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Jeffrey Epstein, Arms dealer in the 1980s [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-12
Article published a month before Epstein's death
Hoffenberg, Steven: A mentor and a con man. Before Bernie Madoff, there was Hoffenberg, who in 1985 pleaded guilty to cheating investors out of $460 million — at the time, the largest Ponzi scheme ever. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and, after his release in 2013, began sounding the alarm on Epstein, who had worked at Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corporation after leaving Bear Stearns. He claimed that Epstein had been his co-conspirator in the scheme and that Epstein’s fortune was built on Towers Financial’s fraud. “He was great at moving money illegally,” Hoffenberg says. “He was the deeper architect to getting things accomplished.” Hoffenberg claims he was introduced to Epstein by Douglas Leese, a mysterious British arms dealer, and that he paid Epstein $25,000 a month as Towers Financial began making risky plays to take over companies like Pan American World Airways and Emery Air Freight. Advisers on the Pan Am deal included Richard Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, Nixon’s brother Edward, and John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy. The move fell apart after the Lockerbie bombing, and when Towers Financial later went belly-up, Hoffenberg says, the two of them engineered a Ponzi scheme to fill the hole.
2021 Rolling Stone article
Hoffenberg was serving 18 years in prison for committing a $450 million Ponzi scheme. In the 1980s, he’d been running Towers Financial, a debt collection and reinsurance business, and had worked alongside Epstein, who was a paid consultant. Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had plans to turn Towers into a global colossus — through illegal means.
“Epstein Untold: Follow the Money”
“Epstein Untold: History Rhymes”
Both have three episodes, can be found streaming but I couldn’t download a copy for myself. I prefer listening offline on a separate device with headphones while gardening.
What follows is an official version of the substack video I have mentioned in previous posts. If Epstein got his start from Iran-Contra money, no wonder MAGA Republicans are covering this up.
Epstein takes down every Republican message for a generation, not just the trafficking stuff. Capone, this involves big money and fraud. Donald Trump swam in the same waters until a real estate deal.
Trump and Epstein fell out because of money and real estate, not bad morals. That house was then sold as part of what appears to be a Russian fraud scheme to funnel money to Trump. That’s why Rick Wilson calls Epstein Trump’s Kryptonite. He ties all the corruption into a big bow, a 90-00s Ponzi schemer and 80s arms dealer for Iran-Contra.
Turns out there was a conspiracy, just not the type that Republicans would ever let see the light of day.
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[1] Url:
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