Trump's $100,000 Watches: A Gateway for Illicit Financial Flows?

This new grift is very, very suspicious. So we did some digging.

Source: Prashantrajsingh / Shutterstock.com; GetTrumpWatches.com

As the U.S. election draws near, Donald Trump's introduction of a “luxury” watch priced at $100,000 raises more than eyebrows—it sparks serious concerns about potential loopholes for financial misconduct. Trump’s grifts these days are endless. It seems that almost every day he is hawking a new “Trump Coin,” a pack of NFT trading cards, or a Trump Bible. An in-depth investigation into these Trump-branded Tourbillon watches reveals several aspects that could potentially enable secretive and unregulated financial activities, which could allow for large amounts of cash to flow into Donald Trump’s bank account from unknown sources at a critical moment before the 2024 presidential election.

Key to the controversy is the method of payment accepted for these watches. Buyers can use Bitcoin, a digital currency favored for its anonymity. This capability to purchase high-ticket items like the $100,000 Tourbillon watch without traceable financial footprints poses a significant challenge to ensuring financial transparency. It opens the door to the possibility of moving large sums of money discreetly, circumventing traditional financial oversight and potentially violating campaign finance laws.

Screenshot from the website selling the new Trump watches

Trump Watches are marketed globally, available to international buyers, including foreign dignitaries and business magnates. This global sales strategy complicates adherence to U.S. regulations designed to prevent foreign contributions to political campaigns. The website's caveat that international customers handle their own taxes and duties adds another layer of complexity, distancing the transactions from stringent regulatory scrutiny.

Donald Trump is notoriously transactional, and with the introduction of these $100,000 watches, it's conceivable that someone might purchase one as a straightforward means to curry favor with him, leveraging the purchase for political gain.

Further muddying the waters is the disclaimer on the Trump Watch website that the product images are for illustration purposes only, suggesting that what is marketed may not reflect the actual product, and that an actual product may not even yet exist. This vagueness is unusual for luxury goods and raises questions about consumer transparency and product authenticity.

The site’s shipping policy, which absolves the company of responsibility for timely delivery, could potentially allow for an indefinite delay between payment and delivery, if delivery occurs at all. This policy could be exploited to justify holding funds without delivering a tangible product, complicating accountability and potentially facilitating a form of money laundering.

Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief at MeidasTouch, highlights a disturbing possibility: “With this, Trump has created a vehicle for foreign leaders and oligarchs to bribe him openly. Just buy a watch.” This statement encapsulates the core ethical concerns surrounding the Trump Watch venture. The ease with which such transactions can occur, masked under the guise of legitimate business dealings, lends credence to fears that these high-value watches could serve as a conduit for illicit financial flows.

This investigation underscores a critical need for stringent regulatory oversight and transparency in political figures' business dealings, especially when those dealings involve high-value international transactions. The potential for these luxury watches to act as a medium for improper financial exchanges—whether as disguised contributions, bribes, or money laundering vehicles—calls for immediate attention from regulatory bodies.

Digging into the LLC selling the Trump Watches raises even more questions. The watches are being sold by a company that calls itself TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC. The LLC lists their address on the official website selling the watches as 1309 Coffeen Avenue Suite 1200 Sheridan, WY 82801. Searching the address reveals the location is shared by at least hundreds of businesses. On such business is called Royal Honey Shop, a company that sells honey products meant to provide sexual performance enhancements for conditions such as erectile dysfunction, among many others. The location appears to be used by the law firm and/or service who help set up the LLC for a variety of different business operations as a virtual address.

The LLC’s location is also mysteriously blurred out on Google Maps street view.

Moreover, experts in the watch and menswear space appear to agree that Trump’s product is vastly overpriced, and likely Chinese-made, despite its “Swiss-made” branding. The Hollywood Reporter released a story on Friday about this—and the quotes they shared are quite damning.

Here are some of the most revealing portions from their article:

“This is cobbled together, patently unoriginal and vastly overpriced,” says Ariel Adams, founder and editor of A Blog to Watch, one of the industry’s most popular sites for timepiece information and education. “It’s very clear he’s working with a white labeler, which is nothing new. Anyone can go to a white labeler and say, ‘I want a watch with this case, this bracelet and these other details,’ and a white labeler will Frankenstein it together, put your name on it and sell it to you. But the price you sell it for is up to you. That the markup came from someone on Trump’s team is obvious here. Even the $500 piece from another brand would go for maybe $200.”

A marketing director of a well-known Swiss brand, who asked not to be named to keep his opinion separate from the company that employs him, agreed. “I belong to a collector group that maintains an ongoing group chat, and the initial reaction was that it had to be fake. After that, everyone was laughing,” he said of the more expensive piece. “When you look at all of them, they scream Chinese-made watch. None of them is worth the asking price.”

Indeed, even though the website touts “Swiss-made” when describing the watches, it’s not uncommon among manufacturers of lower-priced designs to manipulate that designation by purchasing some Swiss-made parts and assembling the watch in another country. By Thursday afternoon, several experts across social media pointed out that the more expensive watch’s tourbillon, a mechanism designed to improve accuracy and typically found in pricier timepieces, seemed to be sourced from both Switzerland and China. “Those blue screws on the tourbillon cage are a dead giveaway that it was partly made in China. You won’t find blue screws on a tourbillon made in Switzerland,” noted the marketing director. “And you can pick up a Chinese tourbillon for $100.”

Derek Guy, often billed as the “Menswear Guy” for his viral posts on X/Twitter, wrote:

i don't understand how anyone can do this to their supporters. this crappy $100k watch is a halo product to sell even crappier $500 and $800 non-swiss steel and gold-plated watches with a cheap automatic movement. they play you as a sucker…the goal here is just to make money, not treat people with respect and offer them something of genuine value. buy watches from established watch brands or independent watchmakers who care more about watches than money. this sort of behavior is genuinely disgusting…$100k for a movement as smooth as the brain who buys this absurd thing

All things considered, we are left, in our opinion, with two likely scenarios (neither of which are mutually exclusive).

1. Trump is selling a piece of white-labeled piece of junk (that shows no signs of actually existing yet) for exorbitant amounts of money to extract more money from his cult.

2. Trump has opened the door to a massive new influence-peddling operation in which foreign agents and governments can transfer large sums of money to him without it being traced.

Either way, the implications of this new grift must continue to be exposed and the press and regulatory agencies must watch this closely.