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Company that incorporated the creator of the Trump trading cards works with some shady characters [1]
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Date: 2022-12-19
Eichenwald writes that “my jaw dropped” when he saw that Wyoming Corporate Services registered NFT International. That’s saying something given Eichenwald’s long history of unearthing corporate malfeasance and misfeasance. But a look at the 2011 Reuters report reveals why Eichenwald was so stunned. For one thing, Wyoming Corporate Services’ environment literally screams “shady.”
Neighbours say they see little activity there besides regular mail deliveries and a woman who steps outside for smoke breaks. Inside, however, the walls of the main room are covered floor to ceiling with numbered mailboxes labelled as corporate “suites.” A bulky copy machine sits in the kitchen. In the living room, a woman in a headset answers calls and sorts bushels of mail.
What Reuters described as a “little Cayman Island on the Great Plains” flourishes because Wyoming is a hotbed for mass incorporators. While we usually think of Delaware as a corporate haven, Wyoming’s corporate laws put Delaware to shame. A company incorporated in Wyoming is allowed to hide its true ownership behind “nominee” officers and directors who are often executives of mass incorporators. Wyoming Corporate Services not only does that, but will even recruit a lawyer for the board to make it easier to invoke attorney-client privilege.
Under its longtime president, Gerald Pitts, Wyoming Corporate Services’ stock in trade is offering “shelf corporations,” which are set up and then left “on the shelf” for a number of years. Anyone who buys these shelf corporations gets a company that appears to be a solid, stable business, complete with ready-made bank accounts, credit histories and tax filings. At the time of the Reuters report, Wyoming Corporate Services offered more than 700 shelf companies for sale in 37 states—with the oldest companies fetching the highest price.
While shell companies and shelf companies have legitimate purposes, a number of Wyoming Corporate Services’ clients have decidedly illegitimate legacies. Among them is former Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, whom Transparency International once ranked as the eighth-most corrupt government official in recent history for stealing as much as $200 million during a little over a year in office. He was arrested for money laundering in Switzerland in 1998, but fled to the United States in 1999 while on bail. He has lived in this country ever since, though he spent eight years in federal prison here for money laundering and extortion.
Numerous court filings and interviews revealed that Lazarenko used Capital Investment Group, a company registered at Wyoming Corporate Services, to conceal his stake in Ukrainian real estate. That may be of interest to Ukrainian prosecutors, who intend to bring him to trial if he ever comes back to Ukraine.
Another shady character connected to Wyoming Corporate Services is Ira N. Rubin, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2012 for helping online poker outfits launder billions in illicit money. In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission sued Rubin for using 18 shell and shelf companies to hide his activities. One of those front companies was Elite Funding, a shelf company that Rubin bought from Wyoming Corporate Services.
Still another suspicious character is Hace Galip Dedekarginoglu, who used a company created at Wyoming Corporate Services to cover massive self-dealing at the Pentagon’s expense. His company, New York Machinery sold the Department of Defense vehicle parts that supposedly conformed with Pentagon requirements, but actually came from a company in his native Turkey. He was forced to reimburse the military for $160,000 in illegal sales, on top of a $200,000 fine.
When I first saw Eichenwald’s piece roll across my Facebook feed, I immediately thought about Bernie Madoff claiming that he was being audited by a three-person accounting firm with only one active accountant, David G. Friehling. Madoff may have wanted an accountant who wouldn’t ask any questions. But in the process, he ended up raising new ones. After all, there was no way that a firm that small could even begin to properly service a multi-billion dollar operation. Ultimately, Friehling pleaded guilty to simply rubber-stamping Madoff’s numbers, making the Madoff fraud the largest accounting scandal in history.
This is no different. A lot of people have been loath do do business with Trump in light of his outrages while in office, especially his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. But even allowing for that, one would have thought someone in Trump’s inner circle would have thought twice about dealing with an incorporator with a legacy that is ethically problematic at best. It raises a lot of questions that we shouldn’t have to ask about someone with presidential ambitions. And it’s yet more evidence that Trump is unfit for office.
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