executive boat and yacht brokerage

Performance Boats

Fishing Boats

Pontoon Boats

Personal Watercraft

Cuddy Cabin

Competition Boats

House Boats

House boat multi owners.

Miscellaneous

Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

Location & Hours

Suggest an edit

3600 S Main St

Salt Lake City, UT 84115

City of South Salt Lake

You Might Also Consider

Eva W. said "Had an absolute blast on a two hour snowmobiling tour. Our guide was super patient, friendly, and just awesome. They provide safety equipment and the snowmobile is a really nice one. We went as a group and all agreed it was one of…" read more

in Ski Resorts, Ski & Snowboard Shops, Atv Rentals/tours

Children’s Corner Preschool & Child Care

2.2 miles away from Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

Lisa V. said "My son was cared for by Children's Corner. He went there for 5-6 years, both after school and summer. The owners Bob and Kathy were so good with the kids and their daughters were loving and kind. They provided fun activities and…" read more

in Child Care & Day Care, Campgrounds, Recreation Centers

Amenities and More

1 More Attribute

Ask the Community

Ask a question

Yelp users haven’t asked any questions yet about Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage .

Recommended Reviews

• 1 star rating Not good
• 2 star rating Could’ve been better
• 3 star rating OK
• 4 star rating Good
• 5 star rating Great

Select your rating

Overall rating

I had put a $1000 deposit down on a 2019 Regal boat on April 24,2021. The deposit was refundable if the boat was not satisfactory or I could not obtain financing. I was working with my own lender for financing. It was very difficult for the finance department to get the information they needed from the dealer. The finance company approved the loan but the initial down payment they were requesting changed due to the fact the boat was way over the NADA guide price. I let the dealer know that because of the terms of the loan I would not be proceeding and I would like my deposit back. I emailed, called and they ignored me. I finally got a hold of the owner on the phone and he refused to refund me and said *I had just changed my mind*He continued to raise his voice and hung up on me. I had the lender email the dealer and explain that the financing was changed due to the price of the boat being priced over the NADA guide. I also applied to another finance company and they wouldn't even approve the loan based on the boat price. I have filed formal complaints with State of Utah Dept of commerce, Utah Dept of motor vehicles enforcement *governs dealers* along with the BBB Ironically a couple weeks later the dealer lowered the price on the boat! DO NOT PUT DOWN A DEPOSIT THEY ARE THE MOST CORRUPT DEALER I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH!

REDUCED THE PRICE !!!! because they couldn't sell it for the price they had listed it at.

Three weeks ago I called Executive boat and yacht to express interest in one of their boats, a 2000 28' Chaparral, and made a $30,000 cash offer. It took these guys over two weeks to get me a counteroffer, which I accepted. I was asked for a $1,000 wire transfer to "hold the boat." I was coming from out of state with the cashier's check for the entire amount, only three days later, So I didn't see the need to pay $35 for the wire transfer. I even texted a picture of the cashier's check. Besides, who entrusts $1,000 to anyone without even seeing what they are buying (I was given no assurance of a refund). When I suggested they charge my credit card instead, Kory stomped the deal dead by unwittingly stated, "you probably won't be happy with the boat when you see it." This, after almost three weeks of chasing around after him, his office and later some guy named Greg. Even worse, they blamed the consigner saying "he doesn't answer the phone" and other such nonsense. Since when does a boat seller not answer the person whom he hires to sell his property. I sent a picture of the cashiers check made out in full to Executive Boats... but Kory acted like a child, pouted and said, at this point I suggest that we part ways. Kory, owner of executive boats can't execute didley. He claims that he has been in business for 30 years, but his behavior is that of a very poor businessman that doesn't understand the value of a customer, particularly one that is holding the entire agreed-upon price in a cashier's check for his consigner. Other reviews sing him praises but my opinion is to the contrary. At best he carries the habits of a spoiled child and doesn't realize the value of grown people's time! He keeps his consigner's boat and I keep my money! What a joke and a waste of time- I say, stay away!

We ordered an extended swim deck from a company in Arizona and had it sent to Executive Yacht for installation. When it finally arrived it had quite a few issues with fitting on our boat. Kory and his team went above and beyond to make it fit and still look good. He also worked hard to get it done in time for the holiday even though he was super backed up. In the end it looked really great when they got it installed.

I had a pretty serious concern after having my boat winterized. I called in to voice my concern and was immediately invited to bring my boat back for their review. The issue was addressed the same day. Cory and his team along with Robin restored