CNN tracked Trump’s watch to a building in Sheridan, Wyoming—and found strange ties to a “male enhancement honey” company with a similar name.

Last month, Donald Trump announced that he was selling limited-edition, gaudy watches ranging from $499 to the bargain price of $100,000, bragging about their Swiss-made precision.

But a CNN investigation traced the watches’ origin to a shopping center in remote Sheridan, Wyoming, where TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC, the company behind the timepieces, is based. There’s no indication that a watch company is located at the building listed at the address, only a daycare. Its neighbors include an H&R Block, a Wendy’s, and a “vape and hemp smoke shop.”

CNN couldn’t find the people behind the company either, because the business’s location allows it to legally hide those details from the public. The news network found that knocking on the door of the business’s supposed address didn’t answer those questions. Interestingly, the limited liability corporation behind Trump’s infamous gold sneakers is also based at the address, along with other random businesses. The watch company was registered on July 29, only two months before Trump announced the watch line.


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  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Worth a read, no idea how legit this info is - https://calibercorner.com/trump-watches-caliber-tx07/.

    I don’t know if it’s my cynical eyes, but the side by side image comparison is… striking. The parts in Trump’s watch look much cheaper, and there seem to be fewer mechanical pieces. I know nothing about watches so I have no idea if I’m making sense or taking out of where the sun don’t shine.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It should come as no surprise that nothing was legitimate about that entire scheme.

    • kautau@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s all legitimate. That’s the issue. Wyoming doesn’t give a fuck. You can set up hundreds of llc’s in Wyoming that only just connect back to each other or shady law firms. The law firms take their money. Wyoming takes their money. And the rest of the money disappears

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I meant legitimate in the colloquial sense, not in the apparently legal sense in this case. These watches were most definitely not Swiss in origin.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Ah right. I just assumed they were not Swiss watches lol. Trump could sell an enlarged pyrite plated statue of his cock, lube made from his sweat, and his followers would line up to buy and ride it

          • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            Its mass hysteria. These people have been told immigrants are coming to kill/rape/disenfranchise them for over 40 years and they still believe it.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The words “derelict”, “strip” and “mall” really sum him up perfectly. So it sounds like he found the perfect match for his needs.

  • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    I did some digging into the shoe company when they came out and found out Wyoming is probably the LLC Capitol of the country. Apparently they have very lax registration laws and Andrew Pierce seems to do a lot of them. His company handled the shoe business and likely the watches.

    I also happened upon a list of registered businesses 23Q3 file is 3258 pages. I believe this list only contains new businesses registered that quarter but am not certain.

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    A man whose presidential bid is simply a grift for money having a decent chance at winning is very fitting for the US.

      • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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        oh I get the point in lying about your location of course. in other words what I’m asking is why have business registration at all if it’s so easy to lie?

        • Reyali@lemm.ee
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          6 hours ago

          Probably because most people don’t lie, it’s useful to have records of legit businesses, and (hopefully, but IANAL) it’s one more thing that someone could be charged on for fraud.

          It also probably has a panopticon effect. If people didn’t need to register, then there’s low monitoring of what people do and so those with more grey ethics are more likely to cheat the system. But because there’s a process, one assumes someone is watching, and therefore most people will stay in line; only the most scummy people will actually lie.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Mainly because at the moment, he’s still under the whim of the FBI who he basically wants to disband. Once he’s in power he can dismantle any government agency that would fight his corruption, and then there’s no need for Shell companies

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    No surprise. Dude is nothing but a con man and if you see anything but a con man then you are stupid.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    I just don’t understand how the place isn’t shut down already.

    They know the “business” behind the product is some shady LLC in a warehouse in Wyoming. There are no watches being produced there. There are no sneakers being produced there. And there never will be. This is a money laundering scheme and nothing more. And even if they do get some rubes dumb enough to part with their money, their orders will just be “temporarily delayed” while the customer is sent circling around LLC hell trying to get a refund on a product that never existed in the first place.

