Towers Financial Corporation

[8][1] Hoffenberg set Epstein up in offices in the Villard Houses in Manhattan, and paid him $25,000 ($67,000 in current dollar terms) per month for his consulting work.

Their bid failed, in part because of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, which ultimately contributed to the airline's bankruptcy.

[1] Hoffenberg began using Towers Financial funds to pay for a lavish lifestyle that included a Locust Valley, Long Island mansion, homes on Sutton Place in Manhattan and in Florida, and a number of cars and planes.

[16][12] Hoffenberg pleaded guilty in April 1995 to five criminal charges, cheating thousands of investors out of $462 million, surrendered to the FBI in Manhattan, and was arraigned and released on bail.

[27] Hoffenberg also related how Epstein further planned to use his building network of rich clients and associates in a "political influence campaign ... for his own personal, financial gain.

"[27] In part this involved targeting more easily manipulated clients to be defrauded, also those unlikely to report their victimhood to the authorities, for particular reasons, should they discover the fraud.

[28][29][30] Over three decades after the Towers Financial scandal and six years after his prison release Hoffenberg suggested an overall intelligence aspect to Epstein.

[28] Jeffrey Epstein's apparent capacity to frustrate the law's probe has come to be seen in retrospect as central in his profile since his Towers Financial years, indeed rather definitive.

Effectively, at least for the moment this preserves the block, preventing future investigation into circumstances, people and organisations surrounding Epstein in those earlier charges.

[36][37] Although appealed further later in 2020 to an en banc hearing,[38][39] in April 2021 Epstein's ongoing, posthumous arrangement of immunity from prosecution for sex-trafficking was upheld as beyond challenge, in a majority 6-4 verdict.

"[41] In 2020, a year after his alleged suicide while on detention in a Manhattan prison on new sex trafficking charges involving minors, Epstein was described as having had a "major role" in the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme.