Today President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and announced that his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, would become acting attorney general. Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, but he was also involved in a Miami-based invention-marketing company the Federal Trade Commission shut down last year after calling it a scam.
Whitaker not only sat on the board of World Patent Marketing but also once sent a threatening email to a former customer who had complained after he spent thousands of dollars and did not receive the promised services. Court records obtained by New Times for a 2017 feature about the fraudulent company show that in an August 2015 email to a disgruntled customer, Whitaker touted his background as a former federal attorney and suggested that filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and "smearing" the company online could result in "serious civil and criminal consequences."
Scott Cooper, the CEO and founder of World Patent Marketing, donated $2,600 to Whitaker's 2014 Senate campaign — just $100 shy of the limit for an individual to donate to a candidate. Internal records show the company paid him nearly $10,000 before the company was shuttered.
World Patent Marketing collected almost $26 million by promising starry-eyed inventors it would turn their inventions into best sellers. Company reps claimed invention ideas were reviewed by an illustrious board that included big names such as Whitaker, Republican Congressman Brian Mast, and time-travel scientist Ronald Mallett. (A Mast spokesman denied that the congressman was on the board and said he never accepted compensation, though he did take a campaign contribution he later returned.)
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