[4] He has been involved in information technology since 1973, when he trained as a systems analyst and programmer in the pensions actuarial group of the Old Mutual Life Insurance Company in Cape Town.

[7] On September 15, 2021, Internet researchers successfully extrapolated information from civil litigation brought by Alfa Bank and other open source data to identify Joffe as "Max" from Dexter Filkins' New Yorker articles about Alfa-Bank and The Trump Organization, in addition to being a client of Michael Sussmann.

[11][12][13][2] In a February 2022 court motion related to Michael Sussmann's prosecution, Special Counsel Durham alleged that Joffe and his associates had exploited access his company had through a pending cybersecurity contract with the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to acquire nonpublic government domain name system and other data traffic "for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.

[17][18] A spokesman for Joffe released a statement asserting that his client had lawful access under a contract to analyze White House DNS data for potential security threats.

According to Joffe's spokesman, "deeply concerned" cybersecurity researchers prepared a report "about the anomalies they found in the data" and shared it with the CIA.