The court also found that Baptiste was liable for extortion and fraud, and Baptiste was ordered to pay Goguen roughly $14 million in damages. I relocated my cousin, his wife, and his two kids., You owe people. Theres no story, he said, other than its a really sad story.. According to the court papers, Goguen, 57, employs hundreds of residents in companies he controls, and owns a series of luxury safe houses where he takes dozens of young women for sex. According to a court filing later submitted by federal prosecutors, Goguen wired more than $2 million to Marshall for the paramilitary missions over multiple payments, including $750,000 in 2015 "to strike Syrian Terrorist Leaders," But these grandiose plans to save the world never came to fruition. Building a virtuous Blackwater was going to take time, but Marshall wanted to act now. An email describing the alleged incident, which appeared to come from the alleged Jane Doe victim, was sent to Amber Baptistes former lawyer in 2016. When Marshall and Goguen first met, over coffee at the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas during the 2013 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show, they had much to offer each other. In this setting, when people meet a billionaire, many see only an opportunity to cash in. If you ask Goguen, the threads of deception have finally converged and his public-facing story is nearing a close. Long said she believed Goguen would have trouble obtaining a security clearance, considering his history of legal disputes. New York May Become the First State to Ban Gas in New Buildings. Hes done a lot of good for the community, I know we all appreciate it, said Jeanie Konopatzke, a local realtor who sold several properties to Matt Marshall. Marshalls indictment also revealed that he was never employed as a CIA agent, nor was he associated with an elite reconnaissance unit of the Marine Corps. It is evident that he has orchestrated a complete reputation-destruction campaign to distract from his crimes., According to Goguen, Marshalls lawsuit had nothing to do with stopping sex trafficking or Goguens alleged inability to get a security clearance. Hey buddy, don't forget to work on getting us a re-supply of superman vitamins ASAP, Goguen wrote in a July 2013 text message. None had heard of Marshall. michael goguen montananext uk prime minister odds ladbrokes. In 2017, he and his fourth wife, Jamie, were at a Jason Aldean concert on the Las Vegas Strip when a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 60 people and wounding hundreds. Victims include former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Goguen. Marshall must have conveyed that the mission went ahead, because Goguen kept funneling him cash: $500,000 in October 2013 . During a final trip to the town last summer, I dropped by a handful of bars and struck up conversations with customers and employees. Theres a lot of people in this community who know what hes about and theyre afraid of him., Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Long defended her work at Amyntor in comments to The Daily Beast. (In truth, a subsequent court order from the judge overseeing Marshalls criminal trial stated that neither Long nor Maguire had direct knowledge of Marshalls alleged work for the agency. In Whitefish, Montana, where Goguen has a home, he has been a "hero" to many locals owing to his philanthropic efforts, says one source who vacations there. Goguen allegedly asked Marshall to hire a private investigator to follow Baptiste and use the resources of the security company to target her. MISSOULA, Mont., March 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, March 3, 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Malloy sentenced convicted felon Matth. The woman told the FBI no such crime was committed, Seyler wrote. And it is just one tentacle in a series of legal tangles involving Goguenfeaturing many overlapping charactersranging from an explosive sexual misconduct lawsuit to an extortion plot by an acquaintance. It was the start of a collaboration that would eventually lead to plans for a kind of wildcat mercenary force that would help right wrongs around the globe: taking on drug cartels in Mexico, the Islamic State in Syria, and anti-American political movements in Africa. Prosecutors further alleged in court that he may have fabricated some documents related to the case. I cannot even laugh very hard because my heart hurts, she said. I know thats a VERY big ask but we are in defcon 5. Marshall pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. On the phone that day, Maguire told me an incredible story about a billionaire venture capitalist in Whitefish, Montana, named Michael Goguen. He said he did not use money that Goguen had forwarded to him for paramilitary missions to Mexico or anywhere else. As for the email sent to Baptistes attorney, the woman wrote that she had never sent it; she