Kevin Wessell has spent decades selling a simple proposition to business owners and wealthy investors: structure your affairs correctly before a lawsuit, creditor or financial crisis arrives, and your assets will be harder to reach. Today, the Fort Lauderdale-based entrepreneur presents himself as the founder and CEO of Asset Protection Planners and Lawyers Limited and is widely known online as “The Business Guy.” His own websites describe a career stretching back more than three decades, while a 2026 company release says he now has a following of more than 180,000 people.
But Wessell’s professional history also contains a much less comfortable record. The most consequential episode came through The Alps, a Swedish financial institution that Wessell helped establish and where he served as a director. In 2013, after a federal bench trial, Judge Dale S. Fischer found Wessell and two associates liable in a civil case brought by investor Thomas Alexander. The court concluded that Alexander had been persuaded to place $524,785 with The Alps after being given misleading information about the institution, its regulation, its management and the intended use of customer funds. The judge found that Wessell, Matt Mitchell — whose legal name was Paul Hesse and Casey Lawrence concealed material facts from Alexander and that Wessell had designed the structure in a way that concealed The Alps’ true activities and relationship with the defendants.
The case was not a criminal prosecution, but the findings were severe. The district court awarded Alexander economic damages of $524,785 and found Wessell, Mitchell and Lawrence liable for treble damages under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, producing a $1,574,355 award, plus interest, attorneys’ fees and costs. The court also awarded $2 million in punitive damages as an alternative to the RICO damages. An amended judgment ultimately became a roughly $2.5 million judgment, and in 2018 the Ninth Circuit affirmed the liability findings and the $1,574,355 RICO award. The appellate court specifically stated that the lower court had found Wessell and Mitchell knowingly and willfully committed mail and wire fraud and that Alexander lost money as a direct result of their RICO violations.
The underlying facts help explain why the case continues to follow Wessell. Alexander testified that he had more than $524,700 available and wanted a safe place for his money. Wessell recommended The Alps, telling him that Sweden had exceptionally strong banking protections and that The Alps was a suitable institution. The court found that Wessell and his associates did not disclose that they were connected to The Alps, that Swedish credit unions were not regulated in the manner Alexander apparently assumed, or that customer money was being used in Washington real-estate investments. Alexander eventually tried to withdraw $320,000 for a property purchase and did not receive the money. The court found he never recovered the $524,785 and had spent nearly $175,000 in legal fees pursuing the matter.
The case also exposed how closely Wessell’s companies and associates were connected. The court described IncWay Corporation, Companies Incorporated, Presidential Services Incorporated and 1-800-COMPANY as interconnected operations. Matt Mitchell worked in sales and had Wessell as his supervisor; Casey Lawrence handled offshore-company and banking-related work. The court found that the businesses operated from the same Santa Clarita address and that Wessell had served as a director, president, secretary and treasurer of Presidential Services. The IRS would later identify many of the same entities as part of what it called the “Wessell Group.”
That IRS episode began with summons activity in 2018 and culminated in a 2022 federal enforcement proceeding. The government told a Florida federal court that it was investigating the identities and tax liabilities of U.S. persons who had used Wessell Group services between 2012 and 2017 to establish or control foreign accounts, companies, trusts and other assets. The government listed entities including Eagle Estate, Lincoln International Services, Lincoln Management Group, Eagle Rock Mountain, LAP Trust, IncWay, Companies Incorporated, Worldwide Education Services, 1-800-COMPANY, Presidential Services, PSI Holdings, National Management Associates, Offshore Corporation and several offshore-related websites.
