User:Indy beetle/Global Growth

Following The Signpost's March 29 story on suspicious editing at Jeffrey Epstein, this month seems a good time to profile the article of another reputed billionaire who's life has taken some strange turns, Greg Lindberg. Lindberg is a business executive who resides in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The relevant article summarizes and cites the various publications which report his March 2020 conviction. The story in the sources is that this person offered millions of dollars in bribes to North Carolina insurance regulators in exchange for reduced scrutiny on the insurance companies he owned. As the case involved activities measured in billions of dollars, many people were stakeholders in the outcome and the related media output was diverse. Among these articles The Wall Street Journal published an intriguing narrative titled "Insurance Tycoon Spied on Women Who Caught His Eye" in which they profile Apex International LLC, a company which Lindberg owned and which provided close protection services for the Lindberg family. The Wall Street Journal described that the activities of Apex International included surveillance of women including those popular on social media. The methods of observation included having an agent enroll in a class with one woman to observe her and renting an apartment next to another for video monitoring. These agents would track the women's comings and goings if they had boyfriends. Typically Wikipedia editors take little notice of the content of articles, and instead only discuss how to be the best possible encyclopedia by presenting the information from the sources.

It happens that another activity of Apex International was conflict of interest Wikipedia editing on behalf of Lindberg. Regular Wikipedia volunteer editors took notice, provided customary guidance for editing, and responded to this paid Wikipedia editing and its various suggestions to remove certain content and include other content. The following narrative presents the story in the media, the order of edits to Wikipedia articles, and links to conversations which happened along the way. If any reader has interpretations or reflections on any of this, then The Signpost invites comments below.

A dive into the rise and fall of an insurance tycoon

By his own account, Lindberg was just a college kid with $5,000 and an idea and over the course of two decades transformed a small, self-started healthcare industry newsletter into an international, multibillion dollar conglomerate, Eli Global, by being a "bootstrap entrepreneur". From 2014 onward he quickly amassed a small empire of insurance companies and his conglomerate's profitability dramatically increased, as did his own net worth. According to investigations conducted by The Wall Street Journal, Lindberg used the cash assets—kept by these companies to fulfill payouts to their policy holders—to invest in Eli Global's other subsidiaries and make further acquisitions. Warren Buffet has made a fortune using this strategy. These so-called "affiliated investments" are normally capped by state laws to limit the risks posed to insurance policy holders in the event they turn out to be less than profitable ventures.

Greg Lindberg, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Lindberg managed to duck these caps by moving his insurance companies to North Carolina, where the limits are not set by firm legislation but instead left to the discretion of the North Carolina Department of Insurance. He reached an agreement with Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Goodwin, a member of the Democratic Party, to have the caps raised above their customary level for his companies, though even this was breached on at least one occasion. The Wall Street Journal estimated that Lindberg ultimately made $2 billion worth in affiliated investments. Eli Global became increasingly profitable and, by 2019, had over 100 companies in its portfolio. His reported personal wealth also dramatically increased, and he acquired multiple mansions across the United States, a large yacht, and a private jet.

While all of this was going on, Lindberg began to take a sudden interest in politics. In February 2016 he made his first financial contribution to a political cause in North Carolina, donating to Goodwin's reelection campaign to the Commissioner of Insurance office. That month he also hosted a fundraiser for Goodwin. Lindberg then began funding N.C. Opportunity Committee, a political action committee which produced pro-Goodwin advertisements. Between 2016 and 2018 he donated over $7.5 million to independent expenditure political action committees, state political committees, and federal political committees. Most of his contributions were given to members of the Republican Party, though he also gave a significant amount of money to Democrats. In May 2018 N.C. Opportunity Committee dissolved and about a month later Lindberg created N.C. Growth and Prosperity, a new North Carolina-based political action committee.

In November 2017 Lindberg began donating money to political candidates' campaign funds in Florida, the same month one of his companies was declared "financially impaired" and thus restricted from doing business by state regulators. He gave a lot more to Florida Republicans during the 2018 elections, which included a transfer of $350,000 to political action committees supporting Rick Scott's candidacy for the U.S. Senate and other contributions to local legislative leaders and Chief Financial Officer of Florida Jimmy Patronis, whose office oversees the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. He also donated at least $25,000 to Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon's reelection campaign either personally or through his companies.

