How to Protect Your Wealth with John Williams

In this podcast, John Williams, a real estate investor who creates educational Youtube videos, interviews me.

Blake:
Does Andrew Tate have an offshore trust? He’s someone who often talks about having multiple bank accounts. He’s one that talks about having multiple passports, all good advice. Life’s not just about making money; it’s about learning how to protect that money.

John:
Will offshore asset protection trust help the great reset?

Blake:
The biggest misconception in the asset protection world is that asset protection is just for the super wealthy. You don’t need an offshore trust unless you have 10 million or $100 million. And that’s so far from the truth. And I’m gonna explain with a quick example.

John:
Today I have Blake Harris on the podcast. He’s one of the leading asset protection attorneys in America, helping people establish offshore asset protection plans in places like Cook Island, St. Kitts and Nevis, Switzerland, and other locations. Blake, welcome to the show.

John:
Great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. You got it. So tell me a little bit about, you know, how did you get started in asset protection?

Blake:
So, how did I get started in asset protection? You know, the story actually starts off with me as a kindergartener. I was going to school, and they had a rule where every single day our parents would give us $1. And we’d pay for our lunch that way. And I realized that if you didn’t bring $1, they would still feed us. We were kindergarteners. And so after a few weeks of forgetting the dollar, I’d accumulated a nice little stack of cash. Well, the school contacted my parents, they conspired, and they did what I consider an illegal search and seizure. They went into my personal Cubby and took all of the cash that I had, through some very wise moves accumulated for myself. And that’s when I realized life’s not just about making money; it’s about learning how to protect that money. So I ended up going to law school. After I graduated law school, I was working for a trust and estates law firm. And the office I was working for, or the law firm that I started soon after, was just a few blocks away from another attorney’s office. His name is Barry Engel. Barry Engel was the attorney who wrote the Cook Islands asset protection trust law. He’s considered the godfather of asset protection. And I got to learn from him and work with him on a few cases, and read his book and take his continuing education classes. And he’s the one who very much taught me about the asset protection business. So it started off when I was young, but it was really very much developed by working with the founder of the offshore asset protection business.

John:
That’s exciting. When did you start that?

Blake:
About a decade ago, I’ve been an attorney now for about 12 years, and I’ve been focusing on trust work the entire time.

John:
So for people that don’t know, what is the difference between a domestic trust and say, an offshore asset protection trust?

Blake:
So John, this is a question that I get asked probably a few times a day. And there are two types of asset protection trusts. There are domestic trusts, which can be formed in jurisdictions such as Nevada, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming. There are about 18 different jurisdictions that allow you to form a domestic asset protection trust. There are also offshore jurisdictions: the Cook Islands, Nevis, Belize, about a dozen or more offshore jurisdictions that allow you to form an offshore asset protection trust. The benefit of creating a domestic trust is that it’s a little bit simpler; it’s easier to sell one to a client because clients are much more comfortable using a trustee out of Nevada than a trustee out of, let’s say, the Cook Islands. They’re a little bit less costly to set up, typically. However, they lose a lot of settlement leverage. What can save you a few $1,000 upfront can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars in leverage. And if you just think about it from a plaintiff’s point of view, if you’re suing someone and they say, Oh, I’ve got my money in a trust, and it’s two states away, well, guess what? That plaintiff attorney is going to say, It’s not that hard. I’ve got a buddy I went to law school with in that state. We’re going to file a motion under Article four, section three of the US Constitution: full faith and credit of the judgment here has to be honored there. Now, on the other hand, if your assets are controlled by a Cook Islands trustee, the money’s in a bank account in Switzerland, the plaintiff is pretty much dead in the water. They’re going to have to take your settlement offer. So the difference is the power that you get, the protection you get. There have been several failures of domestic-only trusts. There’s never been a failure of a properly structured offshore Cook Islands trust, so you get better protection. And you get much better settlement leverage by using an offshore trust, John.

John:
So how does an offshore trust actually work? Let’s say you’re explaining it to a five-year-old, okay? They have no idea what an asset protection trust is. They’ve seen Wolf of Wall Street and they’re just using their imagination and not really looking into it.

Blake:
Well, think about it like this. Let’s say you have a boat. You enjoy the boat, but you decide, I’m going to give the boat to my friend John.

John was to let me ride around the boat. John was to let me go and bring some friends on the boat and take some pictures for Instagram. We’ve got a boat, we can enjoy the boat, no problem. But if I get sued, if I do something wrong, or if I don’t even do anything wrong but I still get sued, which happens often here in the world’s most litigious country, nobody’s gonna be able to go and take a boat away from my friend. It’s that simple. You hand control of the asset to an individual, to an entity not subject to US court orders. They allow you to remain the beneficial owner; you can still enjoy that property. But again, if you’re ever sued, that asset remains protected.

John:
So if you are sued, let’s say, for example, you got sued for jaywalking, hypothetically, or the $5 million fine.

Blake:
I jaywalk all the time.

John:
Yeah, yes. And it gets sued. And they’re really dedicated to getting this money from you. But you’re like, Hey, my buddy John’s got my boat. He’s got my house. He has multifamily properties. He has XYZ. But what if, like, how does that actually work? You go to court to say that I’ll own anything, the trust owns it. But then what?

Blake:
How does it play out? Well, not only as a tool for protecting your assets, not only as offshore asset protection trusts for protecting your assets, it’s also an excellent tool in negotiating a settlement. And so the situation that we explained to a five-year-old, I’m going to explain it to someone who’s let’s say 20-25 years old. Instead of having your friend John sitting next to you on the couch, recording a podcast, you’ve got a trust company out of the Cook Islands that can control it. So they sue you. And then you say, You know what? You can sue me, you can spend all this money hiring an attorney or actually in America, you could just take it on a contingency fee. It doesn’t cost you anything to bring a lawsuit. They can say to them, You know what? You can sue me, you can spend all this time doing it. You tell the attorney because they’re investing their time and resources, you’re not going to get away with taking any money from me. It’s controlled by an overseas trustee. My money’s in a bank account in Switzerland. They’re not giving you any money unless you get a court order from the Cook Islands, which is not an easy thing to do. And if it’s a bogus claim, if the BS claim, I say, tell that creditor to go pound sand, get out of here. We’re not paying you anything. Now, if you’ve legitimately harmed someone, I say, make a settlement offer. But settle on your terms. Don’t have your back up against the wall; don’t become a victim of legal extortion, which is prevalent in this country.

John:
Got it. So let me run a scenario by you. Let’s say over the last few years, I’m sure this scenario has come across your desk many times. People are looking at what’s happening in the world. And they’re like, Okay, well, what’s going to happen next? They might not be so concerned about protecting their assets from a creditor, but they might wonder what’s going to happen legally. Could there be unrealized capital gains? Because there’ll be any of these crazy new policies that they’re talking about rolling forward.

Blake:
So there are several benefits of creating an offshore asset protection trust. The main reason I get my phone rings is people are looking for protection from lawsuits, creditors, divorce, business disputes, car accidents. That’s the most common reason that people set up Cook Islands trust. But there are other benefits of setting up a Cook Islands trust, such as estate planning. After you pass away, money inside of a trust avoids probate. It also has the benefit of opening you up to more investment options than you have as a US individual. Certain investments, as a US individual, you cannot make but through an offshore trust, you have access to those investments. To answer your question, though, another benefit of an offshore structure is it protects you from political instability. And individuals like you and me, who probably spent a little too much time researching on the Internet, are aware that there are some potential instabilities in the United States. And if you want to protect yourself from those, an offshore trust is a great way to do that.

John:
Yeah, I was reading that there are 21 other locations that are trying to join BRICs. And there are a lot of people questioning the stability, long term, of the dollar. Stanley Druckenmiller was talking about it, saying that by potentially 2030, the US Dollar may no longer be the reserve currency.

Blake:
Correct. We’ve heard this threat for a while, and that seems to be mounting, right? Right now, I think that may be some of the strings behind the wars we’re seeing. But that’s a little bit speculation that I’ll stay away from.

John:
100%. So tell me, what locations are the best for asset protection?

Blake:
So there are three jurisdictions that I consider to be the top three for an offshore asset protection trust: Cook Islands, Nevis, and Belize. Belize is popular because it has a zero look back period as a codified law. When you transfer money into a Belize trust, there is no way to come in and say that was an improper transfer. Now, Belize has a lack of stability with the government and regulations, even with the trust companies there, that makes me hesitant to make Belize my first choice of an asset protection trust. It is a jurisdiction that, in certain circumstances, I will utilize, but it’s not my first choice. Next is Nevis. Nevis essentially copied the Cook Islands asset protection trust law. They added a codified bond requirement of $100,000 to bring a case, and Nevis has been a very successful deterrent to anyone bringing a lawsuit against any asset protection trust there. However, I prefer the Cook Islands for several reasons. Number one, they’ve been in the business longer. Number two, there have been more attempts, and those attempts have been unsuccessful. Number three, the increased distance from the United States is a deterrent to litigation. And number four, the mentality of the government of the Cook Islands is much more asset protection oriented than Nevis. Nevis makes a lot of money by selling passports. They are not as focused and committed to the asset protection business as the Cook Islands. Actually, recently, the Cook Islands sent a letter to the government of Nevis, telling them that they need to protect their legislation better if they want to continue to have attorneys like myself send business there and support the legislation. The Cook Islands, on the other hand, has never sold a single passport. I don’t think they ever will. The asset protection business is vital to their economy. It is clearly, in my opinion, the best jurisdiction for an asset protection trust.

John:
Do you know approximately what percentage of that economy their GDP is based on asset protection?

Blake:
I have heard this statistic before, it’s somewhere around 10%, maybe around 10 to 20%. It’s the second biggest industry after tourism, and where tourism got killed during COVID, it became even more important, the offshore trust and banking industry in the Cook Islands. Tourism has started to trickle back in, with just recently allowing flights from not just Auckland, but also from Hawaii. Cook Islands were the most beautiful place in the world I’ve ever been. I highly recommend a visit, especially if you can deal with having slow internet for a few days.

John:
Great. So what do you think is the typical client that would look at this? Would it be someone in their late 40s, 50s? Maybe they’ve accumulated a million dollars or $2 million and have a small business. What’s the typical type of client?

Blake:
You hit it right on the money, John. The biggest misconception in the asset protection world is that it’s just for the super wealthy. You don’t need an offshore trust unless you have 10 million or $100 million. And that’s so far from the truth. I’m gonna explain with a quick example. Let’s say I’ve got two clients, one that has a million dollars and another with $100 million. If both clients get sued for $5 million, my client with $100 million, I’m going to say, make no settlement offer, hire the best defense attorneys in the world, fight this case as hard as you can. And if they end up getting a judgment against you, $5 million is not going to have much of an impact on your standard of living or quality of life. Now, for the individual with just $1 million, if they get hit with $5 million, I’m going to say we need to talk settlement. And we need to talk settlement fast. Because if they get a $5 million judgment, that’s going to have devastating effects. The majority of my clients who set up an offshore asset protection trust have between one and $10 million in assets. In terms of age, yes, it tends to be clients in their 40s and 50s. Those are the clients who have been working long enough that they’ve accumulated significant enough assets that it’s worthwhile to protect. And they’re still actively engaged in business. Clients who get higher in age, we do have some of those who still have some lingering liability, or quite frankly, they’re not the best drivers. They tend to not be as interested in looking to protect their assets. So it’s typically 40 to 50-year-olds, between one and $10 million in assets, and they tend to be very business-minded people. Business-minded people tend to make more money, but also business-minded people tend to be better at thinking ahead and protecting themselves. Good things come to those who plan.

