For weeks, Pentagon officials had been preparing for the arrival of the Elon Musk Government Efficiency Department (Doge), asking who the richest man in the world had chosen to supervise an unprecedented review of the largest department of the United States government.
Now, Forbes He learned that one of the employees chosen by Musk to take a chainsaw and destroy the budget of almost a billion dollars of the Pentagon is a series entrepreneur with a master’s degree in terrorism studies called Justin Fulcher, according to an official of the Pentagon and two other people informed about his work.
A look at his career suggests that he is a successful entrepreneur: the founder of a global telesalud startup and a beneficial organization focused on promoting access to internet connectivity and medical care in South Carolina. He was also behind a 500 million dollar plan to invest in an advanced manufacturing plant that was applauded by the Biden administration.
And like many of Doge employees who preceded him, Fulcher, who started his first software company when he was a teenager, has impressive programming skills, according to former colleagues and collaborators who spoke with Forbes ; Several people said he claimed to have done programming work for the FBI when he was a teenager (the FBI refused to comment).
But a more detailed analysis of Fulcher’s career also suggests that his achievements do not always fit, according to internal documents of the company and interviews with 10 people who have worked with him. The Fulcher Telesalud company based in Singapore, Ringmd, for example, declared bankruptcy after he raised more than 10 million dollars of investors. His attempt to restart it in the United States gave rise to a litigation with a commercial partner, who states that Fulcher owes him hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the 500 million dollars manufacturing plant promoted by the Biden administration seems to be one of the few claims that never materialized.
Fulcher’s credentials in national security are not clear either. In 2023 he received a master’s degree in studies on non -proliferation and terrorism at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies of Monterey. One of his teachers there, Jason Blazakis, described him as “a brilliant and very hardworking.” In his LinkedIn profile, Fulcher also claims to have a doctorate in international relationships and issues at the School of Advanced International Studies by Johns Hopkins. But John Bates, who supervises the records of the students at the university, said a Forbes that “we have no records of this individual as a student.”
The non -profit organization based in South Carolina that Fulcher began in 2023, Palmetto Initiative, declared on its website that it was an American public charity organization 501 (c) (3). But the employee identification number of the organization does not match the records of the Internal Revenue Service. In a statement, Shannon Wiley, general advisor to the Office of the Secretary of State of South Carolina, said the organization was constituted as a non -profit organization, but “it has not registered to request charity funds in the state of South Carolina.” The IRS refused to comment.
Fulcher did not respond to multiple requests for comments. After Forbes He contacted him, the website of the Palmetto initiative eliminated the mention that it was a beneficial organization. On his LinkedIn page, the mention of his doctorate at Johns Hopkins was updated to indicate that he is “in process”.
Musk’s effort to implement Doge has brought hope and despair to the Federal Government’s workforce, promising to reduce bureaucracy and costs that have not been controlled for a long time, and thousands of jobs. In the Pentagon, where officials plan to cut up to 50 billion dollars of their budget, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has celebrated the arrival of Doge. “They will be incorporated into what we are doing in the Department of Defense to find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget of the federal government,” he said in a speech in February. “We are focusing as much as we can in the central offices and on the important and frontline things that allow us to reinvest in other parts.”
On Monday, the main spokesman of the Pentagon, Sean Parnell, said in a video published in X that Doge had identified programs to cut that “they would probably save 80 million dollars in unnecessary expenses”, citing initiatives linked to the “strengthening of democracy” and Dei. “We are working in close collaboration with Doge,” he said.
Forbes He could not determine what relationship Fulcher had with the Doge team or if he had security authorization. Forbes He previously reported that Doge personnel would be hired directly by the Department of Defense to focus only on the mandate focused on efficiency.
The Pentagon refused to comment and sent a Forbes to Doge, who is supervised by the White House. The White House refused to comment.
Since 2020, Fulcher has donated almost $ 40,000 to Republican legislators and political action committees, according to the FEC records. He has been a Musk admirer for a long time and, in 2017, in a request for 30 under 30 years, he told him a Forbes that the billionaire was his “dream mentor.” More recently, he has publicly requested a greater public participation of the Basis in the Government. “Each of us has a role to play in the current history of our nation,” he wrote in a Blog post in August 2024. “Serve with courage and contribute in any way that we can to the enduring history of the United States.”
Fulcher moved to Southeast Asia after leaving Clemson University in 2011. There, Ringmd founded with the aim of helping impoverished communities with Telesalud services. In 2017, as part of your application for program 30 under 30, he told Forbes that the company had doctors from more than 30 countries who attended hundreds of thousands of ringmd users. “We have literally connected thousands of people for their first conversation with a qualified doctor!”
Fulcher seemed to embody the successful businessman from a startup and transferred the company to a luxury office in Singapore. Microsoft, who provided his services in the Azure cloud to Ringmd, published articles on his blog to promote Fulcher’s work in the region. That year, it was selected for the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list.
But in 2018, Ringmd ran out of money, stopped paying employees and declared bankruptcy, according to documents presented in Singapore and six people who worked with him. In an email in October 2018, Fulcher apologized to employees and promised to reimburse them, but suggested that “investors are actively fighting so that the team receives absolutely nothing.”
This type of implosions are typical of emerging companies, but Fulcher had not ended with Ringmd and relaunched the company in the United States the following year. With an unleashed investment of a Boston doctor named Ben Harvey, he registered the company in and Combinator in 2020 and said that the company would now generate $ 632,000 in annual recurring income thanks to emerging telemedicine initiatives in Chile, Philippines and India. The attention that aroused helped raise a small amount of initial financing, according to Pitchbook.
Although the company did not announce any other financing round, Fulcher did announce large -scale investments. In November 2023, before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, the White House promoted $ 50,000 million in private sector investments in the Asia-Pacific region. Ringmd was among them, stating that it would invest 5 million dollars in “digital infrastructure” to promote telesalud in India and 6 million dollars to modernize the medical record system of the Vietnam Ministry of Health. The Vietnam Ministry of Health and a representative of Digital India, who supervised the RingmD Association with India, did not respond to a comment request.
On the scenario of the CEO of the APEC CEO in San Francisco, Fulcher announced even more important news: Ringmd had associated with Capital Pasaca, based in California, to invest in an advanced manufacturing plant in South Carolina to produce medical devices and pharmaceutical products. The plant “would generate an estimated investment value of 500 million dollars,” he said, adding that “this ambitious figure transcends the mere statistics.”
The project is still a mystery. It is not mentioned on Ringmd or Passover websites or other public ads about the project. Passover and Ringmd did not respond to a request for comments. Alex Parle, an executive of the National Center for APEC, who organized the event of the executive directors, said: “Apart from providing the stage for the announcement, we have no other connection with the project.”
Then, in December 2024, Harvey, whose investment helped to relaunch the bankruptcy company Ringmd in the US. Ringmd has not yet responded to demand. Harvey refused to comment. (In his LinkedIn, Fulcher is still included as current Ringmd co -founder, but does not specify his function; as recently as in January, Fulcher was director and president of Ringmd, according to the commercial records of Delaware).
Now, three months later, Fulcher is ascending in Doge, where his dream of being advised by Musk seems to have come true. His work in the Department of Veterans Affairs has received early praise from those who interacted with him, who remember “positive conversations,” according to a report. But shortly after the arrival of Doge, the department announced that it would fire 1,000 workers.
In the Pentagon, Fulcher’s work will have a much greater impact, where defense officials are considering cuts that could affect up to 50,000 people.
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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