Hacking conference Def Con bans three people linked to Epstein

Def Con, one of the world’s largest and longest-running hacker conferences, announced Wednesday that three people linked to Jeffrey Epstein are no longer allowed to attend.

The conference justified adding Pablos Holman, Vincenzo Iozzo and Goichi Ito to its general list of banned individuals, citing the appearance of the three in the Justice Department’s latest release of files related to the investigation of the late investor and convicted sex offender. Def Con also cited an article in Politico based on emails the three exchanged with Epstein.

Def Con’s actions are “entirely performative, given that Mr. Iozzo has barely attended the convention in the past 20 years,” Iozzo’s spokesperson Joan Folero told TechCrunch in a statement.

“It was a rush to judgment as it was not based on any investigation or wrongdoing 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 the three comes days after TechCrunch reported that cybersecurity conferences Black Hat and Code Blue removed Iozzo from their official review board pages, amid new and emerging revelations linking the prominent hacker, among others, to Epstein.

Iozzo is a cybersecurity industry veteran and currently the founder and CEO of identity startup SlashID. He previously served as a director at CrowdStrike after the security giant acquired his cybersecurity startup IperLane in 2017. As TechCrunch previously reported, Iozzo interacted with Epstein between 2014 and 2018, including after the Miami Herald reported new allegations that Epstein abused dozens of women and children.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting girls for sex and was 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 discussion of emerging markets and technologies,” and that he “never observed or engaged in any illegal activity or conduct.”

Before founding his startup, Iuzu was a research associate at the MIT Media Lab, which Ito was supervising at the time. The two appear in several of Epstein’s emails together.

Goichi Ito was director of MIT’s 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 ties to Epstein.

Meanwhile, Holman 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 City apartments in 2013, and tried to help Epstein hide negative online news stories about himself.

According to an email, Epstein planned to attend Def Con with Holman in 2013, but it is unclear whether or not they attended. Def Con founder Jeff Moss said that to his knowledge, “Epstein never attended.”