A man named Warren Trepp surfaced in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, you may recall. The paper had investigated the Nevada defense contractor for his shady dealings with then-Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV).
Today’s Las Vegas Sun puts Trepp’s current flap in perspective. Apparently, the man has a history of attaching himself, Zelig-like, to no fewer than four disparate scandals in the past two decades:
Perhaps Warren Trepp is always just at the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of terrible and perpetual coincidence.By his early 30s, he was chief trader for the notorious 1980s junk bond trader Michael Milken.
Then a friend helped him sell a bundle of stock in a collectibles business in 2002, and he wound up selling it to Tom Noe, a Republican bigwig in Ohio recently convicted on multiple counts of fraud and larceny and laundering money to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign.
Trepp formed the software company eTreppid Technologies that later sought national security contracts with the government. A woman, Letitia White, who did lobbying work for the firm is said to be under investigation in connection with the widening federal bribery probe following the conviction of a former congressman.
Finally, his friendship with Nevada Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons landed him on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in an examination of contracts that eTreppid received with help from Gibbons, the Republican congressman from Reno.