Trump’s acting AG linked to company fined for patent scam
The new US acting attorney general (AG), Matthew Whitaker, was linked to a company that was fined by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for a scam related to patent licensing.
Following yesterday’s resignation of former AG Jeff Sessions, US President Donald Trump announced on the same day that Sessions’ chief of staff, Whitaker, would take over as acting AG.
Whitaker was associated with a company that “bilked thousands of customers out of millions of dollars”, according to the FTC.
However, there is no evidence that Whitaker himself was involved in the scam, nor was he found guilty of any illegal activity by the FTC.
A complaint filed by the FTC at the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida targeted Florida-based World Patent Marketing and its owner, Scott Cooper, with the allegations in March 2017. The activity allegedly took place between 2014 and 2017.
Whitaker joined the advisory board of World Patent Marketing in December 2014 and the company’s website listed him as a member until March 2017.
In 2014, Whitaker publicly vouched for the company in a statement, in which he claimed that World Patent Marketing translates words about “doing business ethically” into action.
Cooper advertised World Patent Marketing as a business where people could pay for a “global patent” and gain assistance in commercialising their ideas.
As noted by the FTC, “there is no such thing as a global patent” and the company did not negotiate licensing agreements that resulted in the manufacture or sale of customers’ inventions.
The FTC estimated that World Patent Marketing made roughly $10 million through the scam between 2014 and 2017, but “virtually none of defendants’ customers had made money, or even recouped his or her investments”.
In March 2018, the FTC banned Cooper from doing business in the patent marketing field and ordered him and World Patent Marketing to pay nearly $26 million as equitable monetary relief.
In addition to the monetary judgment, which Cooper and the company are jointly and severally liable for, the FTC ordered Cooper to pay an additional $976,330.
Although Whitaker is not named in the complaint, he allegedly received payments from World Patent Marketing.
For example, UK newspaper The Guardian claimed to have obtained court filings showing that Whitaker received regular payments of $1,875 from World Patent Marketing and that he sent a “threatening email to a victim of the alleged scam”.
A copy of the email, shared by the Miami New Times, can be seen here.
Sessions yesterday submitted his resignation at the request of Trump, according to a letter obtained by CNN, after holding the position for nearly two years.
The controversy around Sessions’ resignation and Whitaker’s appointment comes amid the Republicans losing control of the US House of Representatives in the mid-term elections, giving the Democratic Party their first majority in the House in eight years.
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