Category: BRAINSTORM

Ponzi scheming associate of Jeffrey Epstein and chairman of Towers Financial Corporation Steven Hoffenberg found dead and decomposing; revealed first on Twitter by crusading author Kirby Sommers

• Decomposing body of Jeffrey Epstein’s Ponzi scheming cohort Steven Hoffenberg found in grotty house in Connecticut after bizarre “welfare call” to police from alleged Jeffrey Epstein victim Maria Farmer yesterday.
• Crusading author Kirby Sommers first to call out the news on Twitter ahead of mainstream media.
• After serving 18 years for theft from 200,000 investors, grifter Hoffenberg ludicrously dared suggest he was a victim of Epstein himself and even sought out a new career in the media.
• Hoffenberg claimed to have been introduced to Epstein by a mysterious British “arms dealer” with links to Adnan Khashoggi and the Saudi royal family and briefly owned the ‘New York Post’ in 1993.
• This deviant criminal grifter’s American connections numbered Clintons, Kennedys and Trumps.

 

Not one of the four most infamous Ponzi schemers in history – Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein, the eponymous Charles Ponzi and Steven Hoffenberg – died either respected or renowned. In fact, all four will simply be noted in history as grubby grifters who caused mayhem and misery for all they encountered.

 

On Twitter, yesterday, prior to it being picked up in the mainstream media, crusading author of Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography Kirby Sommers revealed that the latest of this number to be found dead was Steven Hoffenberg – a conman credited by some as being the individual who helped Jeffrey Epstein on his path from taxi driver to trader from 1987 onwards.

 

In the years that followed, Hoffenberg went on to become a man who ultimately came to blame his protégé for his own imprisonment for twenty years in 1997 for his £404 million ($475 million, €479 million or درهم1.7 billion) Towers Financial Corporation fraud – which became known as the largest Ponzi scheme in history until Bernie Madoff was exposed in 2008.

 

Brooklyn born, originally Jewish and later rather predictably a born-again Christian, Hoffenberg – whose exact date of birth remains unknown and whose first suspected brush with the law, which he always claimed to be a case of mistaken identity, was connected to the theft of a £12,800 ($15,000, €15,100 or درهم55,100) diamond ring in 1971 – made his first fortune buying debt in the 1970s. He is said to have been introduced to Jeffrey Epstein through the British “arms dealer” and intelligence asset Douglas Leese (1927 – 2011) in 1987 – a man said to be the former’s “mentor” since they had first met in London in 1981. Leese’s son, Julian, however, span the tale of the introduction slightly differently when he spoke on the Defiance podcast and claimed it was he, himself, who did the introducing and not anything like that that Hoffenberg repeatedly purported in his many media interviews.

 

At that time, whilst Leese was not only fraternising with the likes of Adnan Khashoggi and Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud doing billion dollar arms deals, he also is said to have recommended Epstein to Hoffenberg by tellingly, given what was to come in future years, supposedly shared: “The guy’s a genius, he’s great at selling securities. And he has no moral compass.”

 

With Epstein brought into his orbit as first an employee – though remarkably never his patsy – Hoffenberg embarked on a series of corporate raids that included failed bids for Pan Am and the Emery Air Freight Corp and finally very briefly in 1994, ownership of the New York Post.

 

This period was key to Hoffenberg’s downfall and of such, Sommers shared with The Steeple Times what she termed “a fabulous article that I’ve kept under wraps for a few years now” from an April 1993 edition of The New York Times in a direct message.

 

The feature, by a journalist named Diana B. Henriques, revealed that Hoffenberg was scuppered in a similar fashion to Madoff – whose failure to repay the small investment of the cleaner of the feeder fund honcho Frank Avellino’s resulted in her going to the FBI and the beginning of his end – by a small-time amateur newsman and “self-taught muckraker” from Rushton, Louisiana named John Hays.

 

“Hard-drinking, chain-smoking, cowboy-booted… blunt back-country publisher who [loved] to raise a ruckus” Hays had long claimed Hoffenberg was trying to pull a Ponzi-like scam in his neck of the woods, but had been met with mockery, resistance and disinterest. His hunch, however, paid off when “whatever money could buy” private jet possessing Hoffenberg’s decision to buy the New York Post threw him before nationwide limelight and scrutiny that ultimately resulted in the crook’s conviction on five counts of securities fraud, tax evasion and obstruction of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry.

 

After getting out of jail after serving 18 years for a con that resulted in 200,000 investors losing vast amounts of money, “still deviant to his core” Hoffenberg conveniently found God and illustrated his continuing ability to cross political and social divides by marrying outside Trump Tower in 2014. That the body of this one-time associate of others linked to Bill Clinton was found alone and left decomposing in a grotty flat in Derby, Connecticut after a welfare call from Jeffrey Epstein accuser Maria Farmer also speaks volumes as how the once mighty can well and truly fall.

 

As Kirby Sommers rightly concluded of someone with the same moral compass as Bernard L. Madoff and Charles Ponzi himself: “To be frank, I didn’t trust him. He lied throughout his life… Throughout the last couple of years, he spoke of the money left in Epstein’s estate as ‘belonging to him.’ [He] claimed the money that disappeared in Towers Financial was stolen by Jeffrey Epstein. And, his goal was to get a piece of the money Epstein left behind.”

 

Steven Hoffenberg most certainly failed in that goal and like Charles Ponzi probably died delusionally believing: “Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought, I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.”

 

To purchase ‘Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography’ by Kirby Sommers, click here. Follow her on Twitter at @KirbySommers.

 

The ‘Curious’ Deaths Connected To Jeffrey Epstein That Continue To Stack Up…

People who’ve moved in the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein do have a habit of coming to ‘sticky ends’ – amongst them:

 

• Pension pot plundering tea leaf Robert Maxwell (death by ‘falling off the back of a boat’ in the Canary Islands, Spain on 5^th November 1991).
• Palm Beach based Ponzi schemer and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein (death by ‘suicide’ in prison in New York, USA on 10^th August 2019).
• Palm Beach based Ponzi scheming crook Bernard L. Madoff (death as a result of chronic kidney disease on 14^th April 2021 in Butner, North Carolina).
• Palm Beach based Marvin Weiner and his wife Sondra, the sister of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff (death by murder-suicide in Boynton Beach, USA on 17^th February 2022).
• Molester model agent and alleged paedophile Jean-Luc Brunel (death by ‘suicide’ in prison in Paris, France on 19^th February 2022).
• Convicted Ponzi scheming Donald Trump associate and self-publicist Steven J. Hoffenberg (death by causes yet unknown on date yet unknown in Derby, Connecticut, USA, decomposing body found on 24^th August 2022).

 

Kirby Sommers revealed news of the former Towers Financial Corporation chief’s death before the mainstream media on her social media channel in a series of tweets