Donald Trump is the face of a new cryptocurrency business whose founders have a past filled with debt, lawsuits, and other questionable dating advice.
At the X site on Monday, Trump officially unveiled World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency business that promises to launch its crypto token whose value will be pegged to the US dollar, along with entrepreneurs Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro.
“Crypto is one of the things we have to do,” Trump said during the announcement. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.”
Pundits have characterized the move as an attempt to appeal to cryptocurrency enthusiasts, who tend to be young, white males, amid scrutiny of Trump’s past misgivings about digital currencies. Trump also made other moves to please crypto fans, including a campaign stop on Wednesday at a bar in Greenwich Village where Trump paid for hamburgers and Diet Cokes in bitcoin.
It’s unclear what Trump’s exact role in the business might be — he’s reportedly been named in some internal documents as “crypto’s chief advocate” — but ethics experts say it could be revealing. conflict of interest if Trump wins the presidential election, then he would. to observe the rules of cryptocurrency. Three of Trump’s children are employees of World Liberty Financial, including his 18-year-old son Barron, who CoinDesk reported has the title of “DeFi visionary” at the company.
But the key players behind the company appear to be Folkman and Herro, who spoke for about an hour on the X livestream and are head of operations and data and lead strategy, respectively. .
Folkman and Herro, both 39, appear as multi-millionaires on multiple occasions. On Facebook, their posts show them racing around the Caribbean on a powerboat and relaxing on the beach with their wives. In 2021, Herro boasted a stay at the Ritz Carlton resort in Puerto Rico.
Herro describes his life as a rags-to-riches story: As a teenager and adult, he was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned on drug charges, but he says he turned his life around. and now I am a licensed trader.
Court records tell a more complicated story. Herro and Folkman have filed lawsuits and filed lawsuits in nearly every state they’ve lived in, with both appearing in separate trials from 2010 to 2020 in locations including California, New York and the US Virgin Islands.
Herro and Folkman could not be reached for comment by Business Insider. World Liberty Financial spokesman Jim Redner told BI he had “no information.”
“I have been kept in the dark. I have been trying to find information, but I have nothing,” Redner continued. “In 25 years, it’s the most extraordinary project I’ve ever been associated with.”
In 2010, Herro was sued in Los Angeles by a former business partner who said he invested $170,000 in what he thought was Herro’s medical marijuana operation. In fact, Herro just took the money and ran, according to the suit. Herro was ordered to pay a default judgment of $207,366.
Around the same time, Herro was sued by JPMorgan Chase and a San Diego collection agency. Herro also appears to owe more than $280,000 in unpaid California state taxes, according to the lien notices.
Other court records show that Herro ran an advertising business using fake Facebook accounts. In 2014, Herro sued a man who he said sold him 20 Facebook accounts that Herro wanted to advertise on. The claims stopped working immediately, Herro said, forfeiting the $100,000 he had paid. The parties settled out of court.
That same year, Herro sued the company after a “cleaning product” Herro had been promoting on Facebook for nearly $570,000 in unpaid invoices, according to filings. court previously reported by Bloomberg. The company’s owner was later convicted of unrelated financial fraud and is now in prison.
The landlords of the Virgin Islands home Folkman and Herro rented in 2016 sued the couple and their roommates for $36,000 in unpaid rent and $75,000 in property damage, including damage from six dogs that the owners said were staying in the house without permission. (The parties stayed outside the court.)
Herro is also currently being sued by a woman who rented his speedboat – Herro rents a boat, called Clickbait, for $1,250 a day – and suffered a back injury.
Folkman’s entry into the business came in 2011, when he founded the company Date Hotter Girls LLC, where he provided artist advice under the name “Zack Bauer.” In a video from a 2011 conference for “alpha males,” Folkman boasted about his system for “taking girls home and having sex.”
“That’s what he showed up at the bar,” he told attendees. “That’s why she wears a miniskirt and high heels and puts on makeup and takes an hour and a half to get ready. That’s why she changes her shirt five times and comes out in a khole.”
In 2020, Folkman is selling a $2,000 non-refundable ecommerce course, promising to “teach you the tricks I’ve used to build multiple 7- and 8-person businesses without online marketing and some original proposal,” he teased. $77,000 in credit card debt. The bank’s statement included in the lawsuit seeking refunds owed by American Express showed almost all of his expenses were on Facebook ads. (Folkman never responded to the lawsuit, and a judge dismissed the case after AmEx missed the deadline.)
Business Insider tried to find the three people who posted valid testimonials on the course’s website but was unable to. The photos next to their names were of other people.
Folkman and Herro’s first venture into crypto ended in disgrace. Both were involved in a project called Dough Finance, whose source code appears to be strikingly similar to World Liberty Financial, Coindesk reports. Hackers stole $2 million from Dough Finance users in July. The project’s website is no longer active, although the company has posted on X that it has recovered some of the stolen money and plans to return the money to users.
It is still unclear when World Liberty Financial will start allowing investors to buy its tokens. But even before its official launch, it is already warning crypto buyers about scams.
“Public attention: Please beware of scams and fake tokens,” World Liberty Financial wrote on Telegram last month. “Do not contact these signs!”