A longtime friend of Donald Trump apparently pushed for his son Barron to get involved with a murky crypto startup on the basis it would protect him from scammers otherwise rife across the sector.
A real estate mogul with limited enough experience of the crypto space to refer to “memecoins” as “me-me-coins,” Steve Witkoff is understood to have enthusiastically lobbied the Republican presidential candidate on behalf of Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman.
Herro and Folkman are the brains behind World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture launched by (formerly stalwart crypto-skeptic) Trump and his three sons–Donald Jr., Eric and Barron–during a livestream last month that Barron himself was, curiously enough, absent for despite being described in the company’s promo materials as a “visionary” in the space.
The New York Times reports that Witkoff lobbied on Herro and Folkman’s behalf at least partly in the belief their proposals represented a perfect opportunity for Trump’s youngest to develop a little business experience, all while shielding him from the notoriously unstable industry’s risks of fraud, cyberattacks and sudden downturns.
Whether Herro and Folkman’s pedigree merits that sort of praise seems to be something of topic for debate. The newspaper found the pair have a history of jumping between projects, largely focused on get-rich-quick e-commerce and crypto schemes in the vein of “From Broke to Millionaire in 14 Days,” many of which were reportedly set up in notorious tax havens.
In April 2022, Herro is reported to have hosted a seminar at the home of Jordan Belfort, the convicted fraudster of The Wolf of Wall Street fame, during which he described digital currency TerraUSD as “one of the coolest assets in history.” It collapsed overnight less than a month later.
He also has a criminal history of theft and marijuana possession, with a medical cannabis dispensary he either wholly or partly owned previously the center of a fraud claim that resulted in a $207,000 payout to one of its investors.
One of Herro’s girlfriends is understood to have left him after he tried to pressure her into an abortion by suggesting she’d look fat in a lawsuit, and he’s previously said he missed the birth of his second child because he was tripping on acid in Puerto Rico at the time.
As business partners, Herro and Folkman were reportedly involved in Dough Finance, a crypto-platform hacked earlier this year resulting in the theft of roughly $2 million from its users. They were also previously the subject of various lawsuits over claims including that they’d skipping out on rent, caused damage to properties where they’d stayed, and failed to pay $77,000 in credit card bills.
Overall, experts have generally expressed skepticism over the hype surrounding the pair’s recently-announced venture with the Trump clan, given there’s little to what’s known about World Liberty Financial at this stage that appears to set it much aside from other ventures in the sector.
As John Reed Stark, a former SEC official, put it to the Times: “It’s a bunch of nonsense, and a terrible opportunity for investors.”
