.co/qfAP6yPwj6
— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) August 25, 2022
Epstein “got away with it because I didn’t cooperate,” Hoffenberg said.
“How could you remove the architect of the crime from the story of the crime? I screwed myself, but I also got in bed with the wrong set of criminals. The whole thing blew up, but he wasn’t touched,” he said.
Tower investors claimed in an August 2018 lawsuit that Epstein, who died in custody in 2019 in a death ruled as suicide, “knowingly and intentionally utilized funds he fraudulently diverted and obtained from this massive Ponzi scheme for his own personal use to support a lavish lifestyle,” the New York Post reported.
Hoffenberg said of Epstein once that “He was my colleague daily, seven days a week.”
