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Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are investors in several drone deals including a planned merger of publicly traded golf company Aureus Greenway Holdings with recently formed drone company Powerus.
New research shows that some key shareholders of the planned merger deal ran a prior business that was entangled in several legal cases, including (seemingly unwittingly) doing business with people indicted in a recent DOJ Ozempic fraud case. They are also closely involved with a nonprofit that supports Ukraine and Israel, and, per recent filings, has sent most of the money (tens of millions of dollars) to Israel.
Note: there is no indication of any wrongdoing or illegal activity by any of the people or entities covered here. This information is shared to provide transparency into financial deals involving people connected to the Trump family business, directly and indirectly.
Why the deal matters: Powerus plans to sell to the U.S. military and was recently awarded a U.S. Air Force contract for up to $90 million
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump sons were backing new drone company, Powerus, that planned to acquire Ukrainian drone technology to sell to the U.S. military.
Last week Powerus announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Tandem Defense LLC, was awarded a U.S. Air Force IDIQ contract for up to $90 Million for aerial denial unmanned aircraft systems.
I reported here that Blackwater founder Erik Prince is now Chairman of a drone company, Swarmer, which operates in Ukraine. Swarmer and Powerus recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to explore integrating their technologies.
In addition, Bloomberg has reported that Powerus has also met with officials in Abu Dhabi to discuss selling weapons to the UAE.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal have sent several letters to Secretary Pete Hegseth with questions about the Aureus Greenway and Powerus deal and DoD contracts.
How Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are invested in the planned merger deal with drone company Powerus
Powerus (which is also called Autonomous Power Corporation) plans to merge with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a publicly traded Nevada company that operates two golf clubs in Florida and trades under the symbol PUSA (the prior symbol was AGH). More details, including the timeline on the merger discussions, can be found in this recent August 10, 2026 Registration Statement.
Eric and Don Jr. together own approximately 12% of financial firm Dominari Holdings, which in turn owns 90% of American Ventures, which is a lead investor in Aureus Greenway Holdings. The Financial Times published a roundup of investments made by Dominari through subsidiary American Ventures, and noted that spokespeople for both Eric and Don Jr. said that they are passive investors and not involved in operations.
In addition to Eric and Don Jr., another investor in the Powerus deal is Unusual Machines, a drone components company where Don Jr. is an advisor and investor. Another investor, Korea Climate & Governance Improvement Fund, purchased $50 million of Powerus common stock.
Matthew J. Saker is the interim CEO of Aureus Greenway Holdings. Saker is also a director of SIM Acquisition Corp I, another company backed by Dominari. Aureus Greenway board directors include Christopher Schraft, Xinyue Jasmine Geffner and Vuk Jeremic (covered in more detail here).
Andrew Fox is the CEO of Powerus and Brett Velicovich is Co-Founder. New research below reveals that after the planned merger, key shareholders will include Andrew Fox and two other members of the Powerus management team who were not mentioned in earlier filings, Roman Vintfeld and Michael Sinensky.
A recent SEC filing reveals the significant owners of the planned combined Powerus company
This Registration Statement for Aureus Greenway Holdings reveals that after the merger with Powerus, significant owners of the merged entity, to be called Powerus Corporation, will be several current executives of Powerus: Andrew Fox, Roman Vintfeld and Michael Sinensky.
The filing notes that upon completion of the Merger, former stockholders of Powerus are expected to collectively own about 83.3% of the common stock of the newly formed company. “Messrs. Fox, Vintfeld and Sinensky will each control a significant portion of the voting power of Newco.”
Other owners include COO Brett Velicovich and other 5% (or more) stockholders include American Ventures and AUT Holdings LLC c/o Korea Corporate Governance Improvement Fund (KCGI). The filing notes that AUT Holdings is an affiliate of Korea Climate & Governance Improvement Fund (KCGI) and notes “The financing closed on April 3, 2026, at which time the shares were issued and Powerus received gross cash proceeds of approximately $50.0 million.”
Some more details on Powerus and on the background of some key executives
Powerus was formed last October and its website describes its work: “Powering the future of autonomous drone defense. Powerus builds and scales unified autonomous systems architecture designed to move, protect, and sustain critical assets in high-risk environments.”
