By William Turton and Dhruv Mehrotra
Inside a drab one-story office building in Post Falls, Idaho, a little-known American company has built the machinery that enables hundreds of thousands of businesses to operate in near-total secrecy.
The company, Registered Agents Inc., is a one-stop shop for people seeking to incorporate a business in any US state, often in those with advantageous tax policies, while obscuring their identities. According to five former employees of Registered Agents Inc. or its subsidiaries, the company routinely incorporates thousands of businesses on behalf of its customers using fake personas. Former Registered Agents Inc. employees say that the company’s widespread use of personas is an outgrowth of its founder’s obsession with privacy and a desire to push the boundaries of incorporation laws.
The registered agent industry, which incorporates businesses and acts as a point of contact for legal notices, is already effective at masking the identity of who owns a company. Registered agents have many legitimate uses, and states often require that a company have a registered agent. In some instances, however, these services have benefited “oligarchs, criminals, and online scammers,” according to a 2022 investigation by The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Experts say a lack of adequate federal and state regulations of registered agents helps to make the United States a hotbed for money-laundering and other shady business dealings.
In a typical scenario, a registered agent would incorporate a company on behalf of a customer. An employee of the registered agent company would list their name on the incorporation documents, sometimes providing the company’s email address and office as contact information. That process provides business owners one layer of secrecy, preventing anyone who looks at state records from determining the real owner of a company.
Registered Agents Inc., according to the former employees, routinely goes one step further, incorporating companies in the names of fictional personas created by the company’s founder, Dan Keen. It’s unclear what benefit Registered Agents Inc. or its customers receive when a company is incorporated by a fake identity.
Around the country, at least 1,463 companies incorporated by Registered Agents Inc. list a woman named Riley Park as an organizer or agent, according to a WIRED analysis of publicly available incorporation documents. But Riley Park isn’t a real person, the former employees say. She’s one of multiple fake personas used by Registered Agents Inc. Former employees identified at least 10 fake personas used by the company, including David Roberts, Drake Forester, and Morgan Noble.
Using business records made public by OpenCorporates, a website that shares and standardizes information sourced from business registries around the world, WIRED found 36,257 business listing company officers who share names that former employees say are fake. At least 3,735 of these businesses’ incorporation paperwork references Registered Agents Inc., either explicitly in the paperwork or by using an address known to former employees as belonging to Registered Agents Inc.
WIRED’s analysis found that these companies are registered in 20 different states and appear to provide services ranging from law enforcement training to landscaping. Many of these companies with officers using an alleged fake name were registered to addresses known by sources to belong to Registered Agents Inc. For example, six allegedly fake names were listed as officers for 887 of businesses registered to the same address in Sheridan, Wyoming—an office of Registered Agents Inc.
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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 broadened its services beyond company incorporation, now offering tailored software solutions that can oversee running entire business operations. In the previous year, the company bought Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting business previously providing services to extreme far-right constituents.
A significant portion of the company’s high-tier operation and development work is conducted in the Pacific Northwest, more specifically in locations like Spokane, Washington, and Post Falls, Idaho. Registered Agents Inc. has two main subsidiaries: Two Barrels LLC, involved in software production, and Corporate Tools LLC, which gives its clients resources to handle the documentation of multiple businesses.
It operates like this – someone hires Registered Agents Inc. to establish an LLC, and then Registered Agents Inc. will use fake identities to sign all necessary documentation and submit them to the Secretary of State, explains Mikhail Slyusarev, a senior software engineer who was employed with the company for over half a decade. The process lacks oversight—you don’t truly have to answer to anyone, essentially making up details along the way.”
On the 29th of July, 2015, the company updated the name listed on its incorporation documents previously filed with the Wyoming secretary of state. Formerly, Keen had signed as the president and registered agent of the firm. Following the update, a man named Bill Havre was listed as the new registered agent for the company.
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.
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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 reviewed by WIRED underlines the severity of filing a fraudulent document, indicating that such an action may lead to a felony charge, a maximum of two years in prison and a fine of $2,000. Former staff members of Registered Agents Inc. claim that the company’s clients are usually oblivious to the use of a fake signature on their incorporation papers.
When showed the Wyoming incorporation document, experts argue that the use of a fictitious individual is potentially unlawful. “The document seems to necessitate a real person’s signature—Riley Park appears to be in breach,” says Gary Kalman, the executive director of Transparency International US, an organization targeting corruption.
Ex-workers from Registered Agents Inc. report that Keen defended the use of counterfeit names arguing it shields employees from getting dragged into legal conflicts and from being subpoenaed to provide information about the company’s clientele.
