Steven Hoffenberg

American financier and convicted fraudster who was Jeffrey Epstein's earliest known business partner. Together they ran Towers Financial Corporation, which bilked investors out of more than $450 million in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history prior to Madoff. Hoffenberg was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, while Epstein was never charged in the scheme. Appears in 319 documents in the DOJ-released Epstein files. Before his death on August 23, 2022, Hoffenberg gave multiple interviews to journalists claiming that Epstein had admitted connections to Israel's Mossad intelligence service and credited them for his wealth and elite access.

Hoffenberg told reporters that he introduced Epstein to Leslie Wexner and that the Towers Financial operation was the foundation upon which Epstein built his later financial career. His claims about Epstein's intelligence connections remain corroborated only by the separate assertions of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe and an FBI Los Angeles field office memo from October 2020 that described Epstein as a potential "co-opted Mossad agent." Hoffenberg's status as a convicted fraudster has been cited by skeptics as reason to discount his testimony.