Mr. Hoffenberg may not have carried the infamous name recognition of major financial fraudsters such as Bernie Madoff or the rise-and-fall arbitragers like Ivan Boesky. But, for a time in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Mr. Hoffenberg was as big and brash as any in New York’s wild-ride years.
Mr. Hoffenberg’s operation was an array of interconnected companies falsely portrayed as a deep-pocket corporate parent and used to lure investors with promises of high returns. The inner circle included Mr. Hoffenberg’s main partner Jeffery Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking decades later before an apparent jail cell suicide in 2019.
For years, the money flowed. Mr. Hoffenberg traveled by private jet, had a Long Island mansion and a townhouse on Manhattan’s posh Sutton Place with a chauffeured limousine on standby.
He made an unsuccessful play to buy now-defunct Pan American World Airways in 1987, was briefly owner of the New York Post in 1993 after saving it from bankruptcy and launched a women’s…
