Steven Hoffenberg, who went to prison for running a Ponzi scam with Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Derby, Connecticut. The reason and method of death are still unknown, as the body appeared to be in severe decay.

The Derby Police Department said officers went to Hoffenberg’s residence around 8 pm Tuesday evening in response to a request for a welfare check. Officers discovered “the body of a white male…in a state where a visual identification could not be made,” according to the statement.

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“Every indication is that it is Mr. Hoffenberg,” a department spokesperson told the New York Post. According to the police statement, a first autopsy revealed no trauma.

Hoffenberg’s relationship with Epstein 

Hoffenberg, the founder of debt collecting business Towers Financial, was seeking ways to make money quickly in the 1980s when he met Epstein. He engaged Epstein as a consultant, paying him $25,000 per month to bring in investors using Epstein’s business ties.

Towers Financial purchased the parent company of two insurance firms and used the cash to try a takeover of Pan Am airline in one of the greatest financial frauds in American history. The endeavour was a failure. Hoffenberg later stated that they were transferring money back and forth in order to imitate profit-making.

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Hoffenberg told prosecutors Epstein was participating in the plan, and while Epstein’s name appeared in court records documenting the fraud at first, references to him quickly vanished. Hoffenberg pled guilty to mail fraud, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice in 1995. He received a 20-year prison sentence. Epstein was never charged in connection with the conspiracy. 

During his time in prison, Hoffenberg was accused of grooming and abusing young girls and women with the help of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June for sex trafficking and other offences.

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Maria Farmer, an artist who escaped sex assault at the hands of Epstein, said in an interview that she was in daily communication with Hoffenberg and that when her calls to him went unanswered, she contacted Derby police to do a welfare check. “I want people to know how kind this gentleman was to survivors, while asking for nothing,” Farmer told Rolling Stone.

After serving 18 years in jail, Hoffenberg forcefully disavowed his affiliation with Epstein and advised victim-investors of his company to sue Epstein in order to recover part of their money. “I’m the first one in the line to assist the victims,” he told NPR in 2019, just after Epstein was discovered dead in a Manhattan jail cell where he was awaiting trial for sex offences. “At 74, I’d like to go to the pearly gates assisting the victims.”