Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Found Dead At Los Angeles High School

LOS ANGELES — A reported federal informant and whistleblower who went missing a year ago was found dead this week at a high school in Los Angeles.

Valentin "Val" Broeksmit, 46, was officially last seen alive the afternoon of April 6, 2021, at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, the LAPD said. At the time, he was driving a 2020 red Mini Cooper. Authorities later found the vehicle, but never found Broeksmit, concerning his family. (Forensic News Network journalist Scott Stedman said they talked in January, however, and Broeksmit's Twitter account appeared to have tweeted as recently as April 5.)

A cleaning crew found Broeksmit's body at Woodrow Wilson High School in El Sereno on Monday morning, LAPD Sgt. Rudy Perez told the Los Angeles Times. He appeared to be homeless. No foul play was suspected.

Online records on the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner website showed no cause of death, but confirmed he died at a school.

Broeksmit, a native of Ukraine who was adopted by Bill Broeksmit, who married his mother, was the subject of a 2019 profile in The New York Times titled, "Me and My Whistle-Blower," by David Enrich. The Times described him as an unemployed rock musician who battled opioid abuse and had a criminal past that included credit card theft.

He was also the son of Bill Broeksmit, a senior executive at the troubled financial institution Deutsche Bank who killed himself in 2014.

In February 2019, Val Broeksmit met with federal authorities in Los Angeles and was asked to turn over documents that only people "within the inner circle of Deutsche would ever see." The records stemmed from an investigation into the bank and partly its dealings with former President Donald Trump.

Broeksmit sought to become the next great American whistle-blower, The New York Times profile reported, seeking to hand a trove of documents that he saw as corporate wrongdoing over to investigators and journalists.