Per the Registration Statement last December, Powerus CEO Andrew Fox was introduced to Kyle Wool, the CEO of Dominari, by Jeff Thompson of Red Cat Holdings, a company which spun off several entities to form Unusual Machines.
The filing also states that “Powerus operates through three principal business units: Kaizen Aerospace, Inc. (“Kaizen”), Agile Autonomy, LLC (“Agile”) and Tandem Defense LLC d/b/a Powerus Defense (“Powerus Defense”).” All three entities were acquired in early 2026, Kaizen for $1.8 million, Agile for $3.9 million and Tandem Defense, aka Powerus Defense for $500. Tandem Defense LLC is the entity that was just awarded a contract with the U.S. Air Force worth up to $90 million.
Powerus CEO Andrew Fox previously co-founded Charge Enterprises, an electric vehicle (EV) charging business. Fox resigned as CEO of Charge Enterprises in 2023 and continued as a board member. Around 2024 the company filed for bankruptcy.
Powerus Co-Founder Brett Velicovich is a former U.S. Army Special Operations intelligence analyst with extensive combat and drone experience. In 2024 Velicovich joined the Board of Advisors for Red Cat Holdings. He served on several advisory boards, including Cyberlux Corporation, which is described further on in this story.
Two other executives of Powerus who, along with Andrew Fox, will be significant owners of the new entity after the Aureus Greenway merger, are Roman Vinfeld and Michael Sinensky.
Roman Vinfeld and Michael Sinensky have partnered on several other businesses. They are officers of a Sushi business and a holding company, both incorporated in Puerto Rico. However, it is their involvement together with Brainchain.ai that links them to several legal cases, and (apparently unwittingly) to a recently unsealed DOJ indictment for an Ozempic fraud scheme.
Several Powerus executives partner on Brainchain.ai, which per legal documents is the parent of Assured Global (d/b/a WeShield USA)
Powerus Chief Revenue Officer Roman Vintfeld (which is also spelled elsewhere as Vinfeld or Vinfield) is the CEO of of Brainchain.ai and the CEO of WeShield, both since January 2023, according to his LinkedIn page.
Powerus SVP of Marketing, Michael Sinensky, was the prior CEO of WeShield and Founding Partner of Assure Global d/b/a WeShield US per his LinkedIn page.
In addition, Amy Bove, the Chief of Staff for Powerus, is listed as President of Assure Global which was incorporated in Puerto Rico in 2024.
A 2023 Form D filing for a $3 million offering for Brainchain.AI Inc. lists Roman Vinfield as CEO, Michael Sinensky as a Director, and another director, Matthew Sweeney.
This 2026 lawsuit against Assured Global references a corporate disclosure statement identifying that Brainchain.AI as the corporate parent of Assure Global d/b/a WeShield (more details on this case are described further below).
Following is an overview of a few interesting legal cases involving Assure Global d/b/a WeShield.
How Assure Global d/b/a WeShield links to an investigation in India and a recent DOJ indictment for an Ozempic fraud scheme
In May 2025 The National Law Review published an article ‘Why an International Counterfeit Ozempic Investigation Warrants Closer Scrutiny of Assure Global.’ They describe Vicky Ramancha, an alleged key player in a counterfeit Ozempic scheme, who worked with a purported American distributor Assure Global operating as WeShield.
Indian authorities are investigating Vicky Ramancha, who is alleged to have been the key player in a sophisticated counterfeit Ozempic distribution operation that apparently originated in China, transited to a Middle East distributor before reaching the United States to capitalize on a near “insatiable appetite” for the weight-loss drug. The complaint states that Ramancha falsified documents and bilked a U.S. company out of $18.8 million.
The purported American distributor of the counterfeit Ozempic identified in the criminal complaint, operating as WeShield (Assure Global LLC), is a mysterious New York City-headquartered distributor with a public-facing website indicating they are principally distributing PPE protection and COVID tests. While there appears to be indications that Ramancha and WeShield worked closely together, only Ramancha has been charged by Indian authorities thus far.
While the article links to the WeShield website that shows Roman Vintfeld as the CEO, the article does not mention Vintfeld specifically.
