Def Con, one of the world’s largest and longest-running hacker conferences, announced Wednesday that three people associated with Jeffrey Epstein are no longer allowed to attend.
The conference justified adding Pablos Holman, Vincenzo Iozzo and Joichi Ito to its public blacklist, saying the three appeared in the latest release of Justice Department documents related to the investigation of the late investor and convicted sex offender. Def Con also cited a Politico article based on emails the three exchanged with Epstein.
Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for Iozzo, told TechCrunch in a statement that the Def Con events are “entirely performative, given that Mr. Iozzo has barely attended the conference over the past twenty years.”
“This was a rush to judgment that was not based on any investigation or misconduct by Mr. Iozzo,” the spokesman said.
Representatives for Def Con, Holman and Ito did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The move to ban comes three days after TechCrunch reported that cybersecurity conferences Black Hat and Code Blue had removed Iozzo from their official review board pages, amid new revelations linking the prominent hacker to Epstein, among others.
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Iozzo is a cybersecurity veteran who is currently the founder and CEO of startup SlashID. He previously served as a director at CrowdStrike after the security giant acquired his cybersecurity startup IperLane in 2017. As previously reported by TechCrunch, Iozzo dated Epstein from 2014 to 2018, even after the Miami Herald reported new allegations that Epstein abused dozens of women and children.
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in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from girls and registered as a sex offender in New York and Florida. In 2019, the Justice Department charged Epstein with trafficking, exploiting, and abusing dozens of underage girls. Epstein died in prison.
Iozzo previously told TechCrunch that his interactions with Epstein were “limited to business opportunities that never materialized, as well as discussing markets and emerging technologies” and that he “never observed or engaged in any illegal activity or behavior.”
Before his startups, Iozzo was a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab, which Ito oversaw at the time. The two appear together in several of Epstein’s emails.
Joichi Ito was director of the MIT Media Lab until 2019, when he resigned after it was reported that he was aware that Epstein was a convicted sex offender and that he and the university had extensive personal and financial relationships with Epstein.
Holman, meanwhile, is a general partner at venture capital firm Deep Future and describes himself on his website as a “hacker, inventor and tech futurist.”
Holman had been in contact with Epstein since 2010, planned to stay at one of his New York apartments in 2013, and tried to help Epstein hide negative online messages about himself.
According to the email, Epstein planned to attend Def Con along with Holman in 2013, but it is unclear if they attended. Def Con founder Jeff Moss said that as far as he knows, “Epstein never attended.”