On Friday, Medical examiners confirmed that a known mentor to Jeffrey Epstein and a convicted Ponzi scheme Steven Hoffenberg, was found dead in an apartment in Derby, Connecticut.
Police were conducting a wellness check on the 77-year-old at the request of a friend when they discovered him.
Hoffenberg’s body was already decomposing upon being found, and dental records were required to confirm the body was his. Medical examiners believe Hoffenberg had died a week before being discovered.
The cause of his death will officially be determined pending a toxicology report, police noted. An initial autopsy revealed there were no signs of trauma.
Hoffenberg was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1997 for his involvement in a financial scam that swindled thousands of investors out of $460 million, though Hoffenberg maintained that Epstein was the actual architect of the plan. Epstein was never charged.
While it is likely that Hoffenberg’s death will be connected to “natural causes” associated with his older age (77), it is yet another strange footnote in the saga of the highly politically connected Jeffrey Epstein and his “Lolita Express.” The infamous plane ride which whisked numerous political leaders off to Epstein’s island of Little Saint James, where some of them would allegedly participate in sex with underage prostitutes and exploited minors in exchange for money and favors.
He was released from federal custody in 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. He was living in a small apartment in a multifamily home in Derby, about 12 miles northeast of Bridgeport.
Steven Hoffenberg came from a storied era where everything was large: The characters, egos, deals, and esp. the stories. He was kind to me in the many hours we spent discussing Epstein, and gave me a rare portal into his world. May he Rest In Peace. https://t.co/Zr3cr7YCep
— Zev Shalev (@ZevShalev) August 25, 2022
The Daily Wire added:
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.”
In the early 1990s, Hoffenberg also attempted to gain control of the New York Post and for a short time owned the paper in 1993 before his fraudulent financial activities caught up with him.
Source: DailyWire
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