John:
Right. So what does that look like? Let’s say, for example, they have a home. Let’s say the person is worth a million dollars, they have a home worth a million bucks, $200,000 in liquidity, maybe a business making 30-50k a month, and some stocks, gold, and silver. Now, what would that plan look like for that type of person?

Blake:
So most any asset can be protected, and there’s a different strategy for protecting different types of assets. For something like cash, stocks, bonds, it’s very easy. What you do is you open up an offshore bank account under the trust. Typically, I recommend Switzerland. We do have banking relationships in several different countries. Swiss banks tend to be my favorite because they are very stable, risk-averse, and provide excellent customer service. They also offer a large variety of investment options. So cash, set it up that way. If the client has cryptocurrency, there are a few different ways of protecting it. One is to work with one of the banks out of Switzerland that takes cryptocurrency. Another is to cold storage it yourself. And you can do that as long as there’s no pending litigation. If the client is actually under threat, I don’t want my clients holding their own keys. I want to transfer that into either the banks or into a cold storage vault. We have some vaults that my firm has relationships with outside the United States where clients can place their cold storage vault, and the trustee is not going to release that to a creditor. In terms of protecting real estate, it’s a little bit trickier because you can’t just pick it up and move it outside the reach of the US court system. But what you can do with real estate is you can place a lien on it. You can always sell the real estate, but you can also place a lien on it, and if you can strip out the equity, take the equity that you’ve stripped out, put that into the offshore structure, you can keep the real estate protected that way as well. In terms of operating a business or protecting a business, my advice is to run lean and mean, which means take any excess cash out of the business, drop that into your offshore trust. If the business owns hard assets, form a separate holding company for the hard assets. Have your operating company lease those hard assets from the holding company. That way, if the operating company gets sued because there’s certain liability that’s attached to an operating company that you can’t divorce from it, what you can do is have that operating company operate pretty much empty, so there’s nothing for a creditor to take. When you’ve eliminated the assets for a creditor to take, you’ve eliminated any incentive for someone to sue.

John:
So let me give an example. Let me ask this question. If it is a company that buys land, maybe single-family homes in different parts of the country, or maybe they have a chain of laundromats, and they want to buy a small little single-engine plane and they want to fly around, would you say that the holding company would own that single-engine plane and then lease it back to the owner, and then it would basically be under the plane to be protected? Is that kind of like the gist of it?

Blake:
So kind of. Planes are special assets in that they are very risky assets, the same way that cars are risky assets. For a risky asset like that, we want to have its own shell around it, its own LLC that owns it. Depending on how much value there is in that LLC, if it’s a plane worth a million dollars, we want to protect that asset as well. We’ll have that LLC then owned by the trust as well, but have it segregated from other liabilities.

John:
Okay, are there tax benefits to an offshore asset protection trust?

Blake:
An offshore asset protection trust is a tax-neutral vehicle. It does not increase or decrease your taxes. You are required to report it to the IRS when you have an offshore trust, but in no way does it increase your chance of an audit. I provide my clients with a detailed tax memorandum that explains all the reporting requirements, so they can hand that to their CPA. The CPA will then have guidance on how to report the offshore structure to the IRS. We also have a large network of CPAs we work with, whom we can refer clients to for completing the offshore reporting requirements. But it’s not a tool for reducing or evading taxes.

John:
Do you have a lot of clients that come to you with ideas in which asset protection trusts may help them tax-wise? What are some of the common misconceptions?

Blake:
So one thing that I get asked about very often is a Cayman Islands trust. And I mentioned the three jurisdictions: Cook Islands, Nevis, and Belize as the best asset protection jurisdictions. The Cayman Islands is not a country that has a codified asset protection trust law. I don’t recommend using it. You hear about corporations that can use offshore trust for avoiding taxes. If you’re a non-US person, there may be opportunities to use offshore structures for avoiding taxes. But in terms of US persons, that is not an offshore trust that’s going to allow you to avoid paying taxes. Non-US people, there are different rules, but 95% of my clients are US citizens. The reason why 90% of the lawsuits in the world are filed in the United States.

John:
Got it? What other misconceptions are you hearing from people that are thinking about establishing an offshore trust in which you have to kind of educate them? And because I’m sure there are probably quite a few people listening right now that are thinking of the uncertain world that we’re living in and how they can protect themselves? And maybe you can answer some questions in their head before they even get there.

Blake:
Certainly. So the biggest one is, as I mentioned, you don’t need to be super wealthy, you need to have assets worth protecting. Certainly, some million dollars is where it becomes worthwhile for most clients. Next, as we mentioned, it’s not a tool for avoiding or evading taxes. Another misconception is that a domestic trust will do the trick. A domestic trust, as I mentioned, is easy to set up, but you lose a lot of bargaining power when you use a domestic-only trust. Another misconception is that the client can continue to serve as trustee. No, you have to hire a professional trust company out of the Cook Islands. These trust companies are very reputable companies. I’ve been to the Cook Islands. I’ve met with these trust companies myself. They are better regulated and supervised than US-based trust companies. Another misconception is that you lose control over the assets. No, the trustee will do anything we tell them to do. If we want money out of the trust, they’re going to send us money. If we want them to invest the money in a certain way, they will invest the money in a certain way. They are going to do everything that I requested that they do because they want me to continue to send them business. Not to mention, I have the ability to remove every client I’ve ever sent these trust companies. These trust companies and I, we’ve worked together very, very closely. The only time that the trust company is not going to honor a request is if a client has been ordered by a court to make a request. If you’re acting under duress, the trust company will say no. You’ve been forced to make this request. But provided the client has acted by their own free will, they are still going to have access and ultimate control over their assets the same way they would if the money was in their own pocket.

John:
What other items can you hold inside of an offshore trust? I was asking ChatGPT. This is like three weeks ago. Wealthy people that have offshore trusts, and one of the people they listed was Michael Jordan, his famous free throw shot from that free-throw line. That’s owned by an asset protection trust, according to ChatGPT, secures music rights owned by an asset protection trust. You know, there are a lot of other really, really big names. Aqua stone, the Formula One CEO, has a lot of his wealth hidden there.

Blake:
There are a lot more people with offshore trusts who are more behind the scenes. When people create an offshore trust, they are joining a league of a very protected group of people. People also ask, ‘Well, why doesn’t the government just get rid of offshore trusts?’ But quite frankly, the people who are writing the rules, they have offshore trust. Quick comment on ChatGPT: I’ve used it a little bit to kind of test how it responds to certain questions about asset protection. And I’ve noticed that I think some of the content it’s pulling is actually from my website. Alright, I have one of the best sources of asset protection information on my website. And I think that some of the information it’s pulling, it sounds very similar to the content on my website.

John:
Who are some of the wealthy people that maybe, not your clients, that are behind the scenes that you’ve heard have asset protection?

Blake:
So, the people who are famous for having asset protection trusts are the ones who have gotten into some trouble or the more nefarious characters. I think that some of the media that gets run around offshore trusts, I quite frankly love because the big news sources will often run stories of how offshore trusts have been used by nefarious people or how people have gotten in trouble that I’ve used offshore trusts. Now, they don’t get in trouble simply for using an offshore trust. It tends to be they use an offshore trust and then they lie about it. You never lie about an offshore trust because, quite frankly, well, one, you’re gonna go to jail. But also, you don’t need to. The court can know that you have an offshore trust. It’s not going to give them access to your money. So, there are some very famous people who have offshore trusts, but they’re famous not for particularly great reasons. One that comes to mind is Octomom, the woman who, oh yeah. She, she does not have an offshore trust. But the doctor who did that bizarre procedure, he set up an offshore trust quite wisely.

John:
And do you think Alex Jones, in a lot of people kind of talked about him and a couple of other names that have been dragged into massive lawsuits?

Blake:
So I would like to think that he thought of an offshore trust. Here’s one: Does Andrew Tate have an offshore trust? Yeah, I was actually gonna ask that. And this is something that I talked about some. I don’t know the answer, I would like to think so. He’s someone who often talks about having multiple bank accounts. He’s one that talks about having multiple passports, all good advice. However, if you have multiple different bank accounts but you control them all yourself, John, a court could just say, ‘Hey, you can show this, send the money back.’ Now, if you have multiple bank accounts under an offshore trust, of course, they’re not gonna be able to order you to hand those assets back.

John:
So what he said he had something like 10 passports or something like that. How do you maintain it? Don’t you have to, for example, in Puerto Rico, you have to say that 183 days a year, right, to be a resident? There are certain requirements. You have to stay there for 90 days, I guess initially when you set up a business.

Blake:
So there are about a dozen or maybe two dozen different countries which will sell you a passport, and there are about six different ways to get a passport. One is to be born into a country, and another is to marry someone from that country. Another is to go through the traditional naturalization process. You go, you get a work permit. You live there for a while, eventually you apply for citizenship. There’s also something called citizenship by exception, where if you are a high-end athlete, a very popular celebrity, they’ll give you a passport. Another is citizenship by descent, and this is a very interesting one. If you can prove through records that you have a parent, grandparent, or in certain cases, a great-grandparent of another country, they will give you citizenship. And then the sixth way to get citizenship is to buy it. And in my opinion, the two best passports to consider buying, one is Malta, which is around $800,000, I believe, to purchase, but it gives you access to some of the best countries. I believe you might even get visa-free access to the United States. I’m not certain about that; selling passports is not part of my business, though I do get asked about it a bit. So I’ve gained a little bit of knowledge about it.

John:
With $800,000, so you buy a property in Malta for 800K, or do you basically transfer 800K into a Malta bank?

Blake:
I’m not sure exactly what it is with Malta, but there are different programs. Sometimes you open up a bank account, sometimes you buy a property, sometimes you just make a donation. The one that I think is the best value is Nevis. You never have to step foot in Nevis. There are no taxes in Nevis. I paid $25 for a driver’s license when I was there a few weeks ago. But no death taxes, no income taxes, it’s a very easy country to live in. You don’t have to, you never have to step foot in Nevis. It’s one of the oldest citizenship by investment programs. And for as little as a couple of $100,000, you can get a passport to Nevis. If you want to add family members, it’s around $25,000. Additionally, I think it’s wise to have a second passport for several reasons. There are lots of reasons to get a second passport. Number one, if we see more COVID-type restrictions, it may not be because of COVID. It might be because of another virus, or it may be because a war breaks out and we are not allowed to travel from enemy countries or countries that aren’t complying. You won’t have a second passport that will still allow you to travel if your country’s on a certain end. If you have a disagreement, or because of an attempt to fight global warming or what they will tell us is an attempt to fight global warming, CO2 capping based on your passport, you can’t travel too much. If you’re considering renouncing your US citizenship, you want to have another passport so you don’t end up stateless. And another benefit of having a second passport is you get to be cool like James Bond, yeah.

John:
So are you able to hold both?

Blake:
So, it depends on the country, but a lot of people do.

