# Registered Agents Inc.

Registered Agents Inc. (RAI) is an American registered agent firm founded in 2008. The company provides business formation services to set up limited liability companies and corporations and acts as a point of contact for legal notices. The company is headquartered in Wyoming where approximately 266,000 companies registered using RAI's address between 2019 and 2024, making up over 40% of all new incorporations within the state during that time.
RAI is known for obscuring ownership of the businesses it forms by listing its address and, in some reported instances, the use of pseudonyms on its clients' business formation documents.
In 2024, the company received media coverage after acquiring Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing domain registration services to the alt-right.

## History

In 2008, Dan Keen founded RAI after running a tree trimming and landscaping business. Initially focusing on company incorporation in the Pacific Northwest, Dan Keen grew RAI into a registered agent incorporating companies throughout the United States. According to Wired, RAI is a "one-stop shop for people seeking to incorporate a business in any US state, often in those with advantageous tax policies, while obscuring their identities." RAI uses pseudonyms to mask the identities of its employees and to sign their customers' incorporation documents, according to Wired. In Wyoming alone, RAI serves as the registered agent for over 50,000 companies.
In 2020, RAI threatened to sue a Wyoming newspaper, The Sheridan Press, after it reported RAI to be the registered agent of companies with no presence in Wyoming that had received CARES Act money during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that RAI served as the registered agent to companies alleged to launder COVID-19 funds. A half-dozen companies that registered using RAI's address were listed in criminal indictments for misuse of funds. Another company, the Alo Group, which received $531,562 in Paycheck Protection Program funds (PPP), later switched its address to an address in China before being administratively dissolved for not filing state paperwork in 2022.
Also in 2022, KELO-TV reported that RAI served as the registered agent for a company operating illegal robocalls targeted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that a company incorporated with RAI was used in cyberattacks against media organizations in several countries. The same year, Reuters reported that RAI served as the registered agent for entities connected to Russian and Somali cybercrime groups. RAI was one of two firms that registered 55 percent of all incorporations in Wyoming in 2023, the year that Wyoming surpassed Delaware as the U.S. state with the most incorporations.
In January 2024, RAI was reported to serve as the registered agent for a vital records intermediary company later shut down by the Wyoming authorities for misrepresentation. The same year, an RAI-registered company was linked to an organization providing dark money to political campaigns, and another was linked to an election disinformation operation involving a proposed library bond. In May 2024, investigative journalist Leah Sottile found that RAI had formed and maintains a shell company in Wyoming called TwinRay Ventures for secretive religious group, TwinRay, that is based in southern Oregon. The same month, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray dissolved three companies registered by RAI that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found to be linked to fraud directed by North Korea's Ministry of Defence.

## Subsidiaries

In June 2023, RAI acquired Epik, a domain name registrar and web hosting service that traditionally catered to far-right and extremist hate group websites that had been denied service by other internet service providers. For ICANN accreditation in 2023, there was an update to the terms of service and "problematic" clients were removed, including controversial customers such as Kiwi Farms and Gab. Focus was shifted to RAI's business clients.
RAI also owns a software development company called Two Barrels LLC and a company that helps manage multiple corporation filings called Corporate Tools LLC.