Inside the Shadowy Firm Pushing the Limits of Business Privacy
Since 2008, Dan Keen has grown his enterprise from a small firm serving prospects within the Pacific Northwest to a serious nationwide participant in what’s often known as the company formation business. The firm and its rivals provide the power to include a enterprise within the state of a buyer’s selecting and obtain mail and authorized notices.
Keen began the corporate after operating a tree trimming and landscaping enterprise. Former workers mentioned Keen labored tirelessly to construct the enterprise, typically sending emails in any respect hours of the night time.
“Dan put in a lot of effort, he worked nonstop,” says Matt MacKenzie, who labored as a authorized compliance specialist for greater than 11 years and was one of many firm’s earliest workers.
When the corporate was a small upstart, Keen usually listed his title on the formation paperwork of the corporate and its numerous subsidiaries in states throughout America. “It wasn’t until down the road a couple years later, where he started wanting to use full-on fake names and take his name off all the corporate paperwork for Registered Agents Inc.,” MacKenzie says.
Keen is described by former workers as a pushed however eccentric businessman who’s susceptible to micromanagement and sudden shifts in temper. Keen attire modestly, former workers say, sporting shorts and flannel shirts, and is an avid skier and outdoorsman.
Keen typically took a passive aggressive strategy together with his workers, in accordance with six former workers. Two recounted Keen begrudgingly providing well being care plans to workers after being informed it was required by the Affordable Care Act, allegedly telling his workers they had been “whiners and complainers” for asking for it.
Multiple former workers described Keen as “inappropriate,” saying he typically made feedback about workers’ bodily look. Two former workers described him as making misogynistic statements, which allegedly included making sexual feedback about ladies and continuously questioning their skill to carry out their job.
Several former workers questioned the high-security nature of the workplace, which they are saying was stuffed with safety cameras and required them to lock their cell telephones in bins. Slyusarev, Registered Agents Inc.’s former senior software program engineer, says the cellphone system, which he says he put in, was able to surreptitiously recording worker cellphone calls.
Former workers say that Keen chafed at authorities rules and exercised full management over the corporate and its operations. Keen has no web site or social media profiles and would not give interviews about his enterprise.
“He thinks people are out to get him, or out to get the company,” Evans, the previous senior worker, claims.
Details about its interior workings, together with the possession and administration construction, are hid from workers, who say they had been discouraged from discussing it on the workplace. And the apply of utilizing faux personas extends even to Registered Agents Inc.’s personal employees.
When Don Evans started interviewing at Registered Agents Inc., he recalled first talking over LinkedIn with Diane Brunner, who recognized herself as a recruiter on the firm. When he arrived on the workplace for an interview, he requested to talk with Brunner and was informed no one by that title works on the firm.
Jack Stephenson, who claims to be a vp and shopper relations director at Registered Agents Inc. on LinkedIn, is one other faux persona, workers say. Stephenson continuously feedback on the registered brokers business on LinkedIn. He lists a Bachelor of Business Administration from Utah State University on his profile, however an official from the college informed WIRED they couldn’t discover any data pertaining to Jack Stephenson.