John:
Let’s say, for example, you have St. Kitts and Nevis, right? You have that password that you just mentioned: spend 100k. And now you set up maybe a trust in St. Kitts and Nevis, and that trust made a really good investment. We bought Apple stock for $1, and now Apple stock is worth 100. If they have favorable tax policies there in relation to the US.

Blake:
So, if you’re still a US citizen, it’s not going to do much good for your taxes. But if you are no longer a US citizen, it can save you a lot in taxes. If you want to save on taxes as a US citizen, move to Puerto Rico. We’re now your citizenship are the two main routes to do that.

John:
How was Nevis during all the lockdowns and everything?

Blake:
They were locked down as well. But it’s a tiny island country. I mean, you can drive around the entire country in about 45 minutes. I can’t imagine that they were taking things all that seriously. It did slow down their tourism industry, which the locals there didn’t like. But also, talking to the people there, they were much happier. They said, We can actually eat the local food. Typically, we’re taking this local food and having to sell it to the visitors, and we have to eat cheaper brought-in food. So it slowed down. It was interesting. I mean, and I think a lot of experiences during COVID may slow down business in certain regard but also brought a different level of happiness during COVID. So it was affected as well. I mean, it wasn’t as pretty as Florida, probably. But it got lifted. It wasn’t a Canada or Australia type of COVID lockdown place.

John:
If you have, let’s say, your family, man, you got two young kids, maybe they’re five years old and seven years old, you see the way the world is going. And you’re concerned with everything that you just mentioned, potentially closures or omissions or whatever it may be. And you want your children to have the same life that you had when they grow up, they’re able to travel, enjoy the world, enjoy experiences. What passports would you suggest other than what you just mentioned that would allow them access or at least allow them access to travel and enjoy their life?

Blake:
So it depends on how much money you have to spend.

John:
Let’s say 5 million bucks.

Blake:
Okay, so you’ve got a fair bit of money to spend on a passport. I would look at something that gives you access to the European Union because that’s going to be similar to the United States in a lot of regards. There are three basic areas where you can purchase a second passport: the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. And what I tell clients who are thinking about purchasing a second passport is to go and visit the place, see whether you like it or not, whether it’s a place you could see yourself spending some time. It really just depends on the person and what they’re looking for. But I think it’s very wise to have a backup plan. I think it’s wise to have multiple different bank accounts. And I think it’s wise to have those bank accounts owned by an offshore asset protection trust.

John:
Great. So, from that example that I just gave, if you have one asset protection trust and say the Cook Islands, are you able to have basically entities that are associated in some capacity in which, let’s say you have money set aside for your wife, you have money set aside for your son, you have money set aside for your daughter. And then they basically have their own type of investment vehicle which they’re able to invest in and kind of do their own thing inside of an entity associated with yours.

Blake:
So with a Cook Islands trust, you can open up different entities under Nevis. LLC is a very common one, but there’s others. But you can open a US LLC under the Cook Islands trust. You can open up multiple different bank accounts under one Cook Islands asset protection trust. As far as having different beneficiaries, typically the way it’s structured is the client will be the initial beneficiary. They’ll set up the Blake Harris Trust, and the Blake Harris Trust will be the beneficiary of that trust. And then after Blake passed away, the money then divides down between his children. If you want to set up with different beneficiaries, it may actually be better in that case to set up a separate trust and actually totally get it off your books. So that if you are ever subpoenaed to have to complete a financial affidavit, when you do have to complete a financial affidavit, you do report the existence of the trust. You can report the value of the trust to $0. But if it’s a trust that you’re not even a beneficiary of, you don’t even have to report on it. You should not even report on a financial affidavit. And so in that circumstance, if you want to set up little pools of money for other family members, setting up a separate trust may be the best route to do that.

John:
How much is an asset protection trust?

Blake:
So asset protection trust, the bare minimum you’re ever going to find anyone to quote that has any idea what they’re doing is going to run around $10,000. The higher-cost asset protection trust that I’ve heard quoted, that I’ve quoted before, run between one and $200,000. The majority of asset protection trusts run somewhere between 20 to $50,000. Generally, my fee runs around $25,000. That’s the setup cost. There are annual maintenance fees on top of that, which run around 5 to $10,000 a year for the basic trust. Of course, the higher-end trust, there’s going to be higher annual fees.

John:
Got it. And so if you have one trust, and then you have one for your wife, one for your, you know, one or two children, will basically be 25k or 30k times the amount of child? There’s no like type of…

Blake:
I mean, it depends on the attorney, your attorney you’re working with. I mean, if someone’s bringing a quantity of business, I mean, typically, most service providers can relax their fees a little bit in that circumstance. The majority of individuals don’t set up multiple trusts. They will set up one trust with themselves as the beneficiary. And then if they want to give money to their children, they can make a distribution to themselves or have the trustee distribute money directly to the family members without needing to go ahead and give it away to the family member. One power that I don’t ever want to take away from a client is the ability to cut off or cut out family members, keep your family close, but still keep in control of your own money.

John:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we’ve seen a lot of chaos, probably the last few years in which many people probably could have done well with that advice. What other locations are people also considering for asset protection trust if you do not like?

Blake:
So the common one is the Cayman Islands. I tell people I’m an offshore trust attorney. They say, Oh, you do business in the Cayman Islands. And I do have some relationship down in the Caymans. I’ve been there before. But it’s a very sold jurisdiction. Sometimes it’s an asset protection trust jurisdiction. And yes, having money offshore by a Trust Company in the Cayman Islands does give some level of protection. But it’s night and day difference from the protection that you get with the Cook Islands. Other jurisdictions — I was just in Dubai last week, and they are starting to get into the trust business more. And I could see that as a potential place where there’s gonna be more trust businesses as well. Switzerland’s banking system is a very big country for banking. They have introduced legislation to pass an asset protection trust law. And this is something that has been pushed back several times; they have not adopted it yet. The jurisdiction, which I think I would stay away from for my clients, in almost all circumstances, is the United States. I did have one client recently who we did set up a domestic trust for; he has an occupation where he has a very high level of security clearance with the United States, and setting up the offshore structure can compromise his occupation. And so for him, we did a domestic trust. We still include a backdoor where we could convert it to an offshore trust later. That’s not my favorite way to plan, but still, some planning is better than none. So, in terms of answering your question directly, which jurisdiction do I recommend staying away from? The United States.

John:
Yep. And so with a place like America and the direction in which we’re going, do you think that we’re going to start to see even more lawsuits as the economy starts to liquidate? In the great financial crisis, many more people are getting sued; it became much more litigious. Do you think that’s likely going to be the future for America?

Blake:
Attorneys get hungry; attorneys have mortgages to pay. Right now, a lot of attorneys are busy creating businesses that are busy reviewing contracts. And if there was something that went wrong in a business deal but both partners ended up still making money, they’ll still keep their friendship and avoid litigation. But when things hit the fan, that’s when lawsuits break out. And this has been the busiest year my law firm has had. And we’re just at the beginning of it; it looks like we’re at just the beginning of a recession. I think we’re going to see a lot more litigation to come. And the wise ones are the ones planning ahead. You can get much better protection by setting up your asset protection before things go sour than trying to do it after the fact.

John:
So how much would a lawsuit have to be, essentially the net present value for an attorney to want to explore taking it up in the Cook Islands?

Blake:
So, I mean, for a case under a million dollars, it’s probably not going to happen. It has happened. I mean, I would say maybe 2 and 1000 offshore trust actually have a plaintiff go to the Cook Islands and litigate there. And it depends on a few different circumstances. If the plaintiff is a car accident, and their attorney is a run-of-the-mill attorney, and they are in the business of pushing paper, they’re not going to explore going overseas to get money out of a Cook Islands trust. But if it’s a divorce, and somebody hates their ex-spouse, and they are going to do everything they can to take them to the cleaners, this is when we see them go overseas. And I had been contacted before by people who were looking to break into an offshore trust. The majority of what I do is setting up the trust, but we will help people try to break into other offshore trusts. And that’s the benefit of hiring me. Once you hire me, I’m never able to come after you. Yeah, so that’s the so it’s rarely under a million, it’s rarely under 5 million. But if there’s more than $5 million, it may make economic sense for someone to go off to the trust and the Cook Islands. Now here’s an interesting thing. If they do go to the Cook Islands, we have a mechanism to move the control to another jurisdiction. So let’s say that we set up the trust or we even set it up kind of last minute where it may not pass muster under the courts in the Cook Islands to hold up. If they end up going to the Cook Islands, which most of the time they don’t, we can usually get a settlement before they get to that point. But if they do, we can then move the control of the trust to another jurisdiction and say, Okay, come down to Belize now, try to litigate here. They post bond, they hire an attorney, spend money down in Belize. Okay, we’ll pop it over to Nevis. Okay, now we’ll pop it over to Cyprus, we’ll pop it over to Dubai, we’ll move it around the world. And sooner or later, the plaintiff is going to realize, I’m spending an exorbitant amount in legal fees. Often plaintiffs just straight up run out of money. Some just give up their case entirely. But sooner or later, any plaintiff, pretty much any plaintiff, is going to realize, If I want to get any money, I got to talk settlement.

John:
Got it. And then so is there a bond? You mentioned there’s a 100k bond?

Blake:
There is one in Cook Islands. It’s not codified, but it comes out to about $100,000 as well. The court system in the Cook Islands doesn’t allow contingency fees. They do require you to post a bond. You have to have an attorney that’s licensed in the Cook Islands or ones accepted by the Cook Islands court. US Attorneys are not allowed to practice in the Cook Islands. You have to win your case in the Cook Islands by proving your case beyond a reasonable doubt, and in the United States, to win a civil matter, you just have to prove your case by preponderance of the evidence, which means 51% or 49%. If you can convince the judge the court is just barely more likely than not that you’re right, you win the case. In the Cook Islands, even if they think you’re right, that’s not enough. They have to believe it beyond reasonable doubt for you to win your case in the Cook Islands. It is a very difficult place for a plaintiff to get anything done successfully.

John:
Yeah, I was reading an article last year about John Paulson, the billionaire who bet against the housing market. Apparently, he made 4.2 billion, or I think it was 4.4 billion. And his wife, they’re getting a divorce, and she wants to sell them for 2.2 billion, and they want to audit his books. And his accountants and his attorneys set up offshore asset protection trusts in the late 90s without he never told her. And then as the years went on, she wanted to audit their books, realized that he didn’t really have much money. Yeah, everything was owned by these trusts. Yep. Have you ever heard anything like that?

Blake:
Own nothing, control everything. Have I heard anything about people using offshore trust to shield the wealth from divorce? Yes, I did. On the car ride over, I had that exact conversation.

John:
And so how would that actually kind of play out?

Blake:
So an offshore trust can protect from divorce. The farther in advance of the divorce, the better it is. I mean, a divorce is another situation where I say, make some subtle settlement offer, but don’t get taken advantage of.

John:
Got it. And so what does that normally look like? They just make an offer, and then it just maybe plays out over a year or two years?

Blake:
I mean, it gives settlement leverage, and the time varies. I mean, for non-divorces, sometimes people realize the other individual, the person they’re suing, has offshore trusts, and they’ll just drop the case from the beginning. With the divorce, they’re still gonna — they tend to still push forward in some regards. But ultimately, they’re pushed back, and they’ll take some settlement offer, as opposed to being able to just have a court order you to hand over an enormous amount of assets.

