Offshore Trusts: The Secret to Asset Protection | Blake Harris DSH #1319

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Speaker 1 They might find it one day. Crypto doesn't lie.

Speaker 1 Crypto doesn't lie. There's a permanent record of it on the blockchain.
And I do believe in this thing called karma.

Speaker 1 I mean, I support people who take some risky bets, but you got to be careful which bets you're taking.

Speaker 1 And betting that the United States, the USA, unlimited surveillance of Americans isn't going to find out is a risk of death. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, from Miami, we got Blake Harris. We're going to talk asset protection.
Very important thing to have these days, right? I certainly think so.

Speaker 1 In a world where litigation is pretty much a badge of success, if you are successful enough in the United States, you can expect to be sued. Asset protection is very important.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I used to have the belief that if you were successful and you did good business, you wouldn't get sued. That's a very common misconception.
And I have heard that before.

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't need asset protection. I'm an upstanding business person.
Well, you may be an upstanding business person, but the person who you just signed a three-year contract with may not be.

Speaker 1 They may use the legal system. They may weaponize it against you.
And you don't want to be unprepared. Yeah.
Seems like these days it's very weaponized.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's always been like that with the legal system. It, I think, is happening more lately.

Speaker 1 I've been getting more calls from people who are involved in politics some ways, not necessarily politicians, but in some way, commentators or in the media.

Speaker 1 And they are concerned that if they are sued, they're going to get a jury that finds against them, not because they've done anything wrong, but because someone disagrees with their political beliefs or you've done something else to upset someone, even if there's not a legitimate claim, simply having to defend a lawsuit is going to be a very expensive and time-consuming process.

Speaker 1 And what ends up happening is a lot of people who, even if they've done nothing wrong, they end up paying settlement because it's just cheaper to pay a settlement than it is the cost and the time associated with trying to defend a case.

Speaker 1 And what ends up happening is we see people who become victims of what I call legal extortion.

Speaker 1 They're just paying out these settlements because it's cheaper to pay something out than it is to actually deal with fighting it. Yeah.
That happened to me last year.

Speaker 1 I just wanted to settle because I knew it would drag on for years because the financial reason is one part, but also the stress. And yes.
And Sean, you're a target.

Speaker 1 I work with quite a few people in social media. Asset protection used to be just doctors, healthcare professionals, and then expand to attorneys, engineers.

Speaker 1 Now it's a lot of different professions, but we're seeing more and more people in the media.

Speaker 1 And I think it's great, those of us who are willing to go out there and put ourselves out in the public and go on camera and say things and stand by them on video.

Speaker 1 But with that, you are inviting a lot of liability. So you definitely want to have a shield up if you're playing this game.
Absolutely. Candace Owens just got hit with another lawsuit yesterday.

Speaker 1 I haven't heard about that one yet, but I might be getting a call before too long from.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, when you're getting that many views, you're just naturally going to piss off certain people, right? Yep.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's the bigger the empire grows, the more opportunities there are for attack. Yeah.
I know you made a couple of videos on Andrew Tate, right, on YouTube. Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 I stopped because those videos would keep getting flagged. But this is your podcast.
So if we're not afraid to, actually, he was on the podcast a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 Well, my pod with him got age-restricted. Oh, did it? Yeah.
It would have gotten millions of views. But yeah, it stopped at like 300K because of that.
Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. I'm not surprised about that.

Speaker 1 Andrew, what he speaks about in his videos, and so what I'm saying is simply public knowledge already, is he talks about having a lot of different bank accounts, which is something I certainly advocate for.

Speaker 1 If you're an American, you live in America, you work in America, you're successful here, it is definitely wise to have money in other places.

Speaker 1 And that's true regardless of where you are, Europe, Asia, having money in multiple locations makes you harder to attack, makes it harder for someone to take away.