The piece notes that Assure Global filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Police in Delhi, India in May 2025. The complaint by Assure Global LLC described how “Believing Vicky Ramancha’s deceit, the complainant made payment of a total of $18.8 Million. However, when the said drug was delivered at the US shore, the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) seized the same for being counterfeit and spurious.“
However, The National Law Review article notes that the framing of the case fails to consider Assure Global’s responsibility to vet suppliers.
Logic would dictate that Assure Global, apparently, knew, early in its dealings with Mr. Ramancha, that the product moving through this channel was not genuine. A competent United States pharmaceutical distributor sourcing prescription medical products across multiple jurisdictions does not stumble blindly into the question of provenance. It demands documented chain-of-custody for the product, batch by batch. It conducts supplier due diligence as a matter of routine. It verifies, against the manufacturer’s published authorized channels, that the supplier is in fact entitled to move the product at all.
The article describes the route from Chinese manufacturers via a Middle Eastern intermediary and says “Assure Global, as a presumably bona fide commercial actor, should have recognized a problem from the structure of the trade itself, but it accepted the product anyway.“
An earlier 2024 Vanity Fair story on counterfeit Ozempic identified Assure Global as one of the first distributors to introduce counterfeit Ozempic into the U.S. supply chain, importing a shipment directly from China.
The National Law Review article also describes how Vicky Ramancha was introduced to Assure Global, saying “the person who allegedly introduced Assure Global to Ramancha was most likely Mr. Yaniv Shemesh, a general manager at Leveragia LLC FZ. Without that introduction, there is no American end of the chain.“
I was not able to find more information on Yaniv Shemesh and Leveragia LLC FZ. There is a similarly named Yaniv Shemesh who runs Sun Holdings Capital, which has some interesting links of its own, but it is not clear that this is the same person.
While the investigation in India provides insight on Assure Global, a more significant event happened in June: the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging “Swapnadip Roy (a/k/a Eric Roy) and Vicky Ramancha, both Indian nationals, with conspiracy related to an alleged transnational counterfeit prescription drug distribution scheme involving counterfeit Ozempic illegally sourced from China.”
The indictment does not mention Assure Global and there is no indication of any wrongdoing by Assure Global. However, as The National Law Review Article noted, there are some important questions about the responsibility and vetting done by Assure Global in their business dealings with Vicky Ramancha.
There are a few other legal cases that Assure Global d/b/a WeShield was involved with.
WeShield was involved in other legal cases related to a disputed merger and disputed refunds
A 2021 press release announced that Optec International completed a $70 million acquisition of WeShield, described as an AI-driven company in the medical supply and PPE space, led at the time by CEO Michael Sinensky.
However, a few months later another press release described a complaint alleging the merger between Optec and WeShield did not take place. Filings in a related case reference Sinensky, Bove and Vintfeld: “…defendant(s) Amy Bove, Assure Global LLC, Carbon Capital Corp., Corporate Event Management Ltd., David Appell, Erika London, IronClad LLC, Michael Sinensky, Roman Vintfeld, Rosewood Theater LLC, Stame Realty Corporation.”
A more recent lawsuit filed in the US Southern District of New York – Stream Techno LLC v Assure Global LLC d/b/a Weshield USA – describes an agreement between Stream Techno LLC, a Ukraine-based company, to pre pay $84.5 million for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in 2023. The filing describes the delivery of UAVs valued at $79.6 million, and an arbitration in 2025 which awarded approximately $5 million (the difference between the prepayment and the delivery value, plus interest) to be paid by WeShield to Stream Techno.
WeShield tried to annul the award by filing an application before the Kyiv Court of Appeal in Ukraine, but the application was dismissed in early 2026.
In separate but related news, in February Stream Techno LLC was awarded a blanket purchase agreement with a U.S. army office in Bavaria for up to $25 million in small unmanned aircraft and related parts and supplies.
It is interesting that while WeShield seemed to be set up as a Covid-related PPE company, the Stream Techno case shows that by around 2023 the firm was supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of drones to Ukraine. And further below, at the same time Vinfeld and Sinsensky were also closely involved in a nonprofit that describes its mission to support Ukraine.
Powerus executives and Cyberlux Corporation
Roman Vinfeld and Michael Sinensky were also involved in another interesting business deal with Powerus founder Brett Velicovich.