Over two years time Lindberg had gone from being a political nobody to one of the largest independent donors to campaigns in both North Carolina and Florida. He remained relatively mysterious, however, declining interview with the media. Even when he decided to partner with the North Carolina-based Legislative Black Caucus Foundation (an organisation composed of African-American Democrats in the local legislature) to support a scholarship fund for students at historically black colleges and universities, he refrained from showing up at the press conference where the announcement was made. People had no solid idea of what his motives were, aside from various spokesmen saying he supported "business-minded" politicians. In the words of one reporter: "Longtime North Carolina politicos, some who have gotten money from Lindberg and some who haven't, either don't know what he wants or aren't saying. Publicly, there is only speculation. Many say they hardly know him." Within a year the picture would become much clearer.

In April 2019 news broke that Lindberg, two of his associates, and North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes were indicted by federal prosecutors for financial crimes including wire fraud and bribery. According to the indictment, Lindberg and his associates—coordinating with Hayes—promised to donate millions of dollars to the North Carolina Republican Party in exchange for favorable treatment of his insurance companies and the dismissal of a deputy insurance commissioner. The investigation was conducted with the assistance of Mike Causey, the new insurance commissioner who had unseated Goodwin in the 2016 elections. When Causey came into office, Lindberg tried to approach him and convince him to be as lenient as his predecessor was. Suspicious, Causey had contacted the authorities, and ultimately worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to capture on video Lindberg's attempts to bribe him. In September Lindberg stepped down from his position at Eli Global, which quickly re-branded itself as Global Growth.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, in October The Wall Street Journal returned with another bombshell, revealing that Lindberg had enlisted one of his own companies, Apex International LLC, to deploy operatives to stalk the various women he was dating, sometimes for 24 hours a day. Apex International LLC bills themselves on Twitter as a "Professional, Elite private security company". According to a court filing by Lindberg, "Apex was established to provide close protection services for Lindberg and his family."

On March 5, 2020 Lindberg was found guilty of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and bribery by a federal jury. Every step of the way, the bad news was accompanied by a flurry of press releases emanating one way or another from Lindberg and his entities, denouncing Causey as a liar, trashing the Wall Street Journal stories, and insisting that the jury who convicted him only heard half the story. Lindberg has now filed a lawsuit against Causey accusing him of entrapment, and has declared his intention to file for an appeal. But in the short time frame since his trial Lindberg has run afoul of the justice system again, when it was revealed that a consultant he hired was attempting to contact the former jurors. The more money Lindberg seems to throw at his problems, the worse they get.

If that all sounded interesting, the story of the Wikipedia article about him will seem similarly intriguing.

Sarah G Eli

On 6 February 2018 an account known as User:Sarah G Eli logged its first edit on Wikipedia, a relatively minor addition to the biography of an American motivational speaker. Two more similar edits followed in quick fashion. Then, about an hour later, the account made an addition to the article for Eli Global (which dates to 2016), writing in the lead that "In October 2017, Eli Global was ranked as one of the Top 50 Privately Held Entities in the Research Triangle." This "ranking" was done by the Triangle Business Journal, a publication local to the Raleigh/Durham area. Sarah G Eli did not care to mention that this was a trivial listing of private companies in the area by largest number of reported employees, not a critical appraisal of their commercial success.

About half an hour later, Sarah G Eli created a draft in their sandbox for Greg Lindberg, followed shortly by an additional edit. At this early stage, the draft article was relatively bare bones and stated his education, gave a single example of a pledged gift to a college scholarship initiative a dedicated subtitle of "Philanthropy", and included a cursory overview of his contributions to political candidates and organizations in North Carolina. Five days later the account removed some relatively uncontroversial information from the Eli Global article, before going silent for several months. They returned on August 15 2018, adding a "Career" section to the draft, which, though it cited news sources, read in the promotional and vague fashion of his personal website. Over the next ten minutes they linked Lindberg's name in the Eli Global article and moved the draft to articlespace. About 45 minutes later User:Barkeep49 posted a standard "Welcome to Wikipedia!" message to their talk page with some warnings and advice regarding the WP:Conflict of Interest policy. Barkeep49 then performed some cleanup on the article, removing the "Philanthropy" section and rephrasing the promotional language.

The Greg Lindberg Wikipedia article as it first looked in the article mainspace

The Sarah G Eli account was renamed User:Green Beans 721 that same day after their last edit by User:Céréales Killer for unclear reasons, though probably as a result of a rename request. Whatever the case, it seems a strong possibility that from the start the article was marred by paid editing.