Speaker 1 What I haven't heard Andrew talk about too much in his videos, though I have heard him mention the Cook Islands before and Belize and other places we do business, is actually having the assets not just outside of your home country, but also held in a structure so that they cannot be taken away from you.

Speaker 1 And this is where my firm comes in and we set up asset protection trust.

Speaker 1 We work in several different countries. We do most of our business in Cook Islands and then Nevis and we do quite a bit of business down in Belize as well.

Speaker 1 And we're setting up self-settled asset protection trust so that our clients can still invest their money.

Speaker 1 They can take out money as they wish, but if they end up going through any type of lawsuit or litigation, we can keep their assets safe.

Speaker 1 With that being said, is it ethical to set up an offshore trust?

Speaker 1 You know, as soon as somebody starts a business here in the United States, the first thing somebody is going to tell you is go out and form an LLC to prevent yourself from being sued.

Speaker 1 As your assets grow, maybe you've got a few hundred thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 Someone's going to say, well, set up a trust for your children or set up a trust for yourself to keep yourself protected from lawsuits. Nobody questions the ethics of that.

Speaker 1 But as soon as you introduce offshore, people's lights go on and say, wait a second, is this okay? And what I'm about to say, Sean, it's not true for you. It's not true for me.

Speaker 1 It's not true for the viewers and listeners of the podcast. But for most Americans, most Americans are very narrow-minded.
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Speaker 1 Most Americans have never traveled outside of the United States, and those who have, most have not traveled beyond Canada or Mexico.

Speaker 1 If you can get somebody who has an open mind, they are going to do much better. When you look globally for solutions to your issues, you're going to be met with much better results.

Speaker 1 There's a lot more that the world has to offer. I know Justin Bieber talks about peaches out in Georgia and weed out in California.
But if you want wine, maybe look to Argentina.

Speaker 1 If you want asset protection, look to the Cook Islands or Nevis or Belize.

Speaker 1 So I also don't buy into this theory that there's anything ethical or anything honorable about being weak and being unprotected and being vulnerable and being in a state where it's easy for someone to come and take away what you've worked for, what.

Speaker 1 you have built up that's there to protect yourself and your family. I think just the opposite.
I think the highest thing we can do ethically is make ourselves as strong and as protected as possible.

Speaker 1 And with that, you're not going to find a better way to protect yourself than with an offshore trust.

Speaker 1 When it comes to bank accounts, in America, we have the FDIC guaranteeing 250K, right? If something happens, do other countries have some similar systems to that? So let's examine that statement.

Speaker 1 First of all, we have the United States guaranteeing that they will cover up to $250,000 per account.

Speaker 1 Does the FDIC actually have enough money to cover every single account? Probably not. And how long would it take the FDIC to pay out that money? It could be many years or decades.

Speaker 1 More important than finding a bank that is going to be insured when it fails, it's finding a bank that's not going to fail in the first place.

Speaker 1 The banks that my clients work with, the ones that we recommend to our clients in Switzerland, are much safer and much more secure than U.S.-based banks. Some U.S.

Speaker 1 banks keep somewhere between 5% and 10% of cash on hand. The banks we work with in Switzerland have anywhere from 25 to 40% of the cash on hand.

Speaker 1 On top of that, that, these banks, they don't take outside investors who encourage management to take risky bets. They don't engage in prop trading.
They don't engage in investment banking.

Speaker 1 Overall, it's just a much safer banking environment than you can find in the United States.

Speaker 1 And yes, Swiss banks will absolutely work with Americans. Back when Obama was president, the IRS cracked down on some Swiss banks that were not reporting accounts to the United States.

Speaker 1 And Switzerland said, or a lot of Swiss banks said, we don't want to work with Americans. We don't want to comply with the IRS.

Speaker 1 A lot of Swiss Swiss banks said, well, as bankers, we like money and you Americans have a lot of money. We actually changed their business model to cater to the American market.

