The New Cayman Islands: Cheyenne, Wyoming?

[DeSwiss]

Special Report: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains

SHELL GAMES: A Reuters Investigation
Articles in this series are exploring the extent and impact of corporate secrecy in the United States.


Reuters | By Kelly Carr and Brian Grow | Reuters – Tue, Jun 28, 2011


This building at 2710 Thomes Avenue, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is
pictured in an undated photograph.

CHEYENNE/ATLANTA - The secretive business havens of Cyprus and the Cayman Islands face a potent rival: Cheyenne, Wyoming. At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn't a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list corporations. It's a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the State Capitol.

Neighbors say they see little activity there besides regular mail deliveries and a woman who steps outside for smoke breaks. Inside, however, the walls of the main room are covered floor to ceiling with numbered mailboxes labeled as corporate "suites." A bulky copy machine sits in the kitchen. In the living room, a woman in a headset answers calls and sorts bushels of mail.

A Reuters investigation has found the house at 2710 Thomes Avenue serves as a little Cayman Island on the Great Plains. It is the headquarters for Wyoming Corporate Services, a business-incorporation specialist that establishes firms which can be used as "shell" companies, paper entities able to hide assets. http://www.nevada-corporation.com/">Wyoming Corporate Services will help clients create a company, and more: set up a bank account for it; add a lawyer as a corporate director to invoke attorney-client privilege; even appoint stand-in directors and officers as high as CEO.

Among its offerings is a variety of shell known as a "shelf" company, which comes with years of regulatory filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity. "A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy," the company's website boasts. "A person you control... yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!"

http://news.yahoo.com/special-report-little-house-secrets-great-plains-113759191.html">MORE

[TwilightGardener]

1. Now that is interesting.

[gateley]

2. I'm guessing this is legal, right? Do we never stop

GIVING to these people who are stealing from our country?? :grr:

Thanks for posting this -- it's really interesting and surprising!

[DeSwiss]

3. Just barely. :-/ n/t

[KittyWampus]

4. "Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada."

"In the U.S., (business incorporation) is completely unregulated," says Jason Sharman, a professor at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, who is preparing a study for the World Bank on corporate formation worldwide. "Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada."

[yurbud]

5. that's where Dick Cheney picks up his mail.

[Historic NY]

6. In other words this sounds like an on-going criminal enterprise thats shilling as legit.

[DeSwiss]

7. That's what you and I would say.....

...but not the State of Wyoming.