Steven Jude Hoffenberg is the former founder, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman of Towers Financial Corporation, a debt collection agency, which was later discovered to be a Ponzi scheme. In 1993 he rescued the New York Post from bankruptcy, and briefly owned the paper. Towers Financial collapsed in 1993, and in 1995 Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to bilking investors out of $475 million. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison (18 of which he served), plus a $1 million fine and $463 million in restitution. The SEC considered his financial crimes to be "one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history" prior to Bernie Madoff's crimes a decade later.