Speaker 1 So, yes, we can definitely set up a Swiss bank account as well as a bank account in other jurisdictions that we work in. But Swiss is the most common, most popular one, Switzerland and Lechenstein.

Speaker 1 And then within that, you can invest in gold. silver, stocks, bonds, crypto, anything that you can invest in now, you can invest in through an off-short trust.
Swiss bank accounts.

Speaker 1 Wolf of Wall Street, baby.

Speaker 1 Wolf of Wall Street. Although had I been his attorney, he probably would have kept more of his money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because there's good privacy laws there, right? Well, good privacy laws, but the privacy is a little bit confusing. A lot of people online are promoting, oh, we have a private structure.

Speaker 1 That's really not. necessarily true because in a court, you could always be ordered to disclose what your assets are.

Speaker 1 So simply because you have this private structure doesn't mean that the court's not going to find out about the structure, but it also means that the court is not going to be able to access it.

Speaker 1 So disclosure does not compromise protection. So I don't claim that we hide assets.
What we do is protect assets.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I have a domestic trust, but you got me thinking I should look offshore now for more possibilities.

Speaker 1 So the benefits of a domestic trust as the attorney who sets these up for clients is that, well, I don't set up domestic trust, not anymore.

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Speaker 1 From the attorney's perspective, is that it's easier to convince an American to set up a Nevada trust or a Wyoming trust than it is a Cook Islands trust or a Nevis trust.

Speaker 1 They're just more familiar with the local jurisdictions. But the problem with the domestic trust is any U.S.
court can break a U.S. trust.

Speaker 1 If you want a plan that's going to stand up against the legal system of the United States, you need a plan that is controlled beyond the reach and the power of the U.S. court system.

Speaker 1 So it was the Cook Islands that originally allowed the asset protection trust industry to begin back in the 1980s. Since then, about two dozen or more countries have followed.

Speaker 1 It was 1998 that that Alaska allowed for the use of a domestic asset protection trust. But the case law has been scary for the domestic trust.
There have been several times when U.S.

Speaker 1 creditors were able to break into domestic trust. It's a completely different ballgame with the offshore trust in terms of the protection and the amount of settlement leverage that you're getting.

Speaker 1 And that's really what clients are buying. They're getting peace of mind, but they're also buying settlement leverage.

Speaker 1 So if a client's being sued for a million dollars, their assets are held in a Cook Islands trust, they're going to be able to negotiate much more that their assets are still here in Barnable in the United States.

Speaker 1 That's good to know. So, when someone sues you or your trust, what assets can they take if you don't have enough cash to cover the lawsuit?

Speaker 1 So, if somebody sues you, you have certain assets which are already protected under state and federal law.

Speaker 1 For example, your home in Florida, where I live, in Texas, it's a fully protected asset subject to certain acreage limitations.

Speaker 1 Every state has a different limitation on how much of your home is protected.

Speaker 1 So, if your home is protected up to $200,000 and it's worth $400,000 and you have a $200,000 mortgage, you have a protected asset.

Speaker 1 If there's only a little bit of equity in there, chances are a creditor is not going to go through the whole foreclosure process to try to take the asset. They may look to settle.

Speaker 1 There's also retirement accounts. It depends on what state you live in and what type of retirement account.
But generally, the first million dollars of a retirement account is pretty well protected.

Speaker 1 Other than that, you get certain minor protections, such as tools of a trade.

Speaker 1 Nobody's probably going to be able to take any of your podcast equipment, Sean, because the court wants you to continue to work and continue to make all the big money that you make, Sean, so that you can pay off your debts.

Speaker 1 They're probably not going to take much of your clothing. They'll give you a little bit of money for a car.

Speaker 1 But beyond that, your second home, your investment account, your crypto, all of that remains unprotected. And what we do with those assets is we put them into the asset protection trust.

Speaker 1 And then you can sleep well at night knowing that those assets are protected as well. Dang, I didn't know they could go after your crypto.