John:
Got it. Yeah, well, a lot of people are looking at what’s going on in the world. Another thing that people are considering right now is central bank digital currencies and how this could impact people from controlling their own money, controlling their wealth. What are your thoughts on CBDCs? And how could asset protection plans potentially help against that?

Blake:
So two questions there. What are my thoughts on CBDC? I think it’s inevitable. I think that there’s just too much benefit for the government that it’s not going to happen. I think that it’s going to be easy to get people to adopt CBDCs the same way it was easy to get people to start using credit cards. Hey, you get 1% back, and we give you points to go travel somewhere, boom. Cash is pretty much gone at that point. Everyone’s swiping everything for a credit card. CBDC will really be putting the nail in the coffin, moving us to a cashless society. It does concern me. I don’t like it because I spend many Saturdays going to the farmers market, and am I still going to be able to buy my vegetables there at the farmers market, or am I going to be prevented from buying groceries anywhere other than which Jeff Bezos owns? So, I don’t particularly like it. I’m not political. I’m not endorsing any candidates. But I will say that I think it’s interesting that Ron DeSantis did sign something saying that Florida is not going to take part in any CBDC, which I don’t think is anything more than political theater. But what is politics? But what is that anyways? And last night, he just announced that he’s running for president. So I wonder if maybe there might be some resistance movement to delay the CBDC. So a lot of opinions on the CBDC. In terms of can asset protection protect against it? And this is a question that I get asked a lot. I don’t think that the CBDC is going to be the only currency because there are lots of different governments throughout the world. I think it’s also going to push people more into Bitcoin. I think people realize if I still want to purchase something at the farmers market, that CBDC may not be accepted, or if they’re engaged in some other illicit business, which there’s a huge black market economy that is surrounding us. We live in South Florida. It was known in the 80s for cocaine, but it’s still flowing through South Florida, and people are not going to be purchasing their blow with CBDC. They’re going to have to switch to Maduro. I think that it’s going to really push things and is going to actually be a very good thing for the crypto world. In terms of putting CBDC into an asset protection trust, I don’t know how that’s going to play out.

John:
Yeah, not putting it CBDC. Like it wouldn’t matter. I mean, like if you want to basically shield yourself from maybe America’s immaturity.

Blake:
I’m getting there, but I didn’t want to cut cover that point. In terms of shielding yourself from that, it’s diversification within all for asset protection trust trust. Right now, you can hold US dollars, you can hold Swiss francs, you can hold euros, you can hold Turkish Lira, you can hold all different types of assets with all different types of currencies. You can hold Bitcoin and hold different types of cryptocurrency. So I think it is a wise tool for shielding yourself from the potential control of a CBDC.

John:
Have you seen any countries around the world that you saw that behaved more in line with like 2017, 2018, 2019, in terms of policies, when everything else kind of got crazy?

Blake:
Have I seen countries that did not adhere to COVID restrictions? So, I would say that I’m not really one to have much of an opinion on that. I think the smaller island countries where I’ve visited in a bit, they kind of roll their eyes and okay, well play along with this mask for a little while. But it wasn’t China where you have the robots flying by your apartment to make sure that you’re wearing a mask inside your home.

I know some countries have taken lockdown a little bit more seriously than other countries. But I don’t know which countries were the least COVID.

John:
Did you have some clients that reverted their whole life? I know a lot of people moved from places like New York to South Florida or New York, that maybe were going over to UAE in different locations. But have you had people move for lifestyle and then also ended up getting passports?

Blake:
So I’ve seen a wave of people, and I live in Miami, moved from New York to Miami. It’s become the sixth borough of New York. And I’ve had clients who have increased their interest in second passports from it. I have had some clients move overseas, but my clients have always been fairly mobile people.

But I haven’t seen any particular wave of people go into any one particular country. There’s no perfect country. I think that used to be 30 years ago, countries which had everything. Now every country has some drawback to it. And again, it depends on what people are looking for. If you like the laid-back Caribbean lifestyle, there are a lot of great places in the Caribbean. If you want to be around a business environment, I think the UAE is a great place. If you like kind of a more laid-back but still able to do some good business, I think EU is a very popular place. If you like a lot of cutting-edge opportunities, I think there’s a lot of opportunities in Asia where you can make a lot of money. And so it just depends on the person for really the right place for them.

John:
Got it. So what is the cost annually to operate? Let’s say you establish the offshore trust, you spend the initial, what is the annual fee? And kind of like how does that actually work?

Blake:
You’re looking at around five to $10,000 per year. And it depends on, I mean, if you have active litigation, and the trustee is having to take action and actively defend the trust, that’s going to go up. But that’s pretty rare. Simply having the trust is going to deter and allow a lot of settlement. The settlement leverage depends on how often you’re having the trust send you distributions. Some clients, they don’t want to have any money in their bank account, the trustee pays your credit card bill every month, they live off their AMEX, just as though they had a billion dollars in their own bank account. But they don’t ever have any money coming into their account. Other trustees, they use it like a treasure chest every six months or so. The way I use my trust every six months or so, I’ll contribute some money to my trust. But I’m not actively using it as a day-to-day piggy bank. It keeps the cost to maintain my trust down a bit as well.

John:
So how much money would you keep in your accounts, enough to last you 90 days?

Blake:
Does Andrew Tate have an offshore trust? He’s someone who often talks about having multiple bank accounts. He’s one that talks about having multiple passports, all good advice. Life’s not just about making money; it’s about learning how to protect that money.

John:
Will offshore asset protection trust help the great reset?

Blake:
The biggest misconception in the asset protection world is that asset protection is just for the super wealthy. You don’t need an offshore trust unless you have 10 million or $100 million. And that’s so far from the truth. And I’m gonna explain with a quick example.

John:
Today I have Blake Harris on the podcast. He’s one of the leading asset protection attorneys in America, helping people establish offshore asset protection plans in places like Cook Island, St. Kitts and Nevis, Switzerland, and other locations. Blake, welcome to the show.

John:
Great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. You got it. So tell me a little bit about, you know, how did you get started in asset protection?

Blake:
So, how did I get started in asset protection? You know, the story actually starts off with me as a kindergartener. I was going to school, and they had a rule where every single day our parents would give us $1. And we’d pay for our lunch that way. And I realized that if you didn’t bring $1, they would still feed us. We were kindergarteners. And so after a few weeks of forgetting the dollar, I’d accumulated a nice little stack of cash. Well, the school contacted my parents, they conspired, and they did what I consider an illegal search and seizure. They went into my personal Cubby and took all of the cash that I had, through some very wise moves accumulated for myself. And that’s when I realized life’s not just about making money; it’s about learning how to protect that money. So I ended up going to law school. After I graduated law school, I was working for a trust and estates law firm. And the office I was working for, or the law firm that I started soon after, was just a few blocks away from another attorney’s office. His name is Barry Engel. Barry Engel was the attorney who wrote the Cook Islands asset protection trust law. He’s considered the godfather of asset protection. And I got to learn from him and work with him on a few cases, and read his book and take his continuing education classes. And he’s the one who very much taught me about the asset protection business. So it started off when I was young, but it was really very much developed by working with the founder of the offshore asset protection business.

John:
That’s exciting. When did you start that?

Blake:
About a decade ago, I’ve been an attorney now for about 12 years, and I’ve been focusing on trust work the entire time.

John:
So for people that don’t know, what is the difference between a domestic trust and say, an offshore asset protection trust?

Blake:
So John, this is a question that I get asked probably a few times a day. And there are two types of asset protection trusts. There are domestic trusts, which can be formed in jurisdictions such as Nevada, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming. There are about 18 different jurisdictions that allow you to form a domestic asset protection trust. There are also offshore jurisdictions: the Cook Islands, Nevis, Belize, about a dozen or more offshore jurisdictions that allow you to form an offshore asset protection trust. The benefit of creating a domestic trust is that it’s a little bit simpler; it’s easier to sell one to a client because clients are much more comfortable using a trustee out of Nevada than a trustee out of, let’s say, the Cook Islands. They’re a little bit less costly to set up, typically. However, they lose a lot of settlement leverage. What can save you a few $1,000 upfront can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars in leverage. And if you just think about it from a plaintiff’s point of view, if you’re suing someone and they say, Oh, I’ve got my money in a trust, and it’s two states away, well, guess what? That plaintiff attorney is going to say, It’s not that hard. I’ve got a buddy I went to law school with in that state. We’re going to file a motion under Article four, section three of the US Constitution: full faith and credit of the judgment here has to be honored there. Now, on the other hand, if your assets are controlled by a Cook Islands trustee, the money’s in a bank account in Switzerland, the plaintiff is pretty much dead in the water. They’re going to have to take your settlement offer. So the difference is the power that you get, the protection you get. There have been several failures of domestic-only trusts. There’s never been a failure of a properly structured offshore Cook Islands trust, so you get better protection. And you get much better settlement leverage by using an offshore trust, John.

John:
So how does an offshore trust actually work? Let’s say you’re explaining it to a five-year-old, okay? They have no idea what an asset protection trust is. They’ve seen Wolf of Wall Street and they’re just using their imagination and not really looking into it.

Blake:
Well, think about it like this. Let’s say you have a boat. You enjoy the boat, but you decide, I’m going to give the boat to my friend John.

John was to let me ride around the boat. John was to let me go and bring some friends on the boat and take some pictures for Instagram. We’ve got a boat, we can enjoy the boat, no problem. But if I get sued, if I do something wrong, or if I don’t even do anything wrong but I still get sued, which happens often here in the world’s most litigious country, nobody’s gonna be able to go and take a boat away from my friend. It’s that simple. You hand control of the asset to an individual, to an entity not subject to US court orders. They allow you to remain the beneficial owner; you can still enjoy that property. But again, if you’re ever sued, that asset remains protected.

John:
So if you are sued, let’s say, for example, you got sued for jaywalking, hypothetically, or the $5 million fine.

Blake:
I jaywalk all the time.

John:
Yeah, yes. And it gets sued. And they’re really dedicated to getting this money from you. But you’re like, Hey, my buddy John’s got my boat. He’s got my house. He has multifamily properties. He has XYZ. But what if, like, how does that actually work? You go to court to say that I’ll own anything, the trust owns it. But then what?

Blake:
How does it play out? Well, not only as a tool for protecting your assets, not only as offshore asset protection trusts for protecting your assets, it’s also an excellent tool in negotiating a settlement. And so the situation that we explained to a five-year-old, I’m going to explain it to someone who’s let’s say 20-25 years old. Instead of having your friend John sitting next to you on the couch, recording a podcast, you’ve got a trust company out of the Cook Islands that can control it. So they sue you. And then you say, You know what? You can sue me, you can spend all this money hiring an attorney or actually in America, you could just take it on a contingency fee. It doesn’t cost you anything to bring a lawsuit. They can say to them, You know what? You can sue me, you can spend all this time doing it. You tell the attorney because they’re investing their time and resources, you’re not going to get away with taking any money from me. It’s controlled by an overseas trustee. My money’s in a bank account in Switzerland. They’re not giving you any money unless you get a court order from the Cook Islands, which is not an easy thing to do. And if it’s a bogus claim, if the BS claim, I say, tell that creditor to go pound sand, get out of here. We’re not paying you anything. Now, if you’ve legitimately harmed someone, I say, make a settlement offer. But settle on your terms. Don’t have your back up against the wall; don’t become a victim of legal extortion, which is prevalent in this country.

