Steven Hoffenberg

Steven J. Hoffenberg, a brash New York debt mogul who spent 18 years in federal prison after admitting to running a fraud scheme that prosecutors said was then among the largest such crimes in U.S. history, was found dead on Tuesday August 23 2022 in the modest apartment in Derby, Conn., where he had lived for about two years. He was 77. Convicted of bilking investors of more than $450 million in one of the largest pre-Madoff Ponzi schemes in history. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Hoffenberg, officially, ran Towers Financial, a collection agency that was supposed to buy debts that people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies, but instead the funds paid off earlier investors and subsidized his own lavish lifestyle. Mr. Hoffenberg admitted to being the ringleader of one of the largest so-called Ponzi schemes on record, having sold more than $460 million in fraudulent notes and bonds to investors and having used some of the money he collected from later investors to pay interest owed to earlier investors. The rest of the money was used to run The New York Post briefly and to support a Potemkin-village financial empire with inflated revenues and fictitious profits that made it appear to be a major health care financing company. even after the S.E.C. had accused him of being a swindler, Mr. Hoffenberg relished his celebrity role as a New York publisher, wearing his pink press pass over his silk ties and personally directing his newspaper's coverage of his own regulatory troubles. In court, his lawyers cited his rescue mission at The Post in opposing the S.E.C.'s plea that his assets be frozen to protect defrauded investors. When the S.E.C. obtained a court order blocking Mr. Hoffenberg's access to the money he needed to finance the newspaper acquisition, he was forced into a stormy partnership with Abraham Hirschfeld, a New York businessman. The collapse of that alliance paved the way for The Post's acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, its present owner. Mr. Hoffenberg was married at least twice. His first marriage ended in divorce, according to a 1994 Times article. Details about a second marriage, to Lisa Twardowski, were not immediately available. Ms. Twardowski, who went by Lisa Twardeau, died in 2014. Haley Hasho, whose mother was in a relationship with Mr. Hoffenberg at the time of the federal prosecution, said she first met her father after he left prison when she was 19