Bloomberg调查报道：Trump之子关联基金American Ventures利用Trump品牌吸引散户买入后大量抛售获利，涉及四家微盘股

One Monday in March, a small golf-course operator called Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc. announced it was merging with a drone maker. The unlikely tie-up between two Florida companies would have likely gone unnoticed by the stock market except for one detail: The merger was backed by President Trump’s two oldest sons.

Investors pounced, with more Aureus shares changing hands that day than in the previous six months combined. On social media, some speculated that the public association with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump might help the company win contracts from their father’s Defense Department.

Only later would securities filings reveal that American Ventures LLC, the private investment fund through which the Trumps owned a stake, wasn’t putting money into Aureus to support the drone deal. It was taking money out. By the end of the day, it had sold more than $6 million of stock. In the months that followed, it offloaded about $22 million more.

Thanks in part to the sell-down, Aureus has been lucrative for American Ventures, which has already turned a cash profit on its initial $26 million investment while still holding warrants valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, a Bloomberg News analysis of securities filings shows. Those who bought Aureus on news of the Trumps’ involvement haven’t fared as well. They’d have lost about 31% if they held through last week.

The episode is one of at least four since last year when American Ventures sold major stock holdings amid news coverage linking the Trumps to the investments, the analysis shows. In each of the deals, American Ventures earned a profit or is on track to do so. In each, outside investors saw shares decline.

A spokesman for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. said that they are “passive investors” in American Ventures and that they have “absolutely no involvement in the day-to-day operations, strategic decisions, management, or any activities of these companies. They are proud to invest in American companies and great American technology.” The Trumps have consistently dismissed any notion that their investments represent a conflict of interest, saying they don’t get involved in pitching government deals.

Anthony Hayes, chief executive officer of Dominari Holdings Inc., the investment bank that controls American Ventures, said in an email that the fund still owns most of its investment in Aureus, that it created “hundreds of millions of dollars of value” for the company’s original investors and that it never misled anyone. An Aureus representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The lopsided outcomes for American Ventures resemble the results of the Trumps’ investments in cryptocurrency, which added more than $1 billion to the family’s wealth last year while buy-and-hold investors lost money. Securities experts said a similar thing is happening in the American Ventures deals.

Losses for retail investors are common in the high-risk corner of the stock market where American Ventures operates, said Craig McCann, principal of McLean, Virginia-based SLCG Economic Consulting, which specializes in financial analysis for securities litigation. But some aspects of the American Ventures deals are unusual, he said, particularly the use of the Trump name to garner investor attention at the same time the fund is selling. That’s one of the reasons the deals fall on “the abusive end of the spectrum,” McCann said in an email.

“You’ve got this publicity the Trump name gives you, and the stock drops dramatically afterwards,” McCann added in an interview.

Hayes said the company “denies any allegation or inference of wrongdoing.”

“Do stock prices rise and fall? Of course they do,” Hayes said in the email. “But we are not ‘dumping’ our positions or putting out false information, and it is a fact that we have created millions of dollars of value for companies we work with.”

American Ventures was formed last year by Dominari, the Trump Tower-based investment bank where the eldest Trump sons serve as advisers and minority shareholders, and where Hayes is CEO. As of August, American Ventures said it held $835 million across dozens of separate sub-funds, each set up to pursue a different transaction. Not every investor participates in every sub-fund, and it’s often impossible to tell if the Trumps put money into a particular transaction unless American Ventures chooses to disclose it.

Many of the deals involve tiny exchange-listed companies called microcaps, where news coverage driven by a Trump connection can demand attention and boost trading volumes. Higher volumes present a chance to sell.

The four deals followed a common pattern. American Ventures took a stake in a money-losing company, buying warrants or other securities at a discount to market prices. Later, the fund, working with Dominari, engineered a deal to pivot the company into a buzzy new industry, with news coverage proclaiming the Trumps’ involvement. At the same time, American Ventures sold some or all of its stake.

Not every American Ventures investment followed this pattern. Some have no publicly known connection to the Trumps. In other cases, the fund hasn’t sold stock yet or disclosures don’t show whether it has. Still others don’t involve publicly traded stocks.

A Builder Turned Drone Maker

American Ventures used all of the elements of the playbook when it spent $44 million last year for a stake in Nasdaq-listed JFB ConstructionHoldings, an unprofitable homebuilder near Florida’s West Palm Beach.

The purchase consisted of preferred stock that could be converted to shares worth $55 million, securities filings show. The fund also got warrants — option-like securities that could convert into more shares. JFB’s own bookkeepers estimated the fair value of the warrants at $48 million.

In all, American Ventures got a discount of more than 50%. That meant it could make money by selling shares even if the price declined — provided there was someone around to buy.

Then in February, Dominari helped arrange a headline-grabbing announcement: JFB was making its own pivot to the unmanned-aviation industry, by merging with a private drone company known as Xtend. In essence, JFB was using its Nasdaq listing to take the drone company public.

