Nancy Pelosi’s son linked to five shady companies probed by feds: report
Paul Pelosi Jr., the son of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has reportedly been linked to at least five business entities under investigation by authorities for alleged fraud.
The 52-year-old Paul Pelsoi Jr., the only son of Nancy and Paul Pelosi Sr., was hired by several firms that were subject to both federal and state probes, and meanwhile has “connections to a host of fraudsters, rule-breakers and convicted criminals,” although he has never been charged himself, according to DailyMail.com.
The website reports that in February 2007, Pelosi Jr. was hired as senior vice president by Omaha-based InfoUSA, a database marketing company that was investigated by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office several years earlier for allegedly selling consumer data to fraudsters.
The data was then used to scam sick and gullible elderly people out of money, it was alleged. The investigation was closed and no arrests were made. Pelosi Jr., who was paid a salary of $180,000 per year, joined the firm after the probe ended.
InfoUSA was founded by Vin Gupta, a major donor to former President Bill Clinton. The Associated Press reported that Gupta and his company were investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007.
The probe was launched after Gupta was sued by shareholders who allege he misused company funds to fly Bill and Hillary Clinton on private corporate jets.
In 2010, the SEC charged Gupta and two others for “funneling illegal compensation to himself in the form of perks worth millions of dollars.” The case was eventually settled. Gupta did not admit or deny the allegations.
in 2009, Paul Jr. co-founded Natural Blue Resources Inc, an investment company whose stated mission was to “create, acquire, or otherwise invest in environmentally-friendly companies, including an initiative to locate, purify, and sell water recovered from underground aquifers in New Mexico and other areas with depleting water resources.”
But the SEC alleged that the company was secretly run by two convicted fraudsters — James E. Cohen and Joseph Corazzi. In 2014, the agency brought fraud charges against Cohen, Corazzi, former New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya, and a former executive at the company, Erik Perry.
While Cohen and Corazzi claimed to be “outside consultants,” they in fact controlled the company “without disclosing their past brushes with the law to investors.” Pelosi Jr. reportedly owned more than 10 million shares of the company.
The SEC suspended trading in Natural Blue stock. Pelosi Jr. was never charged. According to DailyMail.com, the SEC acknowledged he did not play a “meaningful role” in one of the firm’s key transactions and even testified in court against those who were indicted.
The SEC also said that Pelosi Jr. “strenuously objected” to proposed fundraising contracts and was ousted from the board by Cohen and Corazzi.
Perry and Anaya both reached a settlement with the SEC.
In October 2013, Pelosi Jr. joined FOGFuels, a biofuel company. Just prior to his being named vice president, the company founder, Paul Marshall, was charged by the SEC for allegedly stealing $3 million from elderly investors.
Marshal was accused of using the money “to pay for a variety of…personal expenses, including luxury vacations, child support and alimony payments, and private school tuition and camps for his children.”
FOGFuels was dissolved in 2015. Three years later, Marshall was sentenced to six years in federal prison. He was given a reduced sentence after cooperating with the FBI in a separate bribery cases involving an official in Atlanta.
In 2014, Pelosi Jr. was named independent director at Targeted Medical Pharma, a Los Angeles-based firm. Seven months after his hiring, he quit the company. A year later, the Food and Drug Administration accused Targeted Medical Pharma of testing drugs on people without authorization, according to DailyMail.com.
The company was not subject to further legal action. It insisted that the investigation by the FDA was due to a “clerical issue.”
In the fall of 2014, Pelosi Jr. became “business development executive” of Corporate Governance Initiative. An SEC filing stated that CGI was a “non-profit group” focused on “transparency, capitalism and building sustainable organization[s].””
In December 2015, Pelosi Jr. was promoted to the position of executive director. During his time at CGI, he reportedly established ties with Asa Saint Clair, a New York-based executive who was accused of running a cryptocurrency scam through his charity, the World Sports Alliance.
The Department of Justice alleged that World Sports Alliance was a “sham affiliate of the United Nations.”
“Saint Clair allegedly defrauded investors in IGObit, a digital currency he claimed WSA [World Sports Alliance] was developing, but which turned out to be the fraudulent bait with which to lure victim investors,” the federal prosecutors alleged.
Saint Clair, who was charged with wire fraud, has pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Pelosi Jr. endorsed the fake cryptocurrency on its website in January 2018, according to DailyMail.com, writing: “IGOBit is the absolute best offering I have ever seen.”
He has never been charged in connection with IGOBit or Saint Clair.
In July 2016, Pelosi Jr. became a senior adviser at Oroplata Resources, a lithium mining company.
A month before coming on board, Oroplata executives allegedly issued $26 million worth of fraudulent shares and then awarded some of them to themselves and others without board approval.
The allegation was made in a civil lawsuit filed in Nevada in 2018.
Pelosi Jr. is reported to have received 2.8 million of the allegedly fraudulent shares in July 2016, according to DailyMail.com.
Court documents cited by DailyMail.com show that Pelosi Jr. bought the shares for $2,800 — even though the real market value was between $4,228,000 and $5,152,000.
The fraud was allegedly masterminded by Roger Knox, a Swiss asset management firm owner, who was convicted for a “pump-and-dump” scheme totaling $164 million.
Oraplata was one of several firms entangled in Knox’s fraud, according to federal prosecutors.
Knox pleaded guilty two years ago. He faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years as well as possible fines totaling some $5 million.
Pelosi Jr. was not named in the civil lawsuit or in the federal complaint against Knox.
On his LinkedIn page, Pelosi Jr. makes no mention of his prior positions at InfoUSA, Natural Blue Resources, FOGFuels, Targeted Medical Pharma, CGI, and Oroplata Resources.
His LinkedIn page currently lists Pelosi Jr. as strategic adviser to EVSX, an eco-mining and recycling company based in Quebec, Canada.
Last month, Nancy Pelosi revealed in filings that she and her husband made as much as $30 million in stock trades involving Big Tech firms.
The financial windfall has spurred lawmakers from both parties to push forward legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading in stocks.
Pelosi, the powerful Democrat who represents San Francisco, has been accused of profiting off companies which she is responsible for regulating.
Pelosi is one of the richest members of Congress, with an estimated net worth of more than $106 million, according to an analysis by The Post.
That’s an average of the maximum and minimum estimated value of her assets and liabilities — the methodology used by the Center for Responsive Politics — using her most recent financial disclosure from August, which pegs the maximum at $252 million and the minimum at $40 million underwater.
Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is a businessman who runs the venture capital and investment firm Financial Leasing Services and has made countless bets on high-profile companies his wife is supposed to regulate, like Amazon, Apple and Google.
When asked last month whether the opportunity to profit on trades could create a conflict of interest, the speaker flatly said “no” to the idea of supporting a ban on trading individual stocks.
“We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters. “They [members of Congress] should be able to participate in that.”