Speaker 1 So people think that crypto is an asset that can't be taken, but the reality is the court can order you to disclose if you have crypto. And there's a possibility some people will lie.

Speaker 1 If you do that, you risk going to prison if you ever get caught claiming that you lost it in a boating accident is probably a, well, it's definitely a risky bet.

Speaker 1 And it's probably not a good idea because if you later rediscover the crypto after losing it in the proverbial boating accident, the court's going to be suspicious.

Speaker 1 And if they find out that you did lie, not only do you lose any bankruptcy proceedings, you face potential jail time. There's no need to lie to the court.
Simply put it under the umbrella of a trust.

Speaker 1 You can disclose that you have it and still keep it protected. I like that approach because then you can sleep at night knowing you told the truth, you know? Correct.

Speaker 1 A lot of people are like, I lied about it and, you know, they might find it one day. Crypto doesn't lie.
Crypto, crypto, crypto doesn't lie. There's a permit record of it on the blockchain.

Speaker 1 And I do believe in this thing called karma. I mean, I support people who take some risky bets, but you got to be careful careful which bets you're taking.

Speaker 1 And betting that the United States, the USA unlimited surveillance of Americans isn't going to find out is a risky bet. Yeah.
When it comes to setting up the trust, do you add family members to that?

Speaker 1 Like if you're married, if you've got kids? So we will set up the trust either for an individual or for a married couple. A lot of our clients are married.
Some of them set up the trust just for them.

Speaker 1 Some of them set up for them and their spouse. We can set it up either way.
The trust then does include successor beneficiaries.

Speaker 1 So when you pass away, the trust will then pass down to your children and the assets can be divided among your children.

Speaker 1 They can continue to receive the protection from the Cook Islands Trust, from the offshore trust. Any trust, whether it's domestic or offshore, revocable or irrevocable, will avoid probate.

Speaker 1 So it does have the benefit of avoiding probate as well.

Speaker 1 So yes, you can name successor beneficiaries in the trust and you can change it out over time as you decide which of your children are your favorite. Trust fund babies.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Which children you want to make a trust fund baby out of? Yeah, both don't usually.

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Speaker 1 it's a very careful bounce that parents need to do i get asked about what is the biggest mistake that i see wealthy people make and as most i would like to say it's not protecting their assets sean it's not properly raising their children now this is beyond my scope as an attorney i'm here to give legal advice and when a

Speaker 1 client and I meet for dinner and they bring their eight-year-old along and the entire time they leave the eight-year-old on the iPad. Might be upsetting some people by saying this.

Speaker 1 They're missing out on an opportunity for that eight-year-old to get socialized and learn how to communicate with adults and even learn a little bit of business along the way.

Speaker 1 You want to make sure that your children are challenged appropriately.

Speaker 1 Money for a child can be a wonderful thing and it can enable them to do all kinds of great things and learn and grow and experience and become stronger and better and safer.

Speaker 1 Money can ruin a child as well. So I do believe there's a difference between giving your child a trust fund and making a trust fund baby out of your child.

Speaker 1 If you can get your child where they are strong and capable and able and productive, and they're able to do the things that make any adult happy and then empower that with some extra money, that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1 But if you are causing them not to go out and go through the struggles that we as humans need to go through in order to really feel we've lived a life, you're destroying them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Bezos had a pretty nasty divorce a few years ago. I wonder if you had the proper trust in place with that.

Speaker 1 Asset protection is something that, believe it or not, is most commonly done by people with a more moderate level of wealth.

Speaker 1 Most of my clients have somewhere between about $1 and $10 million in assets. We do have quite a few clients whose net worth is a little bit under a million.

Speaker 1 They may have had some additional heat that motivated them. We do have a handful of clients whose net worth is...
well above or significantly above $10 million.

Speaker 1 But most lawsuits being brought are being brought against individuals with $2 million or less. I certainly imagine that someone at Jeff Bezos' level has done some type of asset protection planning.