A press release highlighted Eric Trump’s role as a “strategic investor” in the transaction. News outlets focused on the Trump connection. Trading volume exploded.

American Ventures’ trading on the day of the announcement wasn’t disclosed, but an analysis of securities filings shows that it sold at least 350,000 shares between Jan. 1 and March 30, worth an estimated $3 million based on average trading prices during that period. It has sold at least 2.8 million more, worth about $15 million, since then.

As of August, American Ventures put the value of the sub-fund that holds the JFB investment at $130 million — about three times what it put in. (It’s unclear if that includes the value of the cash already raised from stock sales.)

A retail investor who bought on the February announcement and held through last week would have lost 44%.

Hayes said that American Ventures still owns a majority of its investment in JFB. JFB did not respond to a request for comment.

A Social Media Startup Pivots to Crypto

American Ventures’ quickest win may have involved an unprofitable Culver City, California-based social media company. Last July, the fund ponied up $1.9 million for a stake in Thumzup Media Corp., which was in the process of switching to the then-fashionable business of hoarding cryptocurrency.

The pivot got even more attention, from Bloomberg and other media outlets, after the company disclosed in a securities filing that Donald Trump Jr. had personally invested alongside American Ventures, in a deal brokered by Dominari.

Thanks in part to the media attention, trading volume climbed and shares rose over the following weeks. Within a month, American Ventures had liquidated its entire position, a securities filing shows. (Because Trump Jr.’s stake was smaller, he didn’t have to disclose when or whether he sold.)

American Ventures didn’t disclose the prices its shares fetched, but it probably realized about an eightfold return, based on average trading prices during the windows when it sold. A retail investor who bought on the Trump news and held the shares through last week would have lost about 73%.

Transforming a Smurf Merchant

American Ventures struck its first public-company deal in May 2025, injecting$5 million into an obscure purveyor of Smurf merchandise called SRM Entertainment Inc. One morning three weeks later, SRM announced a $100 million deal to transform into a digital-asset treasury company in partnership with the crypto billionaire Justin Sun. (The deal was arranged by Dominari.) Seconds after the announcement, the Financial Times published a detailed report on the transaction and reported that Eric Trump was “expected to take up a role at the company,” citing an unnamed source.

SRM shares jumped and more shares changed hands that day than in the previous four months. That afternoon, Eric Trump posted on social media that the Financial Times report was “inaccurate” and that he didn’t have “public involvement” with the company, although he considered Sun a friend. (Eric Trump declined to say whether he is an investor in the American Ventures fund that backed SRM, a role that wouldn’t have to be disclosed publicly.)

American Ventures sold at least 8 million shares, worth an estimated $63 million, during the month of the announcement, according to calculations based on company disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and on average trading prices over that period. By this year, the fund had sold its holdings and probably cleared around $120 million in all, the calculations show — a return of more than 20 times.

Retail traders who snatched up SRM on the deal watched the stock crater 77% since then.

SRM, now known as Tron Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.

Bjorn Eraker, a finance professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that the deals, paired with the performance of Trump-linked crypto tokens, should give smaller investors pause.

“If you’re a retail investor, you need to stop thinking you’ll be striking gold with the Trump name,” said Eraker, who co-authored a study on “lottery-like” returns of small, risky stocks.

Golf Courses and a Rapid Stock Sale

Aureus operates two public golf courses near Orlando, Florida. Dominari took the company public on the Nasdaq early last year. Shares quickly collapsed from $4 to less than $1, putting it at risk of delisting.

Then, in July of last year, Dominari arranged for American Ventures to put $26 million into the company, buying stock and warrants that, if fully exercised, would convert to about six times more shares than the company previously had outstanding.

The fund began exercising the warrants soon after, selling about $5 million of shares in the following months.

Then, just after 6 a.m. on March 9, the Wall Street Journal posted an article online. The article reported that Aureus had agreed to the merger with the drone maker, Powerus, and that the Trumps were involved in the deal. The headline read, “Trump Sons Back Drone Company.”

Volume soared in early trading, and the shares climbed. American Ventures started unloading stock in the premarket, according to a Bloomberg analysis of trading records. The press release confirming the news hit the market at 8 a.m.

The company later disclosed that a different American Ventures sub-fund had loaned $5 million to Powerus prior to the merger announcement. That money was paid back with interest a few weeks later. The loan terms also gave American Ventures warrants in Powerus, potentially worth millions of dollars after the merger closes.

By August, the American Ventures sub-fund that made the original investment in Aureus reported its holdings were worth $261 million, or about 10 times its initial investment. Most of that appears to consist of Aureus warrants that have yet to be exercised. It’s unclear if the figure includes the cash already raised from stock sales.

Brett Velicovich, the Powerus co-founder, said that the company couldn’t speak for American Ventures’ market moves.

Asked by the Associated Press about the Powerus deal in March, Eric Trump provided a statement calling drones “the wave of the future.”

“I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in,” Trump said.