Enter the scandals

Things remained relatively quiet at the Greg Lindberg article until late February 2019, when the news from The Wall Street Journal about his extensive affiliated investments strategy broke. Someone added this to the lead, and soon thereafter User:MT9429, a brand new account, arrived to add "Lindberg's response to Wall Street Journal's reporting", which read, "Lindberg's representatives have refuted the accuracy of the Wall Street Journal's reporting" and was cited to a press release. User:Smallbones jumped in to revert the edit, noting that it would acceptable to describe the story as "disputed" if there was a reliable source that described this. MT9429 did just that, though the new text they added just vaguely said that "Lindberg asserts that the Wall Street Journal omitted key facts from the story". User:Loeklimbo did some followup citation and formatting cleanup and re-added the press release, though this seems to be an honest mistake. When they were done, however, the article seemed to be giving undue weight to defending Lindberg's actions. MT9429 returned on March 25, adding Lindberg's claimed net worth and more defensive language about how North Carolina's laws didn't explicitly limit affiliated investments. The account has since remained inactive.

When the indictment against Lindberg became public on April 2, an IP editor dropped by to add that information to the "Political Donations" section. On November 5, a different IP editor added a great amount of POV text to the article, much of which appeared to be lifted from Lindberg's personal website. It included statements about "Greg’s love of the written word", that "he is a strong believer in the freedom of the press", a full section devoted to "The Global Growth Model", mentions of "philanthropy", accusations of attacks from the media and denunciations of the court proceedings against him as "legally flawed" and involving "unjust charges stemming from a political opponent". Some of the claims were not only biased but factually inaccurate. There was also an entire "In the News" section, similar to the one on Lindberg's private website, which consisted of a very unencyclopedic overview of what various news publications had said about Linberg and, in some cases, his responses to them via press release. An editor soon thereafter toned down some of the language, but the page was largely left unaltered. Screenshots of the page after the IP's edit are below:

Mikec85

On November 12, User:Mikec85 entered the picture. From then until November 29, they made a series of sweeping changes to the article, removing some of the biased language but making even more problematic additions. This included the insertion of numerous external links into the article text, accusations against Wall Street Journal reporter Mark Maremont of writing "defamatory" articles against Lindberg (a probable WP:BLP violation), a direct quote from the Global Growth website, and references to legal motions filed by Lindberg to halt the court proceedings against him.

Edit by Mikec85 on November 20, 2019 to the Greg Linberg article

They returned on December 14 to add a photograph of Lindberg as a child from his website (which was later deleted for lack of licensing information), captioned with an inspirational quote about youth lifted from the same source. Smallbones turned up two days later and proceeded to scrub the article of most of the uncited or poorly cited material, rephrase the biased language, and tag what remained for issues. Mikec85 responded with several unexplained reversions, returning the article to its troubled state. Smallbones rolled these back, saying reliable sources were needed to support this information. User:Bri.public made further removals, noting the "Career" section was unsourced and that "The Global Growth Model" was promotional.

At the same time, Smallbones went to Mikec85's talk page, asking if they were a WP:PAID single-purpose account and admonishing them to adhere to Wikipedia policy by making a disclosure and encouraging them to read the conflict of interest policy. They then summarised the issues with the Lindberg page, explaining that only reliable sources could be used to construct it and that copying swathes of Linberg's private website was leading to copyright violations. Mikec85 responded shortly (emphasis added):

“ I can confirm I am a SPA and that I'm a paid editor as I am the webmaster/administrator for www.greglindberg.com. I have the authorization to cite any material from his website. I am paid by a company called Apex International LLC. Thank you for providing me with the rules I will follow them from now on. As mentioned above, I am the webmaster/administrator/copyright for www.greglindberg.com and I have the authorization to share material from Lindberg's websites. ”

As noted above, Apex International LLC is the same firm that Lindberg employed to track the women he dated.

