Cold Wind

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

—HOSEA 8:7

31

Smith said, “What is it you want to know about Rope the Wind?”

As had happened many times when Joe interrogated people with a high opinion of themselves, it didn’t take long for Orin Smith to open up. He explained how he’d come to own so many companies, and how he’d acquired them. While he explained the strategy and growth of his former enterprise, Joe nodded his head in appreciation, sometimes saying, “Wow—you’re kidding?” and “What a smart idea,” which prompted Smith to tell him even more.

Orin Smith was proud of his business accomplishments, and was grateful someone finally wanted to hear about them.

Smith explained how he’d—legally—taken advantage of a Wyoming initiative to encourage business development during the last energy bust of the 1990s. The state legislature had passed laws that made it very simple and inexpensive to incorporate in the state as a limited liability company. The idea, Smith explained, was not only to encourage new enterprises to start up in Wyoming but also to get existing firms to possibly move their headquarters for the advantage of low taxes and slight regulation. He said he learned the ins and outs of the process, and for a while served as a kind of broker between those wishing to incorporate and the state government entities that processed the applications and granted LLC status.

“I placed ads in newspapers and business journals all over the world,” Smith said. “‘Incorporate your company in Wyoming: it’s cheap, easy, and hassle-free! ’ For a fee, I’d make sure my clients did their paperwork correctly and I’d even walk the applications to the secretary of state’s office on their behalf. You’d be surprised how many people out there took advantage of the new regulations.”

But after serving as a facilitator for a few years, Smith said, he began to encounter more and more competition in the field. He realized there was a new market for turnkey companies that had already been created and were “established”—at least on paper.

“Think about it,” Smith said. “Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur or you just came into some cash. What makes more sense—to put the money in a bank and declare the income so it can be taxed, or to ‘invest’ it into the ownership of a company with all the benefits a small business owner had at the time? Like expense accounts, travel, tax credits, and the like?”

Joe nodded and said, “Exactly.” He’d learned over the years in interrogations that using the word exactly seemed to encourage his subjects to keep talking.

“Then it hit me,” Smith said. “Because it was so easy to create shell companies and bank them away, why not look ahead in the economy and create limited liability companies with names that investors and entrepreneurs might want to buy outright? I mean, wouldn’t it be more valuable for a guy to approach the bank if he had just acquired a two- or three-year-old company with a paper track record than to go into the meeting with all kinds of highfalutin ideas about a start-up?”

“Exactly,” Joe said.

“So that’s what I did,” Smith said proudly. “I started coming up with company names that sounded great and applying for incorporation and filing them away. I tried to figure out what was hot and what was coming down the pike and tailor the names for that. I’ve always had a genius for names, you know.”

Joe nodded.

“Some company names were plays on words: ‘Nest Egg Management,’ ‘Green Thumb Growth,’ like that,” Smith said, getting more and more animated. “Then I realized how many of these folks out there liked company names that sounded cool and modern but didn’t really say anything, like ‘PowerTech Industries,’ ‘Mountain Assets,’ ‘TerraTech,’ ‘GreenTech, ‘TerraGreen’—anything with green or tech in it was golden, man . . .”

Smith went through dozens of names and Joe recalled the short list Marybeth had read to him over the phone. He hadn’t actually heard of any of the companies, but it seemed like he had. He conceded to himself that Orin Smith did have a way with names.

“So you were kind of like those guys who went out and bought all kinds of dot-com names in the early days of the Internet,” Joe said. “You locked up common names so when folks came around to wanting to use them they had to pay you a premium.”

“Right, but then it all came to a crashing halt,” Smith said, his mouth drooping on the sides.

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently, some less-than-upstanding folks out there figured out how to buy and use these companies for unscrupulous means.”

“Like what?” Joe asked.

Smith glanced toward the mirrored window, where Coon was no doubt listening closely.

“Apparently,” Smith said, choosing his words carefully, “it’s a lot easier to launder illegal money through a corporation than it is by other means.”

“Like drug money?” Joe asked.

“Apparently,” Smith said. “Or other kinds of cash. From what I hear, the Russian mafia and Mexican drug cartels discovered they, too, could set up cheap corporations in Wyoming and use them as a front for financial transactions.”

“Not that you did that or knew anything about it,” Joe said.

“Of course not,” Smith said, acting hurt. “Not until the secretary of state started a campaign to shut me down and say that limited liability companies in Wyoming had to have all kinds of new restrictions, like street addresses and boards of directors and crap like that. It just wasn’t fair.”

“Exactly,” Joe said.