Technology

Revisiting World Patent Marketing: The Multimillion-Dollar Scam Matt Whitaker Was Neck Deep In

Whitaker's role in enabling the plot should be disqualifying from serving as Acting Dog Catcher let alone Acting Attorney General.

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Pretending to listen is a skill honed at World Patent Marketing (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

While his illegal appointment and commitment to halting the Mueller investigation are deservedly taking top billing, Matt Whitaker’s involvement with a company called World Patent Marketing is flying a little below the radar. Which is a shame, because the human misery this scam organization wrought upon its unsuspecting victims is heartbreaking to hear about and Whitaker’s role in enabling the plot should be disqualifying from serving as Acting Dog Catcher let alone Acting Attorney General.

What was World Patent Marketing? It claimed to be a company that helped aspiring inventors secure patents and cash in on the American Dream. For a hefty fee, of course. By the time the whole thing unraveled and the FTC shut down the company as a fraud, it had left its customers little to show for all their investments.

One tragic story from the Miami New Times tells of a college student who World Patent Marketing told would make millions on a social media platform for people with disabilities.

It was February 2016, and Masti had already wired World Patent Marketing $4,000 his late grandfather had left him plus $19,000 from a high-interest loan. Now, Shapiro explained, Masti would have to spend more to develop and launch the app. He had nothing more to give. But convinced by Shapiro’s overtures, Masti’s dad withdrew $50,000 from his 401(k).

And then: nothing. Every Monday for a year, Masti emailed to check on the app’s progress, and every time, company officials responded they were still working on it. In March, they stopped replying altogether.

As it turned out, World Patent Marketing’s vaunted board never even looked at applications according to the FTC. Hell, they didn’t even meet. And what work WPM did undertake was routinely denied by the Patent Office. The only product they sold on Amazon was a safety blade and when the inventor’s patent application for that was abandoned, WPM’s CEO filed another application for virtually the same product under his own name. These stories just keep getting worse.

The date was January 31, 2017, and over the past two years, Seaver had depleted his life savings, borrowed from his mom and against his house, and taken out unsecured credit lines, all so World Patent Marketing would bring to life his idea for a cell-phone case with netting on the back to hold keys and headphones. As Seaver handed over $300,000, Cooper drew up complicated Excel spreadsheets supposedly proving Seaver would make at least $1.4 million. After long delays, Cooper now insisted the product was on the market. But Seaver couldn’t find any proof that it was actually for sale — or that it even existed.

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Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

The World Patent Marketing business plan was simple:

First, salespeople would peddle a $995-to-$1,295 “Global Invention Royalty Analysis,” or GIRA, containing research prepared by an “Ivy League research team” that scored an invention’s likelihood of market success on a scale of 0 to 100. Customers who took the bait received a glossy, 70-page booklet in the mail….

Next, salespeople pitched patent protection and invention promotion packages with price tags between $7,995 and $64,995. Then came phase three: a “licensing” or partnership deal priced anywhere from $50,000 to $400,000.

Where does Whitaker fit in? Well, the now-Acting Attorney General served on WPM’s advisory board. Consider, for a moment, that a former prosecutor was approached with the business plan above and willingly joined up. Just think about that from a professional responsibility perspective.

And he didn’t just sit on a board and collect checks — he also waded into the company’s mounting legal trouble, penning threatening letters to the company’s detractors like this one that Ross Guberman highlights:

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As it turns out… maybe the Better Business Bureau should have gotten a call. After posing as an inventor and going through the whole process itself, the FTC shut down WPM, seized its assets, and sent a reciever searching for nearly $26 million in assets. They haven’t found nearly that amount.

And somehow, this guy is running the Justice Department today.

(Read the damning FTC injunction on the next page.)

A Miami Beach Scam Took Millions of Dollars From Thousands of Inventors, Feds Say [Miami New Times]

Earlier: Who Is Matt Whitaker And Why Is He Illegally Pretending To Be The Attorney General?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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