Speaker 1 There are Cook Islands trusts out there which hold more than $10 billion in assets. And so he's definitely one person who would benefit very well from doing this type of planning.

Speaker 1 In many circumstances, Sean, a few hours of asset protection planning can do more to preserve an estate than decades of working.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you see some estates where the person passes away and then it's just a fight for all the assets. They didn't have the proper structure.
Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 I mean, getting into estate administration is something that can be a bit messy. And if you plan ahead, it definitely can help mitigate that mess.
Did you see the Michael Jackson estate?

Speaker 1 I've read a little bit about the Michael Jackson estate. I've read a little bit about various different estates.
And one thing that I noticed early in my practice, I did do some estate administration.

Speaker 1 If the person lived a pretty unstable life, the probate was a pretty wild process. If they lived a pretty smooth life, the probate went pretty smooth.

Speaker 1 And so Michael Jackson, I think, is one person who probably had a few ups and downs along the way. And afterlife, it seemed that

Speaker 1 energy flow continued to bounce back and forth. Yeah.
What's the worst case of poor asset protection you've seen or heard of? What's the worst case of poor

Speaker 1 asset protection? I mean, there's plenty of stories of very wealthy people who slack on their asset protection planning.

Speaker 1 I get asked, do all celebrities, do all super wealthy people have asset protection planning in place? And the answer is absolutely not.

Speaker 1 Now, there's very successful and seemingly smart individuals who completely have

Speaker 1 a very big blind spot. A lot of very wealthy people do.

Speaker 1 A lot of successful and famous people have done a good job with their asset protection planning, but a lot have completely neglected a very important component of their planning. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I see a lot of pro-athletes get targeted too. Correct.
And what will happen is one of them will get targeted and then all of their

Speaker 1 people they work with, all their colleagues, start calling my office.

Speaker 1 When one doctor gets sued, the rest of the hospital will start to start to call in.

Speaker 1 Or sometimes an individual will get sued for a smaller amount and they'll get a wake-up call and say, well, we need to take action to protect ourselves going forward.

Speaker 1 And what's the most common lawsuit you're seeing these guys get hit with? So the most common lawsuits, number one, I would say business disputes. An employee is unhappy.

Speaker 1 It's very easy to exaggerate or fabricate a claim. Lots of employees.

Speaker 1 lawsuits or it's simply business partners not seeing eye to eye on something suppliers not following through on something they promised during economic shake-ups. We see this more happen after COVID.

Speaker 1 We have a lot of people who are hooked on long-term leases that they couldn't pay for. Business disputes.
Next, car accidents. Our nation's roads are quickly becoming a highway to wealth.

Speaker 1 Buy as much car insurance as your agent will sell you. If you have children driving your cars, as soon as they turn 18, put the cars in their name and ideally don't buy them a very fast car.

Speaker 1 And third, and this is not going to be the most romantic advice anyone's ever shared at this table, but sign a prenup or a post-nuptial agreement. Divorce is the most common lawsuit.

Speaker 1 Doing everything you can to mitigate the headache that goes along with that. Otherwise, emotionally tolling experience is wise.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you need a good prenup too, because with Bezos, I think some cheated or something and then it was void because of that. So, correct.
Prenups, postnumps are often disregarded.

Speaker 1 So I recommend putting them in place. The only hesitation I ever say is, well, it may upset your future spouse.
But otherwise, I do recommend having them. But I don't recommend relying on them alone.

Speaker 1 I recommend doing some asset protection planning because that is the type of planning that a U.S. court cannot disregard.

Speaker 1 I love what you said about car insurance because I used to try to cheap out on that. And my financial advisor was like, you got to buy the most expensive plan.

Speaker 1 It's very common that a lot of people buy the minimum amount of car insurance possible. And if you don't have any other assets, maybe it's not such a bad strategy.

Speaker 1 Chances are a plaintiff attorney is not going to get a judgment against you that they can't collect on.