A recent New York Magazine story called ‘The Degenerates of the Drone Stock Bubble’ briefly described Powerus, founded by Brett Velicovich, and mentioned his involvement with drone company Cyberlux Corporation.
Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump are also currently backing another drone start-up, Powerus, which was founded by Brett Velicovich, an advisory-board member of Red Cat. Powerus recently announced it hopes to go public this summer through a reverse merger with a Trump-family-backed golf-course company. Velicovich was previously an advisory-board member of a drone company called Cyberlux, which is currently facing multiple lawsuits from investors for alleged misrepresentation; two of its funders were recently indicted by the Department of Justice for manipulating stocks, including that of Cyberlux.
Brett Velicovich was an advisor to Cyberlux, and per an OTC annual report filing for Cyberlux, shareholders included Velicovich, Michael Sinensky, and Roman Vinfield. An earlier filing described shares issued to Assure Global LLC.
In January 2026 the U.S. Justice Department charged a La Jolla CA couple with a $100 million fraud scheme and described how they engaged in a market manipulation scheme involving six companies.
According to the 24-count indictment, since 2020, the Rosens engaged in a market manipulation scheme through financing, promoting, and selling the stock of six publicly traded companies – Optec International, Inc., Sunshine Biopharma, Inc., BlockQuarry Corp., Solar Integrated Roofing Corp., Cyberlux Corp., and Ilustrato Pictures International, Inc.
Two of the six companies mentioned in the indictment – Cyberlux Corp. and Optec International – have links to Powerus executives and Assure Global. Three current Powerus executives were previously shareholders in Cyberlux and in 2021 Optec International was announced as the buyer of WeShield and Optec later disputed that claim.
Four executives of Powerus are involved with the nonprofit Worldwide Friends Foundation which provides funding to Israel and Ukraine
In addition to many of the business deals that Powerus executives Roman Vinfeld and Michael Sinensky were previously involved with, some involving Brett Velicovich and Amy Bove, the four are also closely associated with a nonprofit called Worldwide Friends Foundation d/b/a Israel Friends Ukraine Friends.
The tax filings for Worldwide Friends list Michael Sinensky as the Chair and, in the most recent 2024 filing, as the President, with Amy Bove the Treasurer. The Ukraine Friends website lists Brett Velicovich as a team member, and Roman Vinfield, Michael Sinensky, Amy Bove and several other people as co-founders.
The Worldwide Friends Foundation website describes how it was founded in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, the tax filings through 2024 show that for several years most of the money was sent to Israel.
Per 2024 filings, Worldwide Friends Foundation received approximately $39.8 million in contributions/grants and had $35.7 million in expenses. Schedule F on activities outside the US notes that $33.9 million was spent on program expenses distributed to Israeli individuals and organizations and wages paid to Israeli contractors: $198,695 for programs in “Russia and Neighboring States – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus” and specifically for “Laptop distribution.” In 2023, with $14.4 million in revenue, approximately $12.6 million was distributed to Israel and $364k for laptops to “Russia and Neighboring States – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus.”
A note at the end of the filing mentions WeShield: “Michael Sinensky and Amy Bove, Board Members, owns/employed by WeShield, a for-profit org that has provided monetary and in-kind donations, made a due to account to WWF, and sold goods to WWF.”
The head of Ukraine Friends is Joe Sullivan, who was the former Chief Security Officer Of Uber and was convicted by the DOJ in 2022 for covering up an Uber data breach, was fined $50,000 and sentenced to 3 years probation.
As noted earlier, there is no indication of any wrongdoing, the information is meant to provides transparency on people who are in a business transaction in which the Trump sons are investors, and a merger deal in which the new entity Powerus has been awarded a recent government contract and will be bidding for future awards.
One final item, while researching this story, I found a similarly named Roman Vintfeld who was sued by attorney generals in New Jersey and Florida around 2011-12 for a primarily child-focused modeling business called Interface Talent for allegedly misleading customers into paying high fees and other allegations. A $400K settlement was reached in the New Jersey case. In Florida, there was a settlement for $22 million in restitution. In an interesting twist, the Florida lawsuit had been filed by then Attorney General Pam Bondi.