Case 1:19-cv-03377 Document 1-8 Filed 04/16/19 Page 11 of 16 http://www. vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303 One 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,” executing 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. To 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