Steven Hoffenberg dead: Former NY Post owner & Jeffrey Epstein associate convicted of massive Ponzi scheme found dead at Derby, Connecticut home. Cause of death to be established.
A former associate of Jeffrey Epstein and the one-time owner of The New York Post, has been found dead at his Connecticut home.
Notice of Steven Hoffenberg‘s death came after a concerned friend sought a welfare check at the man’s Derby, Connecticut, home, on Wednesday.
Responding cops found Hoffenberg, 77, lying on the floor of his bedroom.
A release from the Derby Police Department stated there were no visible signs of trauma to the deceased man’s body.
Hoffenberg’s body was so decomposed that police believe he had been there for at least a week. A medical examiner is now using his dental records to make an identification. To date no cause of death has been issued.
Convicted for massive Ponzi scheme
A police source however told the tabloid that they are ‘extremely confident’ it is Hoffenberg.
‘There is nothing to suggest that this is not him.
‘Every piece of evidence that we obtained – his vehicle, medical records, ID phone etc, all belong to him.’
A formal identification is expected in the next few days and will be announced via the Derby Police Facebook page.
Hoffenberg, a colorful New York character who is best known for trying to ‘save’ The New York Post from bankruptcy in the early 1990s.
He invested millions in the flailing tabloid to stop it from shuttering and ran it for a period of a few months in 1993.
The entrepreneur served 18 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme which he claimed was masterminded by Jeffrey Epstein in the 1990s.
Insisted Epstein was mastermind of Ponzi scheme
Epstein was never charged, but he is understood to have made millions from it. Attempts to connect him to the financial fraud wrought no evidence against the convicted pedophile.
Speaking in 2019, he told The Washington Post that it was Epstein who masterminded the scheme that he spent years in prison for.
‘I thought Jeffrey was the best hustler on two feet. Talent, charisma, genius, criminal mastermind. We had a thing that could make a lot of money. We called it Ponzi,’ he said, calling Epstein the ‘architect’ of the scam.
In 1995, he pleaded guilty to defrauding investors out of $420million, going on to spend 18 years in jail.
Prosecutors said duped investors had bought bonds from Hoffenberg’s company, Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corp, which Epstein worked for.
Tower investors claimed in an August 2018 lawsuit that Epstein ‘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.’
‘He was my colleague daily, seven days a week,’ Hoffenberg previously said of Epstein in a 2019 interview in Quartz.
