I am a natural-born fool,” he said, according to a CNN article. And I have never been able to capitalize on that. “I thought, You know, I am born on April Fools Day. He convinced the king to appoint him court jester. The only possible solution to that conundrum would be to, somehow, become an employee of the Kingdom. There was only one problem he could not take the Tonga account with him without leaving himself open to a lawsuit from his previous employer. he claims he helped the country earn nearly $10 million by moving some of the money out of the low-rent-bearing checking account and into higher-return asset classes like bonds.īut in 1999, disillusioned by a heavy workload and internal changes at Bank of America, Bogdonoff decided to leave the company. On his third day there, a mutual acquaintance introduced him to the king, and the two reportedly hit it off immediately.įor the next five years, still working for Bank of America, Bogdonoff would manage the Tongan account from Tonga. In 1994, according to the LA Times, Bogdonoff traveled to Tonga. One day, he noticed that an ordinary checking account with an enormous balance had been left to languish for years, earning only a modest rate of interest.
#THE COURT JESTER BECOMES THE KING PROFESSIONAL#
He would later take up work as a professional hypnotist.īy the mid-nineties, however, Bogdonoff worked as a securities salesman with the San Francisco branch of Bank of America. A Buddhist who had earned his MBA in night school, his CV included stints as a carpenter, dishwasher, musician, and trail guide, as well as well as a salesman of magnets that purportedly cured back pain. US-born Jesse Dean Bogdonoff had multifaceted career history. If left with Tonga’s government, said the King, it would all be spent on roads. Chen deposited the CBI-proceeds in an ordinary checking account at the San Francisco branch of Bank of America after the king had refused to let it remain in Tonga. According to a New York Times article from 2001, Mr. Throughout the eighties and nineties, the king, with the help of George Chen, sold in excess of 7,000 passports, raising some US$26 million. Among the first customers were ousted Filipino Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, his wife Imelda of shoe-collection fame, and their children. The sale of real Tongan citizenships commenced in earnest in 1983. The King realized that, in order to make money, he’d have to sell actual passports. Predictably, many countries questioned the authenticity of the “passport” and refused TPPP holders. The Pacific state began by issuing Tongan Protected Person Passports (TPPP), which conferred neither citizenship nor residence rights in the country, not even visa-free entry. The original passport king: Tāufaʻāhau Tupou the Fourth
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