John:
Got it. So let me run a scenario by you. Let’s say over the last few years, I’m sure this scenario has come across your desk many times. People are looking at what’s happening in the world. And they’re like, Okay, well, what’s going to happen next? They might not be so concerned about protecting their assets from a creditor, but they might wonder what’s going to happen legally. Could there be unrealized capital gains? Because there’ll be any of these crazy new policies that they’re talking about rolling forward.

Blake:
So there are several benefits of creating an offshore asset protection trust. The main reason I get my phone rings is people are looking for protection from lawsuits, creditors, divorce, business disputes, car accidents. That’s the most common reason that people set up Cook Islands trust. But there are other benefits of setting up a Cook Islands trust, such as estate planning. After you pass away, money inside of a trust avoids probate. It also has the benefit of opening you up to more investment options than you have as a US individual. Certain investments, as a US individual, you cannot make but through an offshore trust, you have access to those investments. To answer your question, though, another benefit of an offshore structure is it protects you from political instability. And individuals like you and me, who probably spent a little too much time researching on the Internet, are aware that there are some potential instabilities in the United States. And if you want to protect yourself from those, an offshore trust is a great way to do that.

John:
Yeah, I was reading that there are 21 other locations that are trying to join BRICs. And there are a lot of people questioning the stability, long term, of the dollar. Stanley Druckenmiller was talking about it, saying that by potentially 2030, the US Dollar may no longer be the reserve currency.

Blake:
Correct. We’ve heard this threat for a while, and that seems to be mounting, right? Right now, I think that may be some of the strings behind the wars we’re seeing. But that’s a little bit speculation that I’ll stay away from.

John:
100%. So tell me, what locations are the best for asset protection?

Blake:
So there are three jurisdictions that I consider to be the top three for an offshore asset protection trust: Cook Islands, Nevis, and Belize. Belize is popular because it has a zero look back period as a codified law. When you transfer money into a Belize trust, there is no way to come in and say that was an improper transfer. Now, Belize has a lack of stability with the government and regulations, even with the trust companies there, that makes me hesitant to make Belize my first choice of an asset protection trust. It is a jurisdiction that, in certain circumstances, I will utilize, but it’s not my first choice. Next is Nevis. Nevis essentially copied the Cook Islands asset protection trust law. They added a codified bond requirement of $100,000 to bring a case, and Nevis has been a very successful deterrent to anyone bringing a lawsuit against any asset protection trust there. However, I prefer the Cook Islands for several reasons. Number one, they’ve been in the business longer. Number two, there have been more attempts, and those attempts have been unsuccessful. Number three, the increased distance from the United States is a deterrent to litigation. And number four, the mentality of the government of the Cook Islands is much more asset protection oriented than Nevis. Nevis makes a lot of money by selling passports. They are not as focused and committed to the asset protection business as the Cook Islands. Actually, recently, the Cook Islands sent a letter to the government of Nevis, telling them that they need to protect their legislation better if they want to continue to have attorneys like myself send business there and support the legislation. The Cook Islands, on the other hand, has never sold a single passport. I don’t think they ever will. The asset protection business is vital to their economy. It is clearly, in my opinion, the best jurisdiction for an asset protection trust.

John:
Do you know approximately what percentage of that economy their GDP is based on asset protection?

Blake:
I have heard this statistic before, it’s somewhere around 10%, maybe around 10 to 20%. It’s the second biggest industry after tourism, and where tourism got killed during COVID, it became even more important, the offshore trust and banking industry in the Cook Islands. Tourism has started to trickle back in, with just recently allowing flights from not just Auckland, but also from Hawaii. Cook Islands were the most beautiful place in the world I’ve ever been. I highly recommend a visit, especially if you can deal with having slow internet for a few days.

John:
Great. So what do you think is the typical client that would look at this? Would it be someone in their late 40s, 50s? Maybe they’ve accumulated a million dollars or $2 million and have a small business. What’s the typical type of client?

Blake:
You hit it right on the money, John. The biggest misconception in the asset protection world is that it’s just for the super wealthy. You don’t need an offshore trust unless you have 10 million or $100 million. And that’s so far from the truth. I’m gonna explain with a quick example. Let’s say I’ve got two clients, one that has a million dollars and another with $100 million. If both clients get sued for $5 million, my client with $100 million, I’m going to say, make no settlement offer, hire the best defense attorneys in the world, fight this case as hard as you can. And if they end up getting a judgment against you, $5 million is not going to have much of an impact on your standard of living or quality of life. Now, for the individual with just $1 million, if they get hit with $5 million, I’m going to say we need to talk settlement. And we need to talk settlement fast. Because if they get a $5 million judgment, that’s going to have devastating effects. The majority of my clients who set up an offshore asset protection trust have between one and $10 million in assets. In terms of age, yes, it tends to be clients in their 40s and 50s. Those are the clients who have been working long enough that they’ve accumulated significant enough assets that it’s worthwhile to protect. And they’re still actively engaged in business. Clients who get higher in age, we do have some of those who still have some lingering liability, or quite frankly, they’re not the best drivers. They tend to not be as interested in looking to protect their assets. So it’s typically 40 to 50-year-olds, between one and $10 million in assets, and they tend to be very business-minded people. Business-minded people tend to make more money, but also business-minded people tend to be better at thinking ahead and protecting themselves. Good things come to those who plan.

John:
Right. So what does that look like? Let’s say, for example, they have a home. Let’s say the person is worth a million dollars, they have a home worth a million bucks, $200,000 in liquidity, maybe a business making 30-50k a month, and some stocks, gold, and silver. Now, what would that plan look like for that type of person?

Blake:
So most any asset can be protected, and there’s a different strategy for protecting different types of assets. For something like cash, stocks, bonds, it’s very easy. What you do is you open up an offshore bank account under the trust. Typically, I recommend Switzerland. We do have banking relationships in several different countries. Swiss banks tend to be my favorite because they are very stable, risk-averse, and provide excellent customer service. They also offer a large variety of investment options. So cash, set it up that way. If the client has cryptocurrency, there are a few different ways of protecting it. One is to work with one of the banks out of Switzerland that takes cryptocurrency. Another is to cold storage it yourself. And you can do that as long as there’s no pending litigation. If the client is actually under threat, I don’t want my clients holding their own keys. I want to transfer that into either the banks or into a cold storage vault. We have some vaults that my firm has relationships with outside the United States where clients can place their cold storage vault, and the trustee is not going to release that to a creditor. In terms of protecting real estate, it’s a little bit trickier because you can’t just pick it up and move it outside the reach of the US court system. But what you can do with real estate is you can place a lien on it. You can always sell the real estate, but you can also place a lien on it, and if you can strip out the equity, take the equity that you’ve stripped out, put that into the offshore structure, you can keep the real estate protected that way as well. In terms of operating a business or protecting a business, my advice is to run lean and mean, which means take any excess cash out of the business, drop that into your offshore trust. If the business owns hard assets, form a separate holding company for the hard assets. Have your operating company lease those hard assets from the holding company. That way, if the operating company gets sued because there’s certain liability that’s attached to an operating company that you can’t divorce from it, what you can do is have that operating company operate pretty much empty, so there’s nothing for a creditor to take. When you’ve eliminated the assets for a creditor to take, you’ve eliminated any incentive for someone to sue.

John:
So let me give an example. Let me ask this question. If it is a company that buys land, maybe single-family homes in different parts of the country, or maybe they have a chain of laundromats, and they want to buy a small little single-engine plane and they want to fly around, would you say that the holding company would own that single-engine plane and then lease it back to the owner, and then it would basically be under the plane to be protected? Is that kind of like the gist of it?

Blake:
So kind of. Planes are special assets in that they are very risky assets, the same way that cars are risky assets. For a risky asset like that, we want to have its own shell around it, its own LLC that owns it. Depending on how much value there is in that LLC, if it’s a plane worth a million dollars, we want to protect that asset as well. We’ll have that LLC then owned by the trust as well, but have it segregated from other liabilities.

John:
Okay, are there tax benefits to an offshore asset protection trust?

Blake:
An offshore asset protection trust is a tax-neutral vehicle. It does not increase or decrease your taxes. You are required to report it to the IRS when you have an offshore trust, but in no way does it increase your chance of an audit. I provide my clients with a detailed tax memorandum that explains all the reporting requirements, so they can hand that to their CPA. The CPA will then have guidance on how to report the offshore structure to the IRS. We also have a large network of CPAs we work with, whom we can refer clients to for completing the offshore reporting requirements. But it’s not a tool for reducing or evading taxes.

John:
Do you have a lot of clients that come to you with ideas in which asset protection trusts may help them tax-wise? What are some of the common misconceptions?

Blake:
So one thing that I get asked about very often is a Cayman Islands trust. And I mentioned the three jurisdictions: Cook Islands, Nevis, and Belize as the best asset protection jurisdictions. The Cayman Islands is not a country that has a codified asset protection trust law. I don’t recommend using it. You hear about corporations that can use offshore trust for avoiding taxes. If you’re a non-US person, there may be opportunities to use offshore structures for avoiding taxes. But in terms of US persons, that is not an offshore trust that’s going to allow you to avoid paying taxes. Non-US people, there are different rules, but 95% of my clients are US citizens. The reason why 90% of the lawsuits in the world are filed in the United States.

John:
Got it? What other misconceptions are you hearing from people that are thinking about establishing an offshore trust in which you have to kind of educate them? And because I’m sure there are probably quite a few people listening right now that are thinking of the uncertain world that we’re living in and how they can protect themselves? And maybe you can answer some questions in their head before they even get there.

Blake:
Certainly. So the biggest one is, as I mentioned, you don’t need to be super wealthy, you need to have assets worth protecting. Certainly, some million dollars is where it becomes worthwhile for most clients. Next, as we mentioned, it’s not a tool for avoiding or evading taxes. Another misconception is that a domestic trust will do the trick. A domestic trust, as I mentioned, is easy to set up, but you lose a lot of bargaining power when you use a domestic-only trust. Another misconception is that the client can continue to serve as trustee. No, you have to hire a professional trust company out of the Cook Islands. These trust companies are very reputable companies. I’ve been to the Cook Islands. I’ve met with these trust companies myself. They are better regulated and supervised than US-based trust companies. Another misconception is that you lose control over the assets. No, the trustee will do anything we tell them to do. If we want money out of the trust, they’re going to send us money. If we want them to invest the money in a certain way, they will invest the money in a certain way. They are going to do everything that I requested that they do because they want me to continue to send them business. Not to mention, I have the ability to remove every client I’ve ever sent these trust companies. These trust companies and I, we’ve worked together very, very closely. The only time that the trust company is not going to honor a request is if a client has been ordered by a court to make a request. If you’re acting under duress, the trust company will say no. You’ve been forced to make this request. But provided the client has acted by their own free will, they are still going to have access and ultimate control over their assets the same way they would if the money was in their own pocket.

