mirror-epstein-docs/results/IMAGES012/DOJ-OGR-00032076.json

{
  "document_metadata": {
    "page_number": "37",
    "document_number": "17-295",
    "date": null,
    "document_type": "Public Records Request",
    "has_handwriting": false,
    "has_stamps": false
  },
  "full_text": "Jeffrey Epstein\necuting the schemes, although, having no broker's license, he had to rely on others to make the trades. Much of Hoffenberg's subsequent testimony in his criminal case has proven to be false, and Epstein has claimed he was merely asked how the bids could be accomplished and has said he had nothing to do with the financing of them. Yet Richard Allen, the former treasurer of United Fire, recalls seeing Epstein two or three times at the company. He and another executive say they had direct dealing with Epstein over the finances. And in his deposition of 1989, Epstein stated that he was the one who executed \"all\" Hoffenberg's instructions to buy and sell the stock. He called it \"making the orders.\" He could not recall whether he had chosen the brokers used.\nTo win approval from the Illinois insurance regulators for Towers's acquisition of the companies, Hoffenberg promised to inject $3 million of new capital into them. In fact, in his grand-jury testimony Hoffenberg claimed that he, his chief operating officer Mitchell Brater, and Epstein came up with a scheme to steal $3 million of the insurance companies' bonds to buy Pan Am and Emery stock. Jeffrey Epstein and Mitch Brater arranged the various brokerage accounts for the bonds to be placed with in New York, and I think one in Chicago. Rodman & Renshaw. Hoffenberg reportedly said then, \"Though they were investing the bonds in much safer financial instruments, they used them as collateral to buy the stock. Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions, and Mitchell Brater was assisting him with it in coordination on behalf of the insurance companies' money.\" Hoffenberg claimed at the time.\nAt one point, according to Hoffenberg, a broker forged the documents necessary for a $1.8 million check to be written on insurance company funds. The check was used to buy more stock in the takeover targets. Meanwhile, in order to throw the insurance regulators off, the $1.8 million is reported as being safely invested in a money-market account.\nUnited Fire's former chief financial officer Daniel Payton confirms part of Hoffenberg's account. He says he recalls making one or two telephone calls to Epstein (at Hoffenberg's direction) about the missing bonds. \"He said, 'Oh, yeah. they still exist.' But we found out later that he had sold those assets ... leveraged them ... [and] used some margin account to take some positions in ... Emery and Pan Am.\" says Payton.\nEpstein's extraordinary creativity was, according to Hoffenberg, responsible for the purchase by the insurance companies of a $500,000 bond, with no money down. \"Epstein created a great scheme to purchase a $500,000 treasury bond that would not be shown ... [as] margined or collateralized.\" he reportedly told the grand jury. It looked like it was free and clear but it actually wasn't,\" he said.\nEpstein has denied he ever had any dealings with anyone from the insurance companies. But Richard Allen says he recalls talking to Epstein at Hoffenberg's direction and telling him it was urgent they retrieve the missing bonds for a state examination. According to Allen, Epstein said, \"We'll get them back.\" He had \"kind of a flippant attitude,\" says Allen. \"They never came back.\"\nEpstein, according to Hoffenberg, also came up with a scheme to manipulate the price of Emery Freight stock in an attempt to minimize the losses that occurred when Hoffenberg's bid went wrong and the share price began to fall. This was alleged to have involved multiple clients' accounts controlled by Epstein.\nEventually, in 1991, insurance regulators in Illinois sued Hoffenberg. He settled the case, and Epstein, who was only a paid consultant, was never deposed or accused of any wrongdoing. Barry Gross, the attorney who was handling the suit for the regulators, says of Epstein, \"He was very elusive.... It was hard to really track him down. There were a substantial number of checks for significant dollars that were paid to him. I remember... He was this character we never got a handle on. Again we presumed that he was involved with the Pan Am and Emery run Hoffenberg made, but we never got a chance to depose him.\"\nFrom the government's discovery in the main sentencing against Hoffenberg it would seem the government was perhaps a bit lazy.\" says David Lewis, who represented Mitchell Brater. \"They went for what they knew they could get ... and that was the fraudulent promissory notes [i.e., the much larger and unrelated part of Hoffenberg's fraud, based in New York State].... What they couldn't get, they didn't bother with.\"\nAnother lawyer involved in the criminal prosecution of Hoffenberg says, \"In a criminal investigation like that, when there is a guilty plea, to be quick and dirty about it. discovery is always incomplete.... They don't have to line up witnesses; they don't have to learn every fact that might come out on cross-examination.\"\nEpstein was involved with Hoffenberg in other questionable transactions. Financial records show that in 1988 Epstein invested $1.6 million in Riddell Sports Inc., a company that manufactures football helmets. Among his co-investors were the theater mogul Robert Nederlander and attorney Leonard Toboroff. A source close to this transaction claims that Epstein told Nederlander and Toboroff that he had raised his share of the money from a Swiss banker.\nOne of Epstein's first assignments for Hoffenberg was to mastermind doomed bids to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987 and Emery Air Freight Corp. in 1988. Hoffenberg claimed in a 1993 hearing before a grand jury in Illinois that Epstein came up with the idea of financing these bids through Towers's acquisition of two ailing Illinois insurance companies. Associated Life and United Fire. \"He was hired by us to work on the securities side of the insurance companies and Towers Financial, supposedly to make a profit for us and for the companies,\" Hoffenberg reportedly told the grand jury. He also alleged that Epstein was the \"technician.\" ex-\nPage 37 of 151\nPublic Records Request No.: 17-295\nDOJ-OGR-00032076",
  "text_blocks": [
    {
      "type": "printed",
      "content": "Jeffrey Epstein",
      "position": "header"
    },
    {
      "type": "printed",
      "content": "The full article text",
      "position": "middle"
    },
    {
      "type": "printed",
      "content": "Page 37 of 151\nPublic Records Request No.: 17-295\nDOJ-OGR-00032076",
      "position": "footer"
    }
  ],
  "entities": {
    "people": [
      "Jeffrey Epstein",
      "Hoffenberg",
      "Richard Allen",
      "Mitchell Brater",
      "Daniel Payton",
      "David Lewis",
      "Robert Nederlander",
      "Leonard Toboroff",
      "Mr. Cayne",
      "Mr. Theram"
    ],
    "organizations": [
      "Bear Stearns",
      "United Fire",
      "Towers Financial",
      "Pan American World Airways",
      "Emery Air Freight Corp",
      "Riddell Sports Inc.",
      "Securities and Exchange Commission",
      "Illinois insurance regulators"
    ],
    "locations": [
      "New York",
      "Chicago",
      "Illinois",
      "Switzerland"
    ],
    "dates": [
      "1987",
      "1988",
      "1989",
      "1991",
      "1993",
      "07/26/17"
    ],
    "reference_numbers": [
      "17-295",
      "DOJ-OGR-00032076"
    ]
  },
  "additional_notes": "The document appears to be a page from a larger report or article discussing Jeffrey Epstein's involvement in various financial dealings and his association with Hoffenberg. The text is printed, and there are no visible stamps or handwritten notes."
}