An undercover investigation into the "shit that happened with Trump"
The men who made millions in insider trades related to a Truth Social deal - and the federal agents who tracked them down.
Full story: The wild probe into investors of DWAC, Trump Media’s proposed merger ally
This story used hundreds of pages of documents filed in federal court to go inside the massive FBI investigation into investors of Trump Media's merger ally. A Russian owner of a Caribbean-island bank and a Miami "granddaddy" of weed-shop finance made tens of millions on insider trades into the big Truth Social deal, court docs show. But federal agents were on their tail – with an undercover informant, secret phone scans and a money-laundering scheme they called the “full Singapore."
The secretly recorded meetings featured moments of tension. During one March 2023 meeting inside a Rocket One office north of Miami, Shvartsman signed documents to move his assets into an offshore trust and then warned he would “have to kill” the informant if the man tampered with Shvartsman’s fortune, according to the government’s transcript of the meeting.
When the informant told another man in the room, “That’s the second time he said he’s going to kill me,” Shvartsman responded, “I don’t f— around,” the transcript states.
But the conversations also showed the men getting to know each other. During the March meeting, Shvartsman said the main reason he wanted to move his assets was “the ordeal with ‘Trump’” and his “desire to not have the funds acquired from that investment taken from him,” according to a “debriefing” statement from the informant included in the HSI report filed with the court. Shvartsman’s attorney also told the informant then that his client was “your classic serial entrepreneur” and had a “fetish for superyachts,” according to the government’s transcript.
During the meetings, Shvartsman offered to introduce the informant to new clients, saying he knew a Russian-speaking “high-ranking Army or military officer” in Ukraine who needed help moving a “significant amount of money,” according to a transcript detailing what the informant told agents after one April 2023 lunch. “There’s guys in the Ukraine sitting on a lot of cash,” Shvartsman told the informant in another meeting, according to the government’s transcript.
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