If you live in Central Oregon, you’ve no doubt seen the campy Jimmy Crumpacker campaign commercials. “I’m packin’” “send ‘em packin’” etc. etc.

It seemed harmless. Some guy moves to Tumalo and throws his hat in for the district 2 primary. He’s raising a ton of out-of-district money, and if you’ve got a war chest like his, well, he’ll probably win.

Well, it was harmless until a week or so ago, when he put out an ad where he calls himself a “successful businessman.” The script also said, “Jimmy is honest.”

This is where I start to take exception. Why? Because Jimmy has little to no verifiable business experience.

A simple Google search shows that his company, "Crumpacker Asset Management," put together an oil investment syndication in 2013, which raised just over $4 million. That would be a nice little raise if he were pulling that off a few times a year, but by itself, it’s insignificant at best.

This capital raise was called the Fleming Oil Fund, LP, and you can look up the SEC filing on it, also with a simple Google search. Now the question is, what other investments has Crumpacker Asset Management orchestrated? Search for SEC filings and Fleming is the only one. End of story for Crumpacker Asset Management. But yet, Jimmy Crumpacker is campaigning as a "successful businessman."

As it turns out, Jimmy is very pleased to have been part of that 2013 project. How do I know? Well, he serves on three boards in Portland (Oregon Ballet Theater, Meals on Wheels, and the Portland Japanese Garden), and instead of noting Crumpacker Asset Management, on all of those boards he lists his occupation as “Managing Partner for the Fleming Oil Fund.”

From: https://jimmycrumpacker.blogspot.com/2020/04/jimmy-crumpacker-for-congress-first.html

But in 2019, Jimmy joined the board of St. Paul’s School. If you're not familiar, St. Paul's is a boarding school for the mega-rich that Jimmy attended during his high school years. Tuition is $60K per year, so it's out of reach for folks like, say, we who live in Oregon congressional district 2 (CD2).

For some reason, on the St. Paul's website, Jimmy does note Crumpacker asset management in his bio. Specifically: “He is currently a managing partner at Crumpacker Asset Management. Prior to that, he worked as a managing partner for Aequitas Commodity Fund and as a portfolio manager at First New York Securities."

He should probably tell his friends at St. Paul’s to remove Aequitas from his bio. Why?

Well, in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Portland Division, on 3/31/2020, it was ruled that Aequitas was operating as a Ponzi Scheme, at least as far back as July 1, 2014.

From that ruling:

“[t]aken together, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the Aequitas Enterprise was operated as a Ponzi scheme.”

Was Jimmy a Managing Partner at Aequitas in 2014? I’m guessing he had gotten out of there by then, since he’s not named in the receivership’s findings. But the facts are: Jimmy moved back to Portland in 2012, he went to work at Aequitas, rose in the ranks to Managing Partner, and then left at some point for reasons unknown. Within at most 2.5 years of his arrival, Aequitas was defrauding investors, and, according to court documents:

“[b]y the end of 2015, [Aequitas] owed Investors $312.0 million and had virtually no operating income to repay them.”

So we’re never going to know what Jimmy’s role in Aequitas really was, but in all likelihood, he’s a seriously shitty investor if he was managing partner at an investment house that “Did not generate sufficient (any) profits to pay the promised returns to Investors”

Okay, so now let’s get back to those Portland boards he serves on. If I were Jimmy Crumpacker, I’d want clients; I’d want people to know that Crumpacker Asset Management is OPEN FOR BUSINESS! I would guess that’s one of the benefits of sitting on the board of the Portland Japanese Garden: you could publicize your asset management services to the wealthy patrons of that organization. But not Jimmy Crumpacker. 

Wanna know why? Okay, I’ll tell you.

The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to submit a Financial Disclosure Report, and Jimmy’s just hit this week. Oh, and it’s a DOOOZY!

It’s public info, so if you want to jump right into Jimmy Crumpacker’s 2019 Financial Disclosure Report, you can view it here:

http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2019/10032444.pdf

So just how much money did "successful businessman" Jimmy Crumpacker earn in 2019 from his asset management business? None.

What? He’s a successful businessman, right? His own campaign website says, “For the past seven years, Jimmy and his company, Crumpacker Asset Management, have been investing in and securing American energy independence and augmenting the historic growth of the American energy sector.”

…but he hasn’t earned a dime off that company in 2019. Or the previous year? The disclosure shouts it: Schedule C: Earned Income - NONE DISCLOSED.

Yet he has the balls to say this on his campaign website: “Having experienced tremendous private sector success, Jimmy began using his business skills to help local non-profits.”

I’ll translate that if you’d like:

“Since nobody trusts Jimmy Crumpacker with their money, and because he has so much family wealth he’ll never need to work another day in his life, he spends a couple hours a week serving on the boards of local nonprofits.” (this is my editorial)

So this leads me back to why I think Jimmy’s latest campaign ad (titled “A man’s word is everything) is so disingenuous. Jimmy Crumpacker it totally misrepresenting himself by claiming to be a political outsider who’s a tremendously successful businessman. And to add insult to injury, he makes those claims in an ad where the theme is HONESTY. The irony is so thick you could choke on it.

So take a moment to check out Jimmy Crumpacker’s financial disclosure. There’s a lot more to it than the lack of income from work. He’s the beneficiary of so many family trusts, it’ll make your head spin. The sheer amount of wealth his family (not him) has created is an amazing testament to the reality of the American dream (that and our byzantine tax code). But there’s no indication anywhere that Jimmy has played a part in creating ANY of that wealth.

For example, the first asset listed on that document are his parents' Dunthorpe house (valued between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000) in Portland. I’m guessing it’s not uncommon for wealthy folks to put the house into an LLC and transfer ownership to their kids. No messy estate taxes. "Jimmy, merry Christmas. Here's our multimillion dollar house. When we die, it's all yours, tax free!"

But it is hilariously apropos that the first asset listed in the financial disclosure of a trust-fund baby like Jimmy is his parents’ house.

The next asset, listed a “518 FR LLC” in Sun Valley Idaho, is probably the family ski mansion, with a value again listed at somewhere between $1,000,000 to $5,000,000. When Jimmy Crumpacker calls himself an avid outdoorsman in his congressional campaign ads, he probably should’ve said “Hood and Bachelor aren't good enough for me. I prefer Sun Valley.”

Go on down the list and you’ll see the Crumpacker family trusts have done an excellent job placing money in real estate, tax-free municipal bonds and mutual funds, which provide Jimmy a nice, ongoing income from the family money. Plus, he has NO liabilities, and he's been living in his parent's properties for the last eight years, so not only is most of his income tax-free, the dude has no expenses! Damn.

Oh, and should Jimmy Crumpacker run into hard times, he’s got at least a million bucks liquid in a Wells Fargo deposit account. (Probably more, but the disclosure statement gives a range of $1,000,000 to $5,000,000.)

Okay, so there you have it. Thank you for reading. All of this information is publicly available; I’m just sharing it because I believe Jimmy Crumpacker is misrepresenting himself as a businessman and I want to set the record straight. If you see ANY inaccuracies, please comment so I can make corrections.

And before you vote in ANY election, always do your research.