Smallbones responded by asking Mikec85 to list their paid edits on their userpage and add a paid disclosure notice to the talk page of the Lindberg article, which they subsequently carried out. Mikec85 listed none of their subsequent paid edits on their userpage. They then added a "Philanthropy" section to the article. Smallbones reverted this, stating that thousands of dollars or previous giving and thousands more pledged were relatively minor for someone who purported to be a billionaire. They also changed the "In the news" section title to "Bribery indictment" and removed the claims cited to primary documents created. Mikec85 asked Smallbones on their own talk page why, after the cleanup, "bribery is the sole focus" of the article page. Smallbones explained at length the sourcing issues with the other material and noted that "Bribery indictment" was a more suitable section heading than "In the news", per WP:NOTNEWS, and as it actually mentioned what had occurred. Smallbones also posted the following notice on the Greg Lindberg talk page:

“ User:Mikec85 has declared that he is a paid editor on his talk page. Most of the edits I just made are explained on that page. I don't think that Mikec85, was intentionally violating Wikipedia's rules. Likely, he simply did not know about them. Still, the result was that Greg Lindberg was controlling the writing and editing of Wikipedia's article on Greg Lindberg. This is not a situation that can continue. If Mikec85/Lindberg continue to edit, he/they should be banned or blocked. ”

Mikec85 went back to Lindberg article on December 22 and changed the "Bribery indictment" to "Recent events". On their talk page they explained:

“ Ok, I understand the rules and editing requirements. To me, "Bribery Indictment/Charges" still seems very subjective. I have changed the title to "Recent Events" as that does not declare news or anything that misrepresents or promotes Mr. Lindberg. Can we agree on that title. ”

It appears this message went unnoticed by Smallbones.

Things went quiet until early February when Mikec85 resurfaced. They added "new news and events" and restored the philanthropy section as "Donations". The "Recent Events" now read as disjointed Wikipedia:Proseline littered with statements in a "On X day, news organisation Y published Z" format and press release material. Mikec85 even characterised a press release issued via PR Newswire as "an article". Smallbones reverted this information for the same reasons they had explained before, and posted on the article talk page that they would recommend that Mikc85 be banned if they made another direct edit to the article.

On March 5, the day of Lindberg's conviction, an anonymous IP editor added the following to the Lindberg Wikipedia page: "On March 5th 2020, Greg Lindberg was found guilty on all charges and faces up to 30 years in prison. He also faces other investigations of fraud in his business dealings. He has been described as 'wicked smart' by some of his colleagues this proves that they were only half right in their assessment." The snide remark about Lindberg being "wicked" was an unwarranted attack, but the note about him being convicted was well-sourced to a Wall Street Journal article. Nevertheless, there was an "edit war" over this entire paragraph, with users removing it and adding it back again.

While all this was going on, Mikec85 inserted a quote from a press release via Business Wire from Lindberg's successor at Global Growth accusing Mike Causey of lying to federal authorities about the facts of the bribery case—a criminal accusation. User:Gerntrash later removed it.

Jumpingjacks67

On March 8, User:Jumpingjacks67 logged their first edit on Wikipedia, adding hopelessly biased language to the article and a bare URL to a press release. In subsequent edits, they made additions about Lindberg's "innovative" business model and his "generous donations to several good causes including HBCU's"—which in retrospect seems more like an attempt by Lindberg to buy favor with black legislators. Gerntrash removed these.

Jumpingjacks67's first edit to Wikipedia

Jumpingjacks67's next major edit was to remove the paragraph about the indictment mentioned above. When they were reverted, they performed the action again and said that the information was unsupported and unfair, when they should have only removed the demeaning comment about Lindberg being wicked. This ended the brief edit war about that paragraph, and also marked the removal of any information on the article mentioning the fact that Lindberg had been found guilty of bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by a jury. Jumpingjacks67 proceeded to restore most of the content removed by Gerntrash, saying "This is a timeline and it is important to give a full picture of the next step in the timeline". Curiously, by the time they had performed their last edit on March 10, this "full picture" timeline did not explicitly mention Lindberg's conviction but did include the accusation against Causey of lying to federal authorities.

Gerntrash later posted on the Lindberg talk page, "There has also been repeated whitewashing by user:Jumpingjacks67".

"The party is now over..."

On March 12, I was doing the regular rounds on my watchlist and jumped from Tom Fetzer to Robin Hayes, where I had previously contributed to the paragraph about Hayes' indictment in the bribery scandal. Greg Lindberg had been wikilinked in the text, and when I clicked on it I was brought to a mess of an article. I spent the next two weeks rewriting it, which included a more thorough discussion of Lindberg's political contributions and trouble with the law. By March 30, the article had been brought up to a relatively respectable state for the first time in its existence.

