Friends and fellow Vermonters, cast your eye on a man who would replace Pat Leahy in Washington, D.C. No, it’s not Senator-In-Waiting Peter Welch, who is certain to win as long as he is still drawing breath come Election Day.

This, folks, is Kerry Patrick Raheb, independent Senate candidate, political conspiratorialist of the first water, wannabe cannabis entrepeneur, and shady investment advisor who has left a string of lawsuits in his wake. The flattering photo above is from his campaign website. (A DuckDuckGo image search turned up precisely one photo of Raheb from independent sources. Dude keeps a low profile.)

Raheb is one of the most colorful characters to grace our ballots in recent memory. He’s not quite Brock Pierce-level, but he’s not far off either.

His campaign website has the garish design sense of mid-period AngelFire. Cheesy graphics, eye-watering color combos, and even a countdown clock!!! (Counting the days, hours and seconds till Election Day.) I haven’t seen one of those in years. All that’s missing is an 8-bit version of “God Bless America” on autoplay.

Raheb’s sense of humor is reflected on a page called “Belches Corner,” a clever reference to Peter, um, Belch. Raheb’s fine grasp of policy can be seen in a passage on American energy independence. He says we’d achieved it under “the prior administration,” but that damn Joe Biden wiped it all out with an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.

You know, that pipeline meant to import Canadian oil into the States.

Well, he probably thinks of Canada as effectively a subsidiary of the U.S.A. so I guess its oil counts as domestic?

Raheb calls Welch, er, Belch, “a hypocritical anti-American” and adds that “Americans have had enough of the selfish anti-American Democrat machine that is dividing and destroying America and all in under a year.”

Yeah, he says “America” a lot, just in case you didn’t grasp his allegiance.

Now we get to the residency puzzle. Raheb’s campaign website lists an address in Shelburne, but it’s not at all clear that the guy actually lives in Vermont. The address, 45 Pine Haven Shores Rd #1000A, is also the listed address for a number of limited liability companies in seemingly unrelated fields. It’s also, more to the point, the listed address for Registered Agents, Inc., which is in the very specific field of serving as the registered agent for any LLC that pays the requisite fee.

A registered agent, per LegalZoom, is “an individual or entity which has been designated by the LLC to receive service of process notices, government correspondence and compliance-related documents on behalf of the LLC.” Or, to put it unkindly, to act as a front for an entity that doesn’t want to reveal much about itself. You may be more familiar with the term “shell company.”

Here’s a real rabbit hole for you. Registered Agents, Inc.’s registered agent is Northwest Registered Agent LLC, and Northwest Registered Agent LLC’s registered agent is Registered Agents, Inc. Is the room spinning or is it me?

Anyway, the point is that 45 Pine Haven Shores Rd #1000A is an address of convenience for a bunch of LLCs and registered agents for LLCs located elsewhere. It could also be Raheb’s home, but I’m dubious.

Another reason to question Raheb’s residency is that he has never made the tiniest impression in Vermont’s news ecosystem. He did appear in recent stories to our south concerning his proposal to open a cannabis dispensary in Adams, MA. He is described as the owner of Indica LLC, which would operate the store. There are Indica LLCs registered in several states; I’d assume they’re all connected, but who knows. Raheb’s name only appears in the Massachusetts registration.

There’s no sign that Raheb has tried to open a dispensary in Vermont. Which may be for the best, since the guy seems to have quite the checkered past. Well, I can’t swear it’s the same guy, but The Google tells us that “Kerry Patrick Raheb” is a former investment broker with a history of job-hopping and complaints from ex-clients. Now, “Kerry Patrick Raheb” isn’t the commonest of names, and neither is Kerry Raheb, nor is Raheb plain and simple, so it seems likely that this is the same person. Let’s see what kind of character this ex-broker is, anyway.

Raheb gets a writeup on websites of several law firms that specialize in representing investors seeking to recoup losses. The firms maintain Rogues’ Galleries of questionable brokers. Juicy details:

Raheb used to be a broker on Long Island, New York. Between 1995 and 2017, according to the Giuliano Law Firm, Raheb was associated with “fifteen different broker dealers, thirteen of which have been expelled by securities regulators for violation of federal securities laws or are otherwise defunct.” (Emphasis theirs.)

Another law firm describes his career thusly: “Raheb moves from troubled firm to troubled firm. The pattern of brokers moving in this way is sometimes called ‘cockroaching’ within the industry.”

His most recent employer, Joseph Stone Capital LLC, is described by the law firm of Iorio Altamirano as a “boiler room,” i.e. “an outbound call center that sells questionable investments through unfair, dishonest, and high-pressure sales tactics.” Not only has Stone frequently run afoul of securities regulators, it has a propensity for hiring brokers who are sketchy at best. Iorio found that 76% of Stone’s brokers had serious red flags in their records.

Raheb has been the subject of at least four different investor claims that they lost money after he talked them into bad investments. A 2001 claim resulted in payment of $22,500 in damages. Another claim was filed in 2011, and two more in 2014. Giuliano does not report the outcome of the latter three cases.

The good folks of Adams, Massachusetts might want to run a background check before they welcome Mr. Raheb into their community.

I’d worry about the prospect that we’d send this guy to Congress, except that there’s exactly zero chance of that happening. Given that, it seems safe to step back and marvel at the chutzpah. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than writing about Cris Ericson.