Speaker 1 But if your net worth grows to the point that you become appetizing for a plaintiff attorney, having that cushion of insurance in there between the plaintiff and your assets is very helpful.

Speaker 1 I don't recommend relying on insurance alone because, well, there's a possibility that you miss paying one month and your coverage has a gap.

Speaker 1 There's also the possibility that a claim can go beyond policy limits or that there's a legitimate claim. but it's big enough that the insurance company decides to try to escape liability.

Speaker 1 They claim that instead of you being negligent, you were grossly negligent, which may not be covered, or for whatever reason, they try to hide behind some type of exclusion.

Speaker 1 Insurance companies don't generally go over the list of exclusions at the time that they sell you the policy. But when it comes time to cash in, then they may try to hide behind one of the exclusions.

Speaker 1 So buy the insurance, but don't rely on the insurance. That's good to know.
Yeah, when I was growing up, I was on the 2550K one, but we got to up that to a million. Good, good.
Yeah. Yep, yep.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Different ballgame you're playing now, Sean. Yeah, we're in the pre leagues now.
Yep, yep. I want to learn how you, how you grew this and started this because this is impressive, man.

Speaker 1 Did it take off right away? So it's a service-based business, which generally don't take off right away. It's not like a tech company where you can wake up to a million new customers.

Speaker 1 It's a law firm is something that you have to do the work and people have to see that you've done the work. And then once they've seen that you've done the work, then the business grows naturally.
But

Speaker 1 it has grown nicely. It's taken over a decade that I've been building my law firm.
It started out, well, pretty much with just me. Now I've got a team of about 10 people.
I don't believe any other

Speaker 1 offshore asset protection law firm in the nation is bigger than our team.

Speaker 1 I have been told by the leading Cook Islands trust company that my law firm for the past several years has registered more trust with them than any other law firm in the world. Wow.

Speaker 1 And it's been very much a game of a couple of things.

Speaker 1 Number one, of course, doing good work for clients, doing the things you say you're going to do on the timeline you say you're going to do them, not surprising them with fees, and getting clients to say good things about you.

Speaker 1 That's been a very helpful part of growing the business.

Speaker 1 Also, building out the right team, both internally, training your staff while training everybody to communicate the brand that you want to communicate for the firm.

Speaker 1 It's very important to me that everyone who comes through, whether they are a client with just a few hundred thousand or hundreds of millions of dollars, they get Rich Carlton treatment with us.

Speaker 1 On top of that, it's been growing the team externally.

Speaker 1 Bankers, trust companies, attorneys, CPAs, all throughout the world. I built up a global Rolodex, which I don't believe anybody else in my field comes close to.

Speaker 1 I've traveled to close to 50 different countries, and we have lots of different options for our clients in terms of asset protection planning. We work with clients from all over the

Speaker 1 world. And

Speaker 1 it's been a fun journey. And it's been a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1 And it's been paid dividends, not just financially, but in so many different ways of getting to grow an experience, getting to experience growing a business.

Speaker 1 And it feels very good because I very much believe in what we are doing. Freedom does not exist without protection.

Speaker 1 And by helping to protect assets, we are helping to ensure freedom. Yeah, that's impressive.
You got a lean team, but your results are massive. Thank you.
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 We've had over 70 Google reviews every single one to five out of five stars. Wow.
That's almost unheard of to have a five out of five on reviews these days.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 we've done a good job for our clients. Yeah.
I built a good team. Thank you.
Well done. And it's a really good service because I don't hear many people offering this type of offshore service.

Speaker 1 There are not a lot of players in this field. I would say that the number of attorneys who focus exclusively on offshore planning,

Speaker 1 less than 10, maybe less than five. Wow.
Now, there's quite a few attorneys who they are maybe an estate planning attorney or business planning attorney.