John:
What other items can you hold inside of an offshore trust? I was asking ChatGPT. This is like three weeks ago. Wealthy people that have offshore trusts, and one of the people they listed was Michael Jordan, his famous free throw shot from that free-throw line. That’s owned by an asset protection trust, according to ChatGPT, secures music rights owned by an asset protection trust. You know, there are a lot of other really, really big names. Aqua stone, the Formula One CEO, has a lot of his wealth hidden there.

Blake:
There are a lot more people with offshore trusts who are more behind the scenes. When people create an offshore trust, they are joining a league of a very protected group of people. People also ask, ‘Well, why doesn’t the government just get rid of offshore trusts?’ But quite frankly, the people who are writing the rules, they have offshore trust. Quick comment on ChatGPT: I’ve used it a little bit to kind of test how it responds to certain questions about asset protection. And I’ve noticed that I think some of the content it’s pulling is actually from my website. Alright, I have one of the best sources of asset protection information on my website. And I think that some of the information it’s pulling, it sounds very similar to the content on my website.

John:
Who are some of the wealthy people that maybe, not your clients, that are behind the scenes that you’ve heard have asset protection?

Blake:
So, the people who are famous for having asset protection trusts are the ones who have gotten into some trouble or the more nefarious characters. I think that some of the media that gets run around offshore trusts, I quite frankly love because the big news sources will often run stories of how offshore trusts have been used by nefarious people or how people have gotten in trouble that I’ve used offshore trusts. Now, they don’t get in trouble simply for using an offshore trust. It tends to be they use an offshore trust and then they lie about it. You never lie about an offshore trust because, quite frankly, well, one, you’re gonna go to jail. But also, you don’t need to. The court can know that you have an offshore trust. It’s not going to give them access to your money. So, there are some very famous people who have offshore trusts, but they’re famous not for particularly great reasons. One that comes to mind is Octomom, the woman who, oh yeah. She, she does not have an offshore trust. But the doctor who did that bizarre procedure, he set up an offshore trust quite wisely.

John:
And do you think Alex Jones, in a lot of people kind of talked about him and a couple of other names that have been dragged into massive lawsuits?

Blake:
So I would like to think that he thought of an offshore trust. Here’s one: Does Andrew Tate have an offshore trust? Yeah, I was actually gonna ask that. And this is something that I talked about some. I don’t know the answer, I would like to think so. He’s someone who often talks about having multiple bank accounts. He’s one that talks about having multiple passports, all good advice. However, if you have multiple different bank accounts but you control them all yourself, John, a court could just say, ‘Hey, you can show this, send the money back.’ Now, if you have multiple bank accounts under an offshore trust, of course, they’re not gonna be able to order you to hand those assets back.

John:
So what he said he had something like 10 passports or something like that. How do you maintain it? Don’t you have to, for example, in Puerto Rico, you have to say that 183 days a year, right, to be a resident? There are certain requirements. You have to stay there for 90 days, I guess initially when you set up a business.

Blake:
So there are about a dozen or maybe two dozen different countries which will sell you a passport, and there are about six different ways to get a passport. One is to be born into a country, and another is to marry someone from that country. Another is to go through the traditional naturalization process. You go, you get a work permit. You live there for a while, eventually you apply for citizenship. There’s also something called citizenship by exception, where if you are a high-end athlete, a very popular celebrity, they’ll give you a passport. Another is citizenship by descent, and this is a very interesting one. If you can prove through records that you have a parent, grandparent, or in certain cases, a great-grandparent of another country, they will give you citizenship. And then the sixth way to get citizenship is to buy it. And in my opinion, the two best passports to consider buying, one is Malta, which is around $800,000, I believe, to purchase, but it gives you access to some of the best countries. I believe you might even get visa-free access to the United States. I’m not certain about that; selling passports is not part of my business, though I do get asked about it a bit. So I’ve gained a little bit of knowledge about it.

John:
With $800,000, so you buy a property in Malta for 800K, or do you basically transfer 800K into a Malta bank?

Blake:
I’m not sure exactly what it is with Malta, but there are different programs. Sometimes you open up a bank account, sometimes you buy a property, sometimes you just make a donation. The one that I think is the best value is Nevis. You never have to step foot in Nevis. There are no taxes in Nevis. I paid $25 for a driver’s license when I was there a few weeks ago. But no death taxes, no income taxes, it’s a very easy country to live in. You don’t have to, you never have to step foot in Nevis. It’s one of the oldest citizenship by investment programs. And for as little as a couple of $100,000, you can get a passport to Nevis. If you want to add family members, it’s around $25,000. Additionally, I think it’s wise to have a second passport for several reasons. There are lots of reasons to get a second passport. Number one, if we see more COVID-type restrictions, it may not be because of COVID. It might be because of another virus, or it may be because a war breaks out and we are not allowed to travel from enemy countries or countries that aren’t complying. You won’t have a second passport that will still allow you to travel if your country’s on a certain end. If you have a disagreement, or because of an attempt to fight global warming or what they will tell us is an attempt to fight global warming, CO2 capping based on your passport, you can’t travel too much. If you’re considering renouncing your US citizenship, you want to have another passport so you don’t end up stateless. And another benefit of having a second passport is you get to be cool like James Bond, yeah.

John:
So are you able to hold both?

Blake:
So, it depends on the country, but a lot of people do.

John:
Let’s say, for example, you have St. Kitts and Nevis, right? You have that password that you just mentioned: spend 100k. And now you set up maybe a trust in St. Kitts and Nevis, and that trust made a really good investment. We bought Apple stock for $1, and now Apple stock is worth 100. If they have favorable tax policies there in relation to the US.

Blake:
So, if you’re still a US citizen, it’s not going to do much good for your taxes. But if you are no longer a US citizen, it can save you a lot in taxes. If you want to save on taxes as a US citizen, move to Puerto Rico. We’re now your citizenship are the two main routes to do that.

John:
How was Nevis during all the lockdowns and everything?

Blake:
They were locked down as well. But it’s a tiny island country. I mean, you can drive around the entire country in about 45 minutes. I can’t imagine that they were taking things all that seriously. It did slow down their tourism industry, which the locals there didn’t like. But also, talking to the people there, they were much happier. They said, We can actually eat the local food. Typically, we’re taking this local food and having to sell it to the visitors, and we have to eat cheaper brought-in food. So it slowed down. It was interesting. I mean, and I think a lot of experiences during COVID may slow down business in certain regard but also brought a different level of happiness during COVID. So it was affected as well. I mean, it wasn’t as pretty as Florida, probably. But it got lifted. It wasn’t a Canada or Australia type of COVID lockdown place.

John:
If you have, let’s say, your family, man, you got two young kids, maybe they’re five years old and seven years old, you see the way the world is going. And you’re concerned with everything that you just mentioned, potentially closures or omissions or whatever it may be. And you want your children to have the same life that you had when they grow up, they’re able to travel, enjoy the world, enjoy experiences. What passports would you suggest other than what you just mentioned that would allow them access or at least allow them access to travel and enjoy their life?

Blake:
So it depends on how much money you have to spend.

John:
Let’s say 5 million bucks.

Blake:
Okay, so you’ve got a fair bit of money to spend on a passport. I would look at something that gives you access to the European Union because that’s going to be similar to the United States in a lot of regards. There are three basic areas where you can purchase a second passport: the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. And what I tell clients who are thinking about purchasing a second passport is to go and visit the place, see whether you like it or not, whether it’s a place you could see yourself spending some time. It really just depends on the person and what they’re looking for. But I think it’s very wise to have a backup plan. I think it’s wise to have multiple different bank accounts. And I think it’s wise to have those bank accounts owned by an offshore asset protection trust.

John:
Great. So, from that example that I just gave, if you have one asset protection trust and say the Cook Islands, are you able to have basically entities that are associated in some capacity in which, let’s say you have money set aside for your wife, you have money set aside for your son, you have money set aside for your daughter. And then they basically have their own type of investment vehicle which they’re able to invest in and kind of do their own thing inside of an entity associated with yours.

Blake:
So with a Cook Islands trust, you can open up different entities under Nevis. LLC is a very common one, but there’s others. But you can open a US LLC under the Cook Islands trust. You can open up multiple different bank accounts under one Cook Islands asset protection trust. As far as having different beneficiaries, typically the way it’s structured is the client will be the initial beneficiary. They’ll set up the Blake Harris Trust, and the Blake Harris Trust will be the beneficiary of that trust. And then after Blake passed away, the money then divides down between his children. If you want to set up with different beneficiaries, it may actually be better in that case to set up a separate trust and actually totally get it off your books. So that if you are ever subpoenaed to have to complete a financial affidavit, when you do have to complete a financial affidavit, you do report the existence of the trust. You can report the value of the trust to $0. But if it’s a trust that you’re not even a beneficiary of, you don’t even have to report on it. You should not even report on a financial affidavit. And so in that circumstance, if you want to set up little pools of money for other family members, setting up a separate trust may be the best route to do that.

John:
How much is an asset protection trust?

Blake:
So asset protection trust, the bare minimum you’re ever going to find anyone to quote that has any idea what they’re doing is going to run around $10,000. The higher-cost asset protection trust that I’ve heard quoted, that I’ve quoted before, run between one and $200,000. The majority of asset protection trusts run somewhere between 20 to $50,000. Generally, my fee runs around $25,000. That’s the setup cost. There are annual maintenance fees on top of that, which run around 5 to $10,000 a year for the basic trust. Of course, the higher-end trust, there’s going to be higher annual fees.

John:
Got it. And so if you have one trust, and then you have one for your wife, one for your, you know, one or two children, will basically be 25k or 30k times the amount of child? There’s no like type of…

Blake:
I mean, it depends on the attorney, your attorney you’re working with. I mean, if someone’s bringing a quantity of business, I mean, typically, most service providers can relax their fees a little bit in that circumstance. The majority of individuals don’t set up multiple trusts. They will set up one trust with themselves as the beneficiary. And then if they want to give money to their children, they can make a distribution to themselves or have the trustee distribute money directly to the family members without needing to go ahead and give it away to the family member. One power that I don’t ever want to take away from a client is the ability to cut off or cut out family members, keep your family close, but still keep in control of your own money.

John:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we’ve seen a lot of chaos, probably the last few years in which many people probably could have done well with that advice. What other locations are people also considering for asset protection trust if you do not like?

Blake:
So the common one is the Cayman Islands. I tell people I’m an offshore trust attorney. They say, Oh, you do business in the Cayman Islands. And I do have some relationship down in the Caymans. I’ve been there before. But it’s a very sold jurisdiction. Sometimes it’s an asset protection trust jurisdiction. And yes, having money offshore by a Trust Company in the Cayman Islands does give some level of protection. But it’s night and day difference from the protection that you get with the Cook Islands. Other jurisdictions — I was just in Dubai last week, and they are starting to get into the trust business more. And I could see that as a potential place where there’s gonna be more trust businesses as well. Switzerland’s banking system is a very big country for banking. They have introduced legislation to pass an asset protection trust law. And this is something that has been pushed back several times; they have not adopted it yet. The jurisdiction, which I think I would stay away from for my clients, in almost all circumstances, is the United States. I did have one client recently who we did set up a domestic trust for; he has an occupation where he has a very high level of security clearance with the United States, and setting up the offshore structure can compromise his occupation. And so for him, we did a domestic trust. We still include a backdoor where we could convert it to an offshore trust later. That’s not my favorite way to plan, but still, some planning is better than none. So, in terms of answering your question directly, which jurisdiction do I recommend staying away from? The United States.