Later that morning Mikec85 made a sudden appearance. Disregarding the previous guidance given to them, they replaced the sentence in the lead mentioning Lindberg's conviction with an explanation of his lawsuit against Causey, fluffed up his education, and added long quotes from press releases that defended Lindberg from the Wall Street Journal exposé about his use of Apex International LLC to spy on the women he dated. I reverted them later that day. On 1 April they added the word "appeal" to the "Criminal indictment and conviction" subheading, maintaining that "there is currently an ongoing appeal". I reverted them again, explaining that no reliable secondary source had confirmed the existence of an appeal. They also attempted to remove the WikiProject US and WikiProject NC banner from the talk page for unclear reasons. In response to my reversion, they declared on their own talk page "You cannot say CONVICTION as Judge Cogburn has not made any conviction ruling. A jury ruled Lindberg guilty, however, Cogburn made no adverse ruling or conviction due to the appeal. Stating 'conviction' is simply false." I replied with two dictionary definitions of the word conviction and a list of news articles which described the guilty verdict against Lindberg as such.

About a half hour later Smallbones returned to the Lindberg talk page deliver the bad news (emphasis added):

“ @Mikec85: The party is now over. Please don't post on the article page again. You know that's strongly advised against, and you have been abusing the minor exemption to the general rule. You can continue to post on this page. Lindberg has been convicted, your gig is up. If you do continue to edit for Lindberg - make sure to get paid in advance. Yeah, there may be an appeal. If it is published in a reliable source you can put it on this talk page. I think you've done enough to be permanently blocked already, but that's up to the admins ”

Mikec85 replied:

“ @Smallbones, is there a way I can forward you a document from our legal team addressing numerous false statements without proper citations and sources? I'd like to be able to discuss several issues that continue to stand regarding Mr. Lindberg. There are numerous falsehoods published as fact about Lindberg's business practices, despite media sources stating the opposite. I can send you a word.doc that you can feel free to address?

Also, why will you not include the Charitable Donations made by Mr. Lindberg? He has donated 1 million to NC HBCUs, and has donated to the Oklahoma Food Bank and NC Special Olympics. I posted these and they were promptly removed, even though I had the citations to back them up. This appears to be very slanted against Mr. Lindberg and it is apparent there is an agenda here.

”

I delivered a relatively lengthy explanation of sourcing policy for why a private legal document could not be used to influence a Wikipedia article. Smallbones' reply was a much more succinct recommendation to read WP:PAYTALK and WP:BOGOF. Two hours later Mikec85, apparently unsatisfied by our comments, filed a case with the Arbitration Committee entitled "Editors to 'Greg Lindberg' have been subjective and baseless in many of their postings". They wrote on the talk page "@Smallbones it is my duty to inform you that I have named you in our arbitration case" (emphasis added). Within a few hours, administrator User:Dreamy Jazz removed the case filing on behalf of the committee, declaring it to be premature and recommending other options.

Mikec85 has since been inactive. On April 1 User:TpssrsWill made their first of two edits to Wikipedia, adding a criminal accusation against Causey on the Mike Causey article. This was placed next to other text likely meant to besmirch him, including the mistitling of sources, incorporated by new account User:WilfredBG on March 30. TpssrsWill's second edit came three days later to the Lindberg article, when they attempted to insert content about philanthropic donations into the lead, naturally citing press releases. Their text has been mostly reverted since. Following a request from Smallbones, on April 6 administrator User:Ad Orientem added extended confirmed protection to the Lindberg article.

Conclusion

Hopefully, that's the last of the paid editing at Greg Lindberg. Perhaps Mr. Lindberg has learned by now that he can't make all of his problems go away just by throwing money at them. Wikipedia and reliable source have won this round, and no amount of cheap public relations wires, campaign contributions, and private security spooks can diminish that.

The essay An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing exists for a reason. Had Lindberg kept out of this affair, he would have likely had no issues about his depiction on the world's most popular online encyclopedia. If the Lindberg article hadn't been so horribly mangled by paid editing when I came across it, I probably would not have taken the time to document what the news had said about his questionable business strategies and trouble with the law. So, to all those up-and-coming corporate executives and eccentric entrepreneurs: Don't try to write your own biography. In the end, your efforts will only come to an embarrassing footnote of vanity in the larger story.