The regulations regarding business incorporation in America are set by the state, giving future business proprietors the liberty to select a location based on factors like tax benefits, privacy guidelines, among others. A large number of state offices do not thoroughly scrutinize filing documents to verify the validity of the signers, according to former employees of Registered Agents Inc.
“There is no federal requirement, there is no state-level requirement that these registered agents have any code of ethics. There’s no anything,” says Sarah Beth Felix, an expert on financial transparency. “For being essential gatekeepers to legitimize businesses, they’re grossly unregulated.”
Former employees say that the registered agents industry benefits from relaxed incorporation laws in states like Wyoming and Montana, where registering a completely anonymous company is as simple as paying a registered agent service as little as $200. That makes the US an appealing location for illicit financial activity even before the added layer of opacity by a registered agent.
According to two former employees, the company doesn’t screen to see if its customers are real people, or even if their email addresses are legitimate. Former employees say they raised concerns about not knowing the true identity of all of their customers to company leadership, but were dismissed. Experts and former employees said that verifying the identity of its customers is often not required for registered agents.
“You could say your name was Billy Bob and your email was BillyBob123, and we would have created an LLC for you,” the former software developer says.
“Dan takes it almost to an extreme. He tries to maximize what the laws allow in each state,” says Don Evans, who worked in a chief technical officer role at the company. “If people find ways to use his services that are in the gray area, he would turn a cheek to it.”
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Since 2008, Dan Keen has grown his business from a small company serving customers in the Pacific Northwest to a major national player in what’s known as the corporate formation industry. The company and its competitors offer the ability to incorporate a business in the state of a customer’s choosing and receive mail and legal notices.
Keen started the company after running a tree trimming and landscaping business. Former employees said Keen worked tirelessly to build the business, often sending emails at all hours of the night.
“Dan put in a lot of effort, he worked nonstop,” says Matt MacKenzie, who worked as a legal compliance specialist for more than 11 years and was one of the company’s earliest employees.
When the company was a fledgling, Keen frequently included his identity in the establishment paperwork of the business and its multiple subsidiaries dispersed throughout the United States. “It was only a few years later when he wished to use entirely fake identities and dissociate his name from all the corporate documents for Registered Agents Inc.,” MacKenzie recounts.
Former employees depict Keen as a motivated yet quirky businessman known for micromanagement and sudden mood alterations. According to past employees, Keen’s fashion sense is simple, often donning shorts and plaid shirts. He is enthusiastic about skiing and outdoor activities.
Keen was well-known for his passive-aggressive treatment of his workforce, as per half-a-dozen former employees. Two repeated instances of Keen reluctantly providing health insurance to staff when informed that it was obligatory under the Affordable Care Act, allegedly branding his staff as “whiners and complainers” for making such requests.
Numerous ex-employees characterized Keen as “inappropriate,” often making remarks about workers’ physical attributes. He was described by two former employees as making sexist comments, allegedly including sexual remarks about women and frequently doubting their capability to carry out their tasks.
Several ex-staff members have raised concerns about the high-security procedures in the office which they report was saturated with security cameras and enforced them to secure their mobile phones in containers. Slyusarev, the former senior software engineer at Registered Agents Inc., reports that the telephonic system he installed had the potential to covertly record conversations of employees.
Previous employees report that Keen was irked by the government restrictions and had absolute control over the company and its operations. He has no online presence, including website or social media profiles, and doesn’t engage in interviews regarding his business.
Evans, an ex-employee, alleges that Keen believes people are after him or his company.
Details regarding the internal workings of the company, for instance, the ownership and management structure, remain hidden from employees. They were reportedly discouraged from talking about it within the office premises. The practice of using fictitious identities also extends to the employees of Registered Agents Inc.
When Don Evans started his interview process at Registered Agents Inc., he remembered initial discussions over LinkedIn with a certain Diane Brunner, who presented herself as a company recruiter. Surprisingly, on reaching the office for his interview, he inquired about Brunner and was informed that no individual by that name was employed in the company.
A similar case was reported with Jack Stephenson, who purportedly represents himself as a vice president and client relations director at Registered Agents Inc. on LinkedIn. According to some employees, Stephenson is yet another non-existant employee. Positioning himself as an active commentator on matters concerning the registered agents industry on LinkedIn, Stephenson’s profile claims a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Utah State University. However, when verified, a university official confirmed to WIRED that their records did not contain any information relating to Jack Stephenson.