John:
Yep. And so with a place like America and the direction in which we’re going, do you think that we’re going to start to see even more lawsuits as the economy starts to liquidate? In the great financial crisis, many more people are getting sued; it became much more litigious. Do you think that’s likely going to be the future for America?

Blake:
Attorneys get hungry; attorneys have mortgages to pay. Right now, a lot of attorneys are busy creating businesses that are busy reviewing contracts. And if there was something that went wrong in a business deal but both partners ended up still making money, they’ll still keep their friendship and avoid litigation. But when things hit the fan, that’s when lawsuits break out. And this has been the busiest year my law firm has had. And we’re just at the beginning of it; it looks like we’re at just the beginning of a recession. I think we’re going to see a lot more litigation to come. And the wise ones are the ones planning ahead. You can get much better protection by setting up your asset protection before things go sour than trying to do it after the fact.

John:
So how much would a lawsuit have to be, essentially the net present value for an attorney to want to explore taking it up in the Cook Islands?

Blake:
So, I mean, for a case under a million dollars, it’s probably not going to happen. It has happened. I mean, I would say maybe 2 and 1000 offshore trust actually have a plaintiff go to the Cook Islands and litigate there. And it depends on a few different circumstances. If the plaintiff is a car accident, and their attorney is a run-of-the-mill attorney, and they are in the business of pushing paper, they’re not going to explore going overseas to get money out of a Cook Islands trust. But if it’s a divorce, and somebody hates their ex-spouse, and they are going to do everything they can to take them to the cleaners, this is when we see them go overseas. And I had been contacted before by people who were looking to break into an offshore trust. The majority of what I do is setting up the trust, but we will help people try to break into other offshore trusts. And that’s the benefit of hiring me. Once you hire me, I’m never able to come after you. Yeah, so that’s the so it’s rarely under a million, it’s rarely under 5 million. But if there’s more than $5 million, it may make economic sense for someone to go off to the trust and the Cook Islands. Now here’s an interesting thing. If they do go to the Cook Islands, we have a mechanism to move the control to another jurisdiction. So let’s say that we set up the trust or we even set it up kind of last minute where it may not pass muster under the courts in the Cook Islands to hold up. If they end up going to the Cook Islands, which most of the time they don’t, we can usually get a settlement before they get to that point. But if they do, we can then move the control of the trust to another jurisdiction and say, Okay, come down to Belize now, try to litigate here. They post bond, they hire an attorney, spend money down in Belize. Okay, we’ll pop it over to Nevis. Okay, now we’ll pop it over to Cyprus, we’ll pop it over to Dubai, we’ll move it around the world. And sooner or later, the plaintiff is going to realize, I’m spending an exorbitant amount in legal fees. Often plaintiffs just straight up run out of money. Some just give up their case entirely. But sooner or later, any plaintiff, pretty much any plaintiff, is going to realize, If I want to get any money, I got to talk settlement.

John:
Got it. And then so is there a bond? You mentioned there’s a 100k bond?

Blake:
There is one in Cook Islands. It’s not codified, but it comes out to about $100,000 as well. The court system in the Cook Islands doesn’t allow contingency fees. They do require you to post a bond. You have to have an attorney that’s licensed in the Cook Islands or ones accepted by the Cook Islands court. US Attorneys are not allowed to practice in the Cook Islands. You have to win your case in the Cook Islands by proving your case beyond a reasonable doubt, and in the United States, to win a civil matter, you just have to prove your case by preponderance of the evidence, which means 51% or 49%. If you can convince the judge the court is just barely more likely than not that you’re right, you win the case. In the Cook Islands, even if they think you’re right, that’s not enough. They have to believe it beyond reasonable doubt for you to win your case in the Cook Islands. It is a very difficult place for a plaintiff to get anything done successfully.

John:
Yeah, I was reading an article last year about John Paulson, the billionaire who bet against the housing market. Apparently, he made 4.2 billion, or I think it was 4.4 billion. And his wife, they’re getting a divorce, and she wants to sell them for 2.2 billion, and they want to audit his books. And his accountants and his attorneys set up offshore asset protection trusts in the late 90s without he never told her. And then as the years went on, she wanted to audit their books, realized that he didn’t really have much money. Yeah, everything was owned by these trusts. Yep. Have you ever heard anything like that?

Blake:
Own nothing, control everything. Have I heard anything about people using offshore trust to shield the wealth from divorce? Yes, I did. On the car ride over, I had that exact conversation.

John:
And so how would that actually kind of play out?

Blake:
So an offshore trust can protect from divorce. The farther in advance of the divorce, the better it is. I mean, a divorce is another situation where I say, make some subtle settlement offer, but don’t get taken advantage of.

John:
Got it. And so what does that normally look like? They just make an offer, and then it just maybe plays out over a year or two years?

Blake:
I mean, it gives settlement leverage, and the time varies. I mean, for non-divorces, sometimes people realize the other individual, the person they’re suing, has offshore trusts, and they’ll just drop the case from the beginning. With the divorce, they’re still gonna — they tend to still push forward in some regards. But ultimately, they’re pushed back, and they’ll take some settlement offer, as opposed to being able to just have a court order you to hand over an enormous amount of assets.

John:
Got it. Yeah, well, a lot of people are looking at what’s going on in the world. Another thing that people are considering right now is central bank digital currencies and how this could impact people from controlling their own money, controlling their wealth. What are your thoughts on CBDCs? And how could asset protection plans potentially help against that?

Blake:
So two questions there. What are my thoughts on CBDC? I think it’s inevitable. I think that there’s just too much benefit for the government that it’s not going to happen. I think that it’s going to be easy to get people to adopt CBDCs the same way it was easy to get people to start using credit cards. Hey, you get 1% back, and we give you points to go travel somewhere, boom. Cash is pretty much gone at that point. Everyone’s swiping everything for a credit card. CBDC will really be putting the nail in the coffin, moving us to a cashless society. It does concern me. I don’t like it because I spend many Saturdays going to the farmers market, and am I still going to be able to buy my vegetables there at the farmers market, or am I going to be prevented from buying groceries anywhere other than which Jeff Bezos owns? So, I don’t particularly like it. I’m not political. I’m not endorsing any candidates. But I will say that I think it’s interesting that Ron DeSantis did sign something saying that Florida is not going to take part in any CBDC, which I don’t think is anything more than political theater. But what is politics? But what is that anyways? And last night, he just announced that he’s running for president. So I wonder if maybe there might be some resistance movement to delay the CBDC. So a lot of opinions on the CBDC. In terms of can asset protection protect against it? And this is a question that I get asked a lot. I don’t think that the CBDC is going to be the only currency because there are lots of different governments throughout the world. I think it’s also going to push people more into Bitcoin. I think people realize if I still want to purchase something at the farmers market, that CBDC may not be accepted, or if they’re engaged in some other illicit business, which there’s a huge black market economy that is surrounding us. We live in South Florida. It was known in the 80s for cocaine, but it’s still flowing through South Florida, and people are not going to be purchasing their blow with CBDC. They’re going to have to switch to Maduro. I think that it’s going to really push things and is going to actually be a very good thing for the crypto world. In terms of putting CBDC into an asset protection trust, I don’t know how that’s going to play out.

John:
Yeah, not putting it CBDC. Like it wouldn’t matter. I mean, like if you want to basically shield yourself from maybe America’s immaturity.

Blake:
I’m getting there, but I didn’t want to cut cover that point. In terms of shielding yourself from that, it’s diversification within all for asset protection trust trust. Right now, you can hold US dollars, you can hold Swiss francs, you can hold euros, you can hold Turkish Lira, you can hold all different types of assets with all different types of currencies. You can hold Bitcoin and hold different types of cryptocurrency. So I think it is a wise tool for shielding yourself from the potential control of a CBDC.

John:
Have you seen any countries around the world that you saw that behaved more in line with like 2017, 2018, 2019, in terms of policies, when everything else kind of got crazy?

Blake:
Have I seen countries that did not adhere to COVID restrictions?

So, I would say that I’m not really one to have much of an opinion on that. I think the smaller island countries where I’ve visited in a bit, they kind of roll their eyes and okay, well play along with this mask for a little while. But it wasn’t China where you have the robots flying by your apartment to make sure that you’re wearing a mask inside your home.

I know some countries have taken lockdown a little bit more seriously than other countries. But I don’t know which countries were the least COVID.

John:
Did you have some clients that reverted their whole life? I know a lot of people moved from places like New York to South Florida or New York, that maybe were going over to UAE in different locations. But have you had people move for lifestyle and then also ended up getting passports?

Blake:
So I’ve seen a wave of people, and I live in Miami, moved from New York to Miami. It’s become the sixth borough of New York. And I’ve had clients who have increased their interest in second passports from it. I have had some clients move overseas, but my clients have always been fairly mobile people.

But I haven’t seen any particular wave of people go into any one particular country. There’s no perfect country. I think that used to be 30 years ago, countries which had everything. Now every country has some drawback to it. And again, it depends on what people are looking for. If you like the laid-back Caribbean lifestyle, there are a lot of great places in the Caribbean. If you want to be around a business environment, I think the UAE is a great place. If you like kind of a more laid-back but still able to do some good business, I think EU is a very popular place. If you like a lot of cutting-edge opportunities, I think there’s a lot of opportunities in Asia where you can make a lot of money. And so it just depends on the person for really the right place for them.

John:
Got it. So what is the cost annually to operate? Let’s say you establish the offshore trust, you spend the initial, what is the annual fee? And kind of like how does that actually work?

Blake:
You’re looking at around five to $10,000 per year. And it depends on, I mean, if you have active litigation, and the trustee is having to take action and actively defend the trust, that’s going to go up. But that’s pretty rare. Simply having the trust is going to deter and allow a lot of settlement. The settlement leverage depends on how often you’re having the trust send you distributions. Some clients, they don’t want to have any money in their bank account, the trustee pays your credit card bill every month, they live off their AMEX, just as though they had a billion dollars in their own bank account. But they don’t ever have any money coming into their account. Other trustees, they use it like a treasure chest every six months or so. The way I use my trust every six months or so, I’ll contribute some money to my trust. But I’m not actively using it as a day-to-day piggy bank. It keeps the cost to maintain my trust down a bit as well.

John:
So how much money would you keep in your accounts, enough to last you 90 days?

Blake:
Six months to two years’ worth of living expenses. Now if there’s active litigation, where you may be called in for a finance to compute a financial affidavit, recall them for a debtor’s exam sometime soon, then I would say keep 30 days worth of living expenses on hand or 60 days worth of living expenses on hand. But if there’s no active litigation, by the time somebody serves you with a lawsuit until they get a judgment, I mean, super fast would be six months, but it’s more like two years typically. So having six months, so years worth of living expenses, on hand makes sense. So I’d say have a year’s worth of living expenses once it gets down to about six months, replenish that.

John:
And so you fly to these locations often, do you meet their, essentially the people that are running these countries? I’ve seen I think a picture with you, maybe I don’t know if it was St. Kitts and Nevis, I’m not sure.

