Police: Epstein mentor, ex-con Steven Hoffenberg found dead, rotting in home

Authorities said they found Steven Hoffenberg, a longtime associate and mentor to Jeffrey Epstein and a disgraced businessman, dead in his home this week. Police discovered the rotting corpse of the former owner of the New York Post during a welfare check at his Connecticut apartment.

According to BNO News, police in Derby, Connecticut, found the body of the 77-year-old ex-convict “in a state where a visual identification could not be made” and had it taken to the chief medical examiner for an autopsy. So far, no cause of death has been revealed, but authorities said there were no immediate signs of trauma.

A full dental evaluation has been ordered to positively identify the body, and officials are sure it’s Hoffenberg.

“Every indication is that it is Mr. Hoffenberg,” a DerbyPolice Department spokesman said, according to the Post. “There’s nothing to suggest that it isn’t. We believe it’s him. We’re just waiting for dental records.”

The Hoffenberg-Epstein connection goes back decades. The two met in 1987, and shortly thereafter, Hoffenberg hired Epstein to work at Towers Financial Corporation, a New York debt collection agency.

The business wound up being one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, bilking about half a billion dollars from investors. Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to the swindle in 1995 and got 20 years in prison. He also claimed Epstein was his accomplice.

Towers investors believe Hoffenberg may have been the link to Epstein’s mysterious and massive fortune, the Post said, and filed a lawsuit in August 2018 saying 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.”

Hoffenberg is the second former Epstein business associate to die this year. French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel was in jail on accusations of raping a minor but was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide before his trial began.

Epstein himself was found hanging in a New York jail cell in 2019. His death was also ruled a suicide.