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This is likely an undercount. WIRED looked specifically for company records indicating that Registered Agents Inc. incorporated the company alongside at least one of a dozen false names provided by sources. We additionally looked for companies registered by these same false names associated with addresses previously utilized by Registered Agents Inc. for incorporating thousands of other companies. Sources believe the true number is likely much higher.
Registered Agents Inc. declined to fully answer WIRED’s detailed set of questions about its business practices.
“To put it plainly, your assertions in this question set are outdated and patently wrong about Registered Agents Inc.,” the company said in a statement. “Therefore, at this time Registered Agents Inc. will provide no comment as it is apparent that you, Wired and its editors attempt [to] fit a pre-arranged narrative through publishing false facts and other blatant lies.”
Registered Agents Inc. says that it has offices in every state in the US and in Washington, DC, allowing it to offer its customers the ability to register a business anywhere. Many of those offices are small outfits located near state government offices, so its employees can easily submit paperwork. (The Sheridan office is located just a block away from city hall.)
Registered Agents Inc. has expanded beyond incorporation services, building custom software to manage entire businesses. Last year, it acquired Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company that had previously catered to far-right extremists.
Much of the company’s high-level operations and development take place in the Pacific Northwest, including Spokane, Washington, and Post Falls, Idaho. The company has two major subsidiaries: Two Barrels LLC, which develops software, and Corporate Tools LLC, which enables its customers to manage the filings of multiple businesses.
“Somebody will hire [Registered Agents Inc.] to create an LLC, and then [Registered Agents Inc. will] sign all that paperwork with fake identities and submit it to the Secretary of State,” says Mikhail Slyusarev, who worked as a senior software engineer at the company for more than six years. “There’s no oversight, you're not really answering to anybody, and you’re just making shit up.”
On July 29, 2015, Registered Agents Inc. updated the name listed on its own incorporation documents it had filed with the Wyoming secretary of state. While Keen had previously signed as president and registered agent of the company, the new registered agent for the company was a man named Bill Havre.
Registered Agent Inc.’s website featured a vivid yarn detailing Havre’s life story, according to an archived version of the site from December 2021. Havre grew up on a small ranch in Wyoming and studied medicine at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1970s, the bio read. But shortly after enrolling in classes, Havre returned home to Wyoming to tend to a family emergency, eventually starting his own businesses in the state.
“After gaining some insight into the nature of starting a business, Mr. Havre was intrigued by the business entity formation process, particularly concerned by what at the time seemed exorbitant fees paid to attorneys to complete and file corporate formation documents,” the website said.
Havre was once listed on Registered Agent Inc.’s website as the company’s president and executive director. Havre has helped register 491 companies with Registered Agents Inc., WIRED found. He’s also an entirely fabricated persona, five former employees say, an invention of Dan Keen.
That 2015 document is the earliest recorded instance of the company using fake names identified by WIRED. Havre’s name was removed from the company’s website in 2022 following inquiries from The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The Wyoming incorporation paperwork viewed by WIRED includes the full text of the state law against filing a false document, reminding registrants that doing so may be a felony punishable by up to two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. Former employees say that customers of Registered Agents Inc. typically aren’t aware that a fake name is used to sign their company’s incorporation documents.
Provided a copy of the Wyoming incorporation document, experts say using a fake person would likely violate the law. “This does look like it requires a real person to sign—Riley Park would seemingly be in violation,” says Gary Kalman, the executive director of Transparency International US, an anti-corruption group.
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