Speaker 1 They may do one or two Cook Islands trusts a year. And they added, it's part of their business.
But in terms of firms that are fully focused on offshore, very few. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, can you access that money freely when it's offshore? Anytime you want it. You request a distribution from your trustee about a week later.
They'll wire you some funds.

Speaker 1 The only time that you won't be able to access your funds is in the situation that you're acting under court order.

Speaker 1 If a court has ordered you, Sean, to bring back a million dollars from your trust, you will say, yes, court i will do whatever i'm ordered by the court to do you send a request to the trustee the trustee is then going to ask sean were you acting under court order and they're going to require you to swear under penalty of perjury that you're not acting under court order and you're not going to lie under penalty perjury you're not going to be ordered by the court to perjure yourself and without you saying that you are not under perjury not under duress, the trustee will not release the funds.

Speaker 1 So generally, anytime you want your money, you will get it. The only time you will be prevented is in a situation where you essentially want to be prevented.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 Have you done anything in the Middle East yet, Dubai, Saudi Arabia? So we have offices in New York, Denver, Miami, where I live, and Dubai. Oh, wow.
We've got a few clients from Dubai.

Speaker 1 Part of the reason we opened the Dubai office, we do want to open ourselves to the market there, but we also want to show the world that we are not just a U.S.-based firm, that we will work with clients from outside the United States.

Speaker 1 So Dubai is a place that I have a few clients and we are definitely keeping an eye on it.

Speaker 1 We are in terms of the asset protection law firm, I'm pretty sure we're the only ones with an international office. And I think, and we are almost certainly the most crypto-friendly law firm.

Speaker 1 We would take payment in crypto. We've helped clients move crypto to overseas accounts to

Speaker 1 keep it out of reach of any U.S. corridors.
How are you feeling about crypto right now? It's down a lot.

Speaker 1 You can't change your opinion on crypto because it took a dip last week. You're either a believer in crypto or you're not.
I'm very much a believer in crypto.

Speaker 1 I think that long term its use is going to continue to survive.

Speaker 1 I don't think that the US dollar or that a lot of other currencies are going to disappear and we're going to be in a crypto only world, but we're going to live in a world where the Swiss franc exists, crypto, Bitcoin exists, Ethereum exists.

Speaker 1 the British pound exists, the US dollar exists, the Euro exists. So it's going to be one of many different currencies that are out there.

Speaker 1 And I do think business owners would be wise to start accepting payment in crypto. We're one of the very few law firms that accepts payment in crypto, though.

Speaker 1 More and more law firms are catching on in that area. I do think that

Speaker 1 there will be future times where Bitcoin crashes, crashes down, crashes up. But I am a believer in it long term.
I'm not giving anyone investment advice or recommending that you buy Bitcoin.

Speaker 1 Don't sue me when

Speaker 1 your shit corn portfolio crashes. But I do advocate for education on it.
Well, even if you get sued, I bet you have nothing in your personal name. The way you sound your stuff.
I am

Speaker 1 probably not the easiest person to collect from.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know some of my mentors are like 100 millionaires, 70 millionaires, but on paper, they're broke. That's situations I may have come across.
I mean, that's a brilliant way of doing things. Yes.

Speaker 1 Own nothing, control everything. Yeah.
I wonder how Trump sets up his stuff. Probably similar, right?

Speaker 1 So when you have a high-profile person like Trump or like Andrew Tate, it becomes a bit more complicated to set up an asset protection plan because the trust companies are very concerned about their reputation.

Speaker 1 And if you are a media personality, it becomes harder to get approved with the trust companies. It also becomes harder to get approved with banks.

Speaker 1 There are some very well-known celebrities who do crazy stuff from time to time, and they have trouble and limitations on which banks will take them, which trust companies will take them.

Speaker 1 But this is a big part of the reason that I spend so much time traveling, and I have just showed up at trust companies before, knocked on their doors.

Speaker 1 I've done the same thing for banks as well, because I want to be able to tell prospective clients.

