## CHAPTER 27

## Steven Hoffenberg: July 10, 1987

efore there was Bernie Madoff, there was Steven Hoffenberg, B In 1987, Hoffenberg was the head of Towers Financial Corporation, a company that bought debts, such as unpaid medical bills, at a very steep discount while pressing the debtors to repay in full. He'd started the company fifteen years earlier with two thousand dollars and just a handful of employees. Thanks, in part, to a grueling work ethic, he'd turned that into a much bigger concern, with twelve hundred employees and stock that traded over the counter. But Hoffenberg still spent fifteen hours each day, six days a week, in his office.

He wanted more. Hoffenberg was a Wall Street outsider. A Brooklyn boy. A college dropout, like Epstein.

One thing Hoffenberg wanted was respect. The other was someone who was familiar with Wall Street's inner workings. Jef frey Epstein, who had traded options for Bear Stearns, fit the bill.

Hoffenberg began pay
month for Epstein's exper
The SEC had already
tling with him out of cou
securities. But Hoffenberg
In the 1980s, several n
the greenmailing of pub
mailing means, in practic
investors will start buyin
vulnerable to takeover att
utives at those companies
It's risky, but very often th
profit.

Yet another thing Hol
American World Airways.
its downward trajectory,
For Hoffenberg, the
huge.

According to Hoffenberg,
over of Pan Am - a deal t
Steven Hoffenberg stil
listening to him, one mus
guilty to criminal conspir
million swindle, a familia
Bernie Madoff case.

Like so many others,
without the necessary u
spent at the office, he'd als

110

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009261
documents/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009261.jpg
{"people":["steven hoffenberg","bernie madoff","jeffrey epstein"]}