Blake:
I do have a photo of me on my website with the premier of Nevis. But I travel frequently. I think the majority of my time, I’m out of the country. I’ve been to probably about 15 different countries in the past year. And I do this for a lot of different reasons. One is there’s a lot about being in other countries that I like—the food, you can often get at a cheaper cost of living, and dating, there’s some good options outside the United States, like Passport for Pros. But really what I love doing is developing business relationships for my clients. Because with this, I can get better deals for my clients. And I can do a better job for my clients than a lot of other attorneys can because I’ve negotiated deals and because of the quality of work that I do with these offshore providers, and because they know me quite well and they trust me. If I bring them a client, I’m going to be bringing them good clients, and they will give me and my clients better deals, better discounts, faster service, and better service, and sometimes even accept cases which they may not accept otherwise.

John:
So what would be a case in which they wouldn’t normally accept?

Blake:
It depends on if there’s pending litigation. They will be a little bit hesitant or if the client has some issues in their background. If the issue in their background is that they got caught with a small bag of pot 10 years ago, it’s not a big issue. But if they have hard felonies or wire fraud, that may prevent them from being able to set up a trust. Or there is going to be a risk premium for them setting up a trust. The trust companies, what they don’t want is bad publicity. So as long as there’s no bad publicity involved in the process, we can usually get them set up, we can usually get them approved. I mean, we can almost always get them approved with some trust companies. But I have my preference for certain trust companies, the ones that have been in the business longer than the ones that are a little bit bigger. I mean, they’re still relatively small but bigger for an offshore trust company. And if they have any bad publicity, trying to get them approved can be a little bit complicated. But I’ve developed relationships where in certain cases where other attorneys may not be able to get them approved, we can get them pushed through compliance.

John:
What is the ballpark for the most money protected with one specific client?

Blake:
Some of these trusts have individuals who have tens of billions of dollars in assets. The biggest client that I work with was about half a billion dollars.

John:
Got it. And do these mainly come from referrals? I know you’re doing a lot of TikToks, and like, do you get some of these clients also from TikTok?

Blake:
TikTok, social media, Instagram is a source of leads. Google has been a source of business as well. If you type in Cook Islands trust attorney, there’s a pretty good chance that my law firm shows up on the front page. I do a lot of speaking engagements. I teach continuing education, so I teach other attorneys how to do this type of work. And a lot of other attorneys, they get clients who are interested in this type of work, but they’re not comfortable handling it themselves. And they’re wise enough to seek out somebody who really specializes in the area and will partner with other attorneys. And I’ll help other attorneys do this type of work for their clients. There’s a lot of referrals from past clients who we’ve worked with for a while—past clients are referring us as well.

And then sometimes just through general networking, attending a conference or even sitting at a nice hotel bar, people ask what you do. And when you say you’re an offshore trust attorney, people find that kind of interesting.

John:
Definitely. It’s not like you’re saying, I’m just an engineer or I’m just an attorney or regular litigation attorney.

Blake:
Right. So a lot from me teaching continuing education and a lot of referrals. And nowadays, social media is a part of it. I do it because it does help drive the business. I do it because it helps build community. I’ve had people who say, Hey, we’re in Madagascar, and we see that you’re talking about trusts. Do you want to do some Madagascar trust business? And no. But I’ll have the conversation. And maybe someday there will be the right fit there. And also, I have fun with social media. And I think my followers kind of pick that up. And I get asked by other business owners, Oh, should I start my social media account? And my answer is, if you’re gonna have fun doing it, then you’re going to do it a lot, and you’re gonna be good at it. But if it’s not something you enjoy, if you don’t like going on camera, if you’re not comfortable having some people spit at you in the comments, if you don’t have tough skin, it’s probably not right for you. But if you can be comfortable with your own imperfections, some days I have bad-looking hair, and I’ll still go on social media. But I enjoy presenting, and I enjoy the entertainment factor that comes with social media. So it is a part of my business, but it’s part of my life too. It’s kind of an art as well that I enjoy.

John:
Yeah, I think you can really tell who enjoys social media and who doesn’t, not just by how much content they put out, but looking in their eyes when they’re actually talking. Like, I follow some mortgage lenders, some of their posts are like, Today’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.25. Like, they’re just basically serving time like a prison sentence, doing their content. And others that are actually having a lot of fun with it are growing and getting a lot of business and creating value.

Blake:
And for me, I’m a big fan of leaning into your personal brand. Don’t try to fit the mold. I don’t wear a suit and a tie. I have a saying that suits are for bouncers and con men. I am a believer that if you’re comfortable with what you’re saying, you should be comfortable with what you’re wearing. Don’t be afraid to occasionally alienate someone because it’s more important that you are yourself. I watched an interview recently where someone was talking to Elon Musk and saying, Elon, you tweeted this, and this was a conservative thing you tweeted, and it might have put out somebody who’s potentially interested in buying a Tesla. And he’s Elon, I’m not interested in the money, I got money. I want to be myself and live my way. The last thing I’d want is to become extremely successful doing something I hate, doing something that’s not me, not being me. I want to be successful, but more than anything, I gotta be me. Yeah. And I do believe being you is really going to be something that people see, and they believe in you, and they believe that you are being authentic. And when you’re being authentic, real people really want to work with real people.

John:
Yep, 100% because it drives—well, thanks so much for coming on.

Blake:
Hey, John, this was fun. Thanks for having me.

John:
You got it, Blake. Six months to two years’ worth of living expenses. Now if there’s active litigation, where you may be called in for a finance to compute a financial affidavit, recall them for a debtor’s exam sometime soon, then I would say keep 30 days worth of living expenses on hand or 60 days worth of living expenses on hand. But if there’s no active litigation, by the time somebody serves you with a lawsuit until they get a judgment, I mean, super fast would be six months, but it’s more like two years typically. So having six months, so years worth of living expenses, on hand makes sense. So I’d say have a year’s worth of living expenses once it gets down to about six months, replenish that.

John:
And so you fly to these locations often, do you meet their, essentially the people that are running these countries? I’ve seen I think a picture with you, maybe I don’t know if it was St. Kitts and Nevis, I’m not sure.

Blake:
I do have a photo of me on my website with the premier of Nevis. But I travel frequently. I think the majority of my time, I’m out of the country. I’ve been to probably about 15 different countries in the past year. And I do this for a lot of different reasons. One is there’s a lot about being in other countries that I like—the food, you can often get at a cheaper cost of living, and dating, there’s some good options outside the United States, like Passport for Pros. But really what I love doing is developing business relationships for my clients. Because with this, I can get better deals for my clients. And I can do a better job for my clients than a lot of other attorneys can because I’ve negotiated deals and because of the quality of work that I do with these offshore providers, and because they know me quite well and they trust me. If I bring them a client, I’m going to be bringing them good clients, and they will give me and my clients better deals, better discounts, faster service, and better service, and sometimes even accept cases which they may not accept otherwise.

John:
So what would be a case in which they wouldn’t normally accept?

Blake:
It depends on if there’s pending litigation. They will be a little bit hesitant or if the client has some issues in their background. If the issue in their background is that they got caught with a small bag of pot 10 years ago, it’s not a big issue. But if they have hard felonies or wire fraud, that may prevent them from being able to set up a trust. Or there is going to be a risk premium for them setting up a trust. The trust companies, what they don’t want is bad publicity. So as long as there’s no bad publicity involved in the process, we can usually get them set up, we can usually get them approved. I mean, we can almost always get them approved with some trust companies. But I have my preference for certain trust companies, the ones that have been in the business longer than the ones that are a little bit bigger. I mean, they’re still relatively small but bigger for an offshore trust company. And if they have any bad publicity, trying to get them approved can be a little bit complicated. But I’ve developed relationships where in certain cases where other attorneys may not be able to get them approved, we can get them pushed through compliance.

John:
What is the ballpark for the most money protected with one specific client?

Blake:
Some of these trusts have individuals who have tens of billions of dollars in assets. The biggest client that I work with was about half a billion dollars.

John:
Got it. And do these mainly come from referrals? I know you’re doing a lot of TikToks, and like, do you get some of these clients also from TikTok?

Blake:
TikTok, social media, Instagram is a source of leads. Google has been a source of business as well. If you type in Cook Islands trust attorney, there’s a pretty good chance that my law firm shows up on the front page. I do a lot of speaking engagements. I teach continuing education, so I teach other attorneys how to do this type of work. And a lot of other attorneys, they get clients who are interested in this type of work, but they’re not comfortable handling it themselves. And they’re wise enough to seek out somebody who really specializes in the area and will partner with other attorneys. And I’ll help other attorneys do this type of work for their clients. There’s a lot of referrals from past clients who we’ve worked with for a while—past clients are referring us as well.

And then sometimes just through general networking, attending a conference or even sitting at a nice hotel bar, people ask what you do. And when you say you’re an offshore trust attorney, people find that kind of interesting.

John:
Definitely. It’s not like you’re saying, I’m just an engineer or I’m just an attorney or regular litigation attorney.

Blake:
Right. So a lot from me teaching continuing education and a lot of referrals. And nowadays, social media is a part of it. I do it because it does help drive the business. I do it because it helps build community. I’ve had people who say, Hey, we’re in Madagascar, and we see that you’re talking about trusts. Do you want to do some Madagascar trust business? And no. But I’ll have the conversation. And maybe someday there will be the right fit there. And also, I have fun with social media. And I think my followers kind of pick that up. And I get asked by other business owners, Oh, should I start my social media account? And my answer is, if you’re gonna have fun doing it, then you’re going to do it a lot, and you’re gonna be good at it. But if it’s not something you enjoy, if you don’t like going on camera, if you’re not comfortable having some people spit at you in the comments, if you don’t have tough skin, it’s probably not right for you. But if you can be comfortable with your own imperfections, some days I have bad-looking hair, and I’ll still go on social media. But I enjoy presenting, and I enjoy the entertainment factor that comes with social media. So it is a part of my business, but it’s part of my life too. It’s kind of an art as well that I enjoy.

John:
Yeah, I think you can really tell who enjoys social media and who doesn’t, not just by how much content they put out, but looking in their eyes when they’re actually talking. Like, I follow some mortgage lenders, some of their posts are like, Today’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.25. Like, they’re just basically serving time like a prison sentence, doing their content. And others that are actually having a lot of fun with it are growing and getting a lot of business and creating value.

Blake:
And for me, I’m a big fan of leaning into your personal brand. Don’t try to fit the mold. I don’t wear a suit and a tie. I have a saying that suits are for bouncers and con men. I am a believer that if you’re comfortable with what you’re saying, you should be comfortable with what you’re wearing. Don’t be afraid to occasionally alienate someone because it’s more important that you are yourself. I watched an interview recently where someone was talking to Elon Musk and saying, Elon, you tweeted this, and this was a conservative thing you tweeted, and it might have put out somebody who’s potentially interested in buying a Tesla. And he’s Elon, I’m not interested in the money, I got money. I want to be myself and live my way. The last thing I’d want is to become extremely successful doing something I hate, doing something that’s not me, not being me. I want to be successful, but more than anything, I gotta be me. Yeah. And I do believe being you is really going to be something that people see, and they believe in you, and they believe that you are being authentic. And when you’re being authentic, real people really want to work with real people.

John:
Yep, 100% because it drives—well, thanks so much for coming on.

Blake:
Hey, John, this was fun. Thanks for having me.

John:
You got it, Blake.