Speaker 1 that if it is possible to set up an asset protection plan, there's nobody who has a better chance of setting up an asset protection plan for you than me and my law firm.

Speaker 1 That's smart because I know of banks banning people, friends of mine. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Banks ban people, trust companies ban people. Some attorneys will be apprehensive to work with you in certain circumstances.
And I certainly don't work with everyone who gives my office a call.

Speaker 1 We've turned down plenty of clients along the way. But just because somebody has something in their background doesn't preclude us from working with them.

Speaker 1 I just generally don't want to work with someone who I deem to be. unethical.

Speaker 1 But if you've made a mistake or there was some injury along the way, we will still usually try to work with someone.

Speaker 1 It is definitely much better to set up the asset protection trust before any litigation. But if a litigation has started, there is often something that can be done to mitigate damage.
Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Much better results if you do it before anything arises. But as long as it's not the federal government on the other side, even once a lawsuit has hit...

Speaker 1 has started, there's often something that could be done to make it a little bit harder for someone to collect. Yeah.
I'm learning a lot about lawsuits lately.

Speaker 1 Like even if someone wins, they still have to collect. Correct.
And that part could be difficult, right? Correct.

Speaker 1 And if you can tell the opposing party that you can win this lawsuit, but everything I have is uncollectible, chances are they'll drop the case. We've seen that.
Or they will talk settlement.

Speaker 1 Which is a great negotiating tactic, right? Yep. That's what the trust is.
It's a tool that buys you settlement leverage. Love them.

Speaker 1 And let's talk about why it's such a powerful tool for a second.

Speaker 1 here in the united states if you want to bring a lawsuit you're probably going to bring in a contingency fee you don't have to bring anything pay anything to bring the lawsuit uh you're heavily advertised to so people who are not thinking about bringing lawsuits are bringing lawsuits because some attorneys are out there stirring a business which would not otherwise be brought you can amend a claim you generally don't have to post any bond in order to bring a lawsuit in the united states now let's compare that to the cook islands in the cook islands you have to post a bond sometimes a hundred thousand dollars or more You can't amend the claims.

Speaker 1 If you start a lawsuit, you have to completely scratch your lawsuit and start from scratch, which if you do that, statute of limitations are probably already passed, which is one to two years in the Cook Islands.

Speaker 1 You have to prove your case in the Cook Islands by a standard beyond a reasonable doubt. In America, in order to win most cases, it's a standard of a preponderance of the evidence.

Speaker 1 So 51% to 49%, you win the case. In the Cook Islands, to win a civil case, they apply what America uses for the criminal standard, which is that of beyond a reasonable doubt, more like 99.9%.

Speaker 1 Because of all these hurdles, and you can't use a U.S. licensed attorney, you have to find one that can practice in the Cook Islands.

Speaker 1 Because of all these hurdles, most plaintiffs don't even bother to go to the Cook Islands.

Speaker 1 And the plaintiffs who have, their success rate has been so low that most plaintiffs are very scared away or scared away from even trying to litigate overseas. Wow.
That is good to know, man. It's,

Speaker 1 it's, I certainly think so.

Speaker 1 Well, we'll include a link in this video for people to be a client of yours for sure. Well, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 It's the one thing we do. And if people want to learn more, you can share all my socials now.

Speaker 1 Blake Harris Law, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,

Speaker 1 X.

Speaker 1 If you would like to read more, I have a book that I've written. Don't let a lawsuit take away everything.
Happy to share a copy of the book as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it on Audible too?

Speaker 1 Is it on Audible?

Speaker 1 It is in progress of being on Audible. I've done a video recording, so I don't know where we are in that process.
But yes, we are going to be releasing it to Berford as an audiobook soon or not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll link everything below. Thanks for coming on, man.
Hey, Sean, thanks so much for having me. This was great.
Absolutely. Check them out, guys, in the description below.
See you next time.