The 2022 petition alleged that Wessell had produced more than 600,000 potentially responsive documents and a customer list containing 1,470 names, but that the government believed records were still missing or incomplete. The allegations included discrepancies between the customer list and documents produced and examples of customers whom the government said were absent from the production. The petition sought enforcement of the IRS summons; it was not an indictment and did not establish that Wessell personally committed tax evasion. The original material supplied for this investigation likewise describes the matter as an IRS investigation into clients’ suspected offshore tax evasion, not a criminal tax case against Wessell himself. Article
Wessell strongly disputed that characterization. In a 2022 letter to OffshoreAlert, he said he and his employees had fully complied with the summons through their law firm. He argued that some customers appearing in payment records never completed the due-diligence requirements needed to form a company, meaning there would be no company documents to produce. He also objected to descriptions of him as an “asset protection expert” and asked OffshoreAlert to remove references to suspected offshore tax evasion. Kevin Wessell – Letter to the E… Kevin Wessell – Letter to the E…
There is an important second side to the IRS story that should not be lost in a headline. The 2022 enforcement proceeding was ultimately dismissed with prejudice by joint stipulation on September 13, 2022. In other words, there is no current IRS summons-enforcement case against Wessell arising from that proceeding. The government never obtained a criminal conviction against him through that matter, and the case should not be described as a finding that Wessell committed tax evasion.
Wessell’s legal history did not end there. In 2021, the Oregon attorney general filed a civil fraud complaint against Wessell and Beaver State Industries LLC. Publicly available records establish the filing and its allegations, but I did not find sufficiently reliable primary-source material establishing a final adjudication that would justify presenting those allegations as proven wrongdoing.
More recently, Wessell has become embroiled in a public dispute with Florida lawyer Shannon Blake Harris and Blake Harris Law. Blake Harris Law sued Wessell, Lawyers Limited and affiliated companies in federal court in December 2025, alleging false advertising and other misconduct connected to the marketing of asset-protection services. The federal Lanham Act claim was ultimately dismissed with prejudice on September 22, 2026. The judge did not rule that every underlying accusation was true or false; the court held that the federal claim was legally insufficient and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims.
Wessell responded with litigation of his own. In January 2026, he and affiliated companies sued Harris and Blake Harris Law in Miami-Dade County, alleging defamation and related claims. That state case remains pending. Harris, meanwhile, has publicly accused Wessell of serious misconduct and says he reported him to the FBI. Those statements are disputed and should not be confused with criminal charges or convictions.
There has also been an online dispute over claims that Wessell has criminal convictions. A private 2025 due-diligence report commissioned by a competitor contained claims concerning an old Washington theft case and a California domestic-violence-related arrest. Wessell disputes those claims, and his current litigation materials say he has never been convicted of a crime. I found no reliable primary criminal-court record sufficient to responsibly publish those disputed claims as established facts, so they should not be presented that way.
What can be established is different and considerably more significant: Wessell was found civilly liable for fraud and RICO violations in the Alexander litigation, and those findings survived appellate review. He was not criminally convicted in that case. The IRS dispute was a civil records proceeding and was dismissed with prejudice. The later advertising litigation ended with dismissal of the federal claim, while Wessell’s own defamation case remains active.
Wessell is still operating. His current public materials identify him with Asset Protection Planners and Lawyers Limited, while Companies Incorporated continues to identify him with its business-formation operation. His websites promote asset-protection trusts, corporate structures, international planning and related services, and he continues to publish educational material under the “The Business Guy” identity. His public-facing business location is now listed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
That is what makes the Wessell record worth examining carefully. The story is not simply about an old lawsuit or an abandoned IRS proceeding. It is about a businessman whose career was built around helping people protect wealth, while a federal court found that his own conduct in one major financial venture caused a client substantial losses and amounted to fraud and civil RICO violations. At the same time, some of the more dramatic accusations now circulating online remain disputed or legally unresolved. For consumers considering offshore structures, trusts or asset-protection services, that distinction matters. The safest lesson is not to rely on branding, testimonials or online accusations alone. Court judgments, regulatory records, corporate filings and the actual legal terms offered to clients provide a much clearer picture of who is being trusted with their money.
Source:
OffshoreAlert
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