    Seriously. $100,000 watches? Who the fuck is the target audience for this? Even if it were on the up-and-up (it isn’t), there’s only a sliver of a sliver of the population who could afford to even if they wanted to. And you’re not going to reach them through some random late-night commercial on OANN. If this were a legit product made by a legit company, their entire sales wing would have known that commercials targeting inbred hicks at 3:00 in the morning is a complete waste of money.

    Trump and whoever else is behind this should have just quietly taken out a couple of back-of-the-magazine ads in some no-name magazine to give their product a veneer of legitimacy and then just quietly did their crime stuff with nobody being any wiser. But no, this is Trump, who must always, always pick the worst and most absurdly inane option available. Every time. Like picking a smart choice would cause him torturous pain or something. I’ve never seen a man who so masterfully looks at all of the options available to him, and somehow manages to come up with and select an exponentially worse option with such consistency.

    • ThomasLadder_69@lemmy.ml
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      7 hours ago

      Seriously. $100,000 watches? Who the fuck is the target audience for this?

      Trump fanatics with a lot of money. Which if even one person buys one (And Im sure someone has) The entire charade becomes worth it.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      If the business were actually about selling watches (which like you said, it isn’t) it would still make sense to have an extremely expensive model as a sales tactic so that the affordable ones seem more valuable. Another example of this is the $10,000 solid gold Apple Watch. Obviously they don’t expect to sell many watches at that price when the battery is sealed into the device and it’s guaranteed to fail after a few years, but it exists just to make the normal models seem fancy by proxy.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Oh, I absolutely agree. But when was the last time you saw a Rolex ad in the middle of a Duck Dynasty rerun or something? Any company able to actually produce and sell watches worth $100k is going to know who their target audience is and how to reach them.

        Trump’s commercials scream less of an attempt to reach people who may genuinely be interested in his product (He’d probably be better off selling them at his golf courses), and more of an attempt to be able to say that there was even a product in the first place when people eventually start questioning where $15,000,000 magically appeared from. Point to the ads, say all 147 of them were bought by clients who wished to remain anonymous, and say you closed up shop after they were sold. Money laundering made easy.

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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        8 hours ago

        Appliance stores uses that tactic all the time, the 2000 fridge doesn’t look at expensive when is side to side with a 10000 one.

    • dion_starfire@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      My money is on it being a way to get around political donation limits - if you’re buying a product, you aren’t donating. Elon can buy a handful of these to give out to his buddies, and it doesn’t count as donating a million dollars to Trump’s campaign.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      I just don’t understand how the place isn’t shut down already.

      Cops have better things to do than shutting down obvious money laundering enterprises - like, shaking down obvious money laundering enterprises for a cut of the action.

      I lived in Daytona Beach a few years ago, and one day I noticed that a small store had opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whisks, plastic whisks that cost $1 each. They were never open (a hand-written sign said the nail salon next door had a couple of whisks if you wanted one) and they were a quarter of a mile from a Publix and three dollar stores, all of which also sold $1 plastic whisks, so they weren’t exactly satisfying an unmet demand. The most ridiculously obvious money laundry I’ve ever seen and yet they were never investigated by anyone.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        There was an old video store that opened up in my neighborhood in the late 80s. Now it did have an adult section in the back, so there was at least a hint of legitimate business. Now remember. I’m saying late 80s here. VHS. A circulation of movies that was never updated. For decades. Well, well beyond VHS’s expiration date. But when you walked in there, that’s what you saw. “Modern-day” movies like Roadhouse and Howard the Duck. In like 2005. And when you walked in, the guy at the counter gave you a look as if you were definitely not welcome, and even the adult section (where I figured the “real” business took place) was “closed”.

        The place closed down sometime during the late 00s, but to this day I firmly believe the store was a front for some kind of mob operation and money laundering and the adult section was for…<ahem>members only, ifyaknowwhatimean.