Back in 2007, Paul Pelosi Jr, son of Nancy Pelosi, received $180,000 a year working for InfoUSA, a job for which he had absolutely no experience and few, if any, duties.
The company is owned by major Clinton backer Vinod Gupta.
Coincidentally, Gupta hired Pelosi’s son just four weeks after she became the Speaker of the House. Fortunate timing, to say the least.
InfoUSA repeatedly rented marketing databases to unscrupulous persons who used the information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly, investigators found.
The company is also under fire in a shareholder lawsuit, which alleges that Gupta is appropriating company funds for personal use and his political pet projects.
The shareholders were angry because Gupta paid Bill Clinton $2.1 million when he left office with another $1.2 million promised to be paid later.
Inc.com had more on the relationship with Gupta and the Clintons:
How about this for a story? A man leaves India for Omaha with $58 in his pocket. He starts a company in 1972 that reaches peak revenue of $400 million, spends a night in the Lincoln bedroom, puts Bill Clinton on its payroll, sails Bill on his 80-foot yacht with an all-female crew, and flies Hillary Clinton to campaign events on his corporate jet.
And he’s as happy as a clam — despite getting sued by shareholders, being pushed out as CEO, incurring over $12 million in debts to settle shareholder lawsuits, and using insurance to pay $13 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that he sold his company — netting him $150 million for his 40% stake — at too low a price.
The man is Vinod Gupta, former CEO of InfoUSA, a company that built a database that marketers use to sell everything from consumer products to politicians.
Gupta got himself into a larger-than-life heap of trouble.
According to the New York Times, a 2006 lawsuit filed against Gupta by disgruntled shareholders — Connecticut-based hedge funds, Dolphin Limited Partnership and Cardinal Capital Management — charged that Bill Clinton and current presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, took a January 2002 family vacation to Acapulco on InfoUSA’s private jet — costing the then-public company $146,866.
Gupta also financed a voyage for Bill on American Princess, the $3 million, 80-foot yacht with an all-female crew bought with InfoUSA funds, according to the lawsuit.
He helped Hillary as well. In January 2004 InfoUSA paid $18,480 — about $2,000 of which was reimbursed — to fly Mrs. Clinton “and her four-person entourage” to New York from New Mexico, where she had made a campaign appearance and attended a book signing, according to the lawsuit.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg. As the Times wrote, “InfoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events [when she was running for Senate in New York].”