suggested that she may have been hacked if it really did originate from her account. Marshalls stories about his military service also proved false. As I watched, he unpacked a small suitcase and backpack stuffed with three-ring binders, which he arranged along the table. She advocated making Amyntor an international companythereby dodging some of the regulatory and clearance requirements of the United Statesand providing services to foreign governments who wanted their expertise. In 2012, Baptiste said, she underwent surgery for a ruptured anal canal after Goguen forcibly sodomized her and left her bleeding and alone on the floor of a hotel room in a foreign country, court papers claimed. Meanwhile, another ghost from his past was about to haunt him. He gave me a wad of cash and said, Theres $5,000 here, Marshall recalled. I met him at the hangar when he landed, Marshall said. Long later said in an interview their approach sounded familiar: Goguen wouldnt be the first tech billionaire who had surrounded himself with generals and intelligence operatives and tried to make a business out of it. This was the start of Amyntor, which Goguen later described as like Blackwater though only contracts that were ethically unambiguous, noncontroversial, and clearly good (from the average person on the streets perspective) would be taken.. Goguen falsely told the FBI that Marshall did not have the requisite experience, had stolen and then laundered funds from Goguen and testified in other ways meant to obstruct law enforcements discovery of Goguens sexual misconduct and the existence of the Goguen Sexual Scheme, court papers allege. Now, he said, he was living in Mexico fighting the cartels, which had put a $20 million bounty on his head. Its been a decade since theyve made it this far in the playoffs. His many successes had earned him a spot on Forbes magazines annual Midas Touch list of The Worlds Best Venture Capital Investors multiple times. Marshall agreed to pay up to $3.5 million in restitution and is scheduled to be sentenced next year. Once she got there, she told police, she got really, really drunk at that point cause they were just making drinks the whole time. She said the friend pressured her to have sex with Goguen and told her hed pay her. Everything Is Breaking the Knicks Way Now. Good God!!! After two 500-pound bombs were dropped on his remote hideout, Marshall wrote, he and other CIA operatives entered the smoldering ruins, and hed retrieved the beads: Im giving you this historical gift because I dont want a guy like you to ever lose faith in the fight against good vs. evil.. "I've used nuWest for several projects, including my home, and am always impressed by the final product," says . Goguen has won all of these legal battles, though massive questions remain. Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If I see damsels in distress, he said, I want to be that guy riding on the horse to save them. Other texts more darkly touched on Goguens tactics both for executing the affairs and maintaining his public image, such as using safe houses in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, and allegedly conducting surveillance on his adversaries. You dont just bail out because this guy is a dirt ball.. Their conversation quickly turned to all the crises in the world that, with enough firepower and enough money, they could resolve. In Marshall, Goguen saw someone who could take his rescue operation global. Marshall previously had rapport with Erickson. She submitted a sworn statement affirming that her encounter with Goguen had been consensual, Goguen said; he acknowledged to The Daily Beast that his lawyers helped draft the affidavit, though the woman declared she was not paid or coerced to sign it. Goguen made clear that he no longer believed Marshall. Cofer Black, Marshalls supposed boss at the Agency, denied knowing him. In the bucolic ski town of Whitefish, Montana, tucked between the Rocky Mountains and Glacier National Park, a long-brewing battle over affordable housing reached a boiling point last week. In March 2016, Baptiste filed a $40 million lawsuit against Goguen that alleged he collaborated with human traffickers who brought her from Canada into the United States when she was 15. He still had good contacts at the CIA and other three-letter agencies, which he could leverage to help Amyntor become a major defense and intelligence contractor. A normal guy would have gone to bed, but I decided to go out. Seeing these allegations against him makes me happy that karma is coming back around because he took away an important part of my identity search as a teenager.. Even as he mostly stuck to the truth in our interviews, he never strayed from the narrative that he was a perfectly conventional father figure, a billionaire Ward Cleaver. In 2018, the woman identified in court papers as Pam Doe told Whitefish police that Goguen had sexually assaulted her after giving her cocaine and alcohol. The case files are still under seal; a judge is expected to rule next year on what documentsif anythe public has the right to see. Certain facts about the situation and the way it was handled by law enforcement remain in dispute. Will Biden Get Embarrassed in Iowa and New Hampshire? Looking back at the brawls, thrills, and temporary insanity of the 90s feud between the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat. Ill wire to your account tomorrow, Goguen replied. Doe herself told me she was sick and tired of people making this out to be something it isnt and acting like Im some sort of victim. At least one local authority has had enough of Goguen. He now works as an analyst at DeliverFund, an anti-human trafficking nonprofit partly funded by Goguen, who sits on its board. When Goguen refused, the affidavit said, Nash continued to pursue him relentlessly and threatened to expose his affairs. Over the next 15 months, the pair, both married, traded dozens of messages about their sexual conquests, making reference to a harem of women Goguen allegedly kept on rotation and to safe houses where they rendezvoused. The objective was altruistic, he said, like helping rescue Yazidi women from genocide in Iraq: Ill fund that all day long.. Its been closure for us. He had proudly claimed to Goguen, among many others, that hed been a Force Recon Marine. 73. In all, Goguen funded five such operations for a total of more than $2 million. Its a code, Maguire added. Aged 56, Michael Goguen first found success at Sequoia Capital, where he became a famous venture capitalist. A local news station dubbed him the states real-life Batman. His handle for Wickr, an encrypted text-messaging app, was Batman234. For several years during which she claimed to have been in the U.S. under the control of traffickers, she was living in Canada and had a boyfriend from whom shed demanded money on the grounds that shed been his common-law wife. But nobody bothered to verify Marshalls backstory, said two people familiar with the matter. equine community in the Flathead Valley for herself and her daughter to . Goguen then backed out of their deal. Tucker Carlson Was Fired After Calling a Fox News Executive the C-Word. Doe was not a college graduate when she and Goguen met; she was 19 and had recently graduated from high school. l can tell you he worked for the CIA, she said in a call with Goguen in November 2018, citing her conversations with Maguire and other unnamed sources, according to a person who heard the comments. It just doesnt work that way. Additional reporting by Kathleen Horan, Whitney Jones, Marianne McCune, and Hanna Rosin. Eventually, Goguen said, he received a copy of Marshalls alleged resume, which claimed he had experience as a paramilitary operations officer in Ground Branch SAD, referring to the covert Special Activities Division of the CIA. Whitefish, Montana. The underground enclave is allegedly used to maintain women for the purpose of committing illicit sexual activity.. He described himself and other Amyntor employees as collateral damage of Marshalls con. Its all about the size of your freaking penis., In 2014, Goguen sent Marshall a news story about Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group known for kidnapping schoolchildren. The Montana Department of Criminal Investigation said it investigated the allegations but didn't find sufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution. The Jane Doe case, however, provided some of the first hints I got that many of Marshalls accusations were baseless. Michael Goguen, 57, allegedly paid a teenager $1,200 to have sex with him . a bar owned by Goguen in Whitefish, Montana . His unit was discovered by the Syrian army, triggering a chaotic battle during which Marshall was captured. As an investor who has to make really good judgment decisions in finding entrepreneurs and companies and all that, the most embarrassing part is, Hey, you got duped he said. Goguen apparently kept an Excel spreadsheet with the names of 5,000 women hed had sex with, and in the basement of a restaurant he owned in the center of town, he had set up something called the Boom Boom Room, where he would have sex with young women. Im sitting in this club; you have to repel these strippers, too, because theyre like they actually make you crazy, Marshall said. He was sure he had met Marshall in post-invasion Iraq, but he had about 700 people under his command, and it was difficult to tell CIA and private contractors apart. Theyd met and had consensual sex. Goguen was visibly surprised when asked about the Spearmint Rhino dancer who had left the threats on his voice-mail. The central allegation, which Goguen vehemently denies, went like this: Around early 2012, a 17-year-old girl was paid to pop out of a cake at a party in Whitefish; she believed, for reasons that were not made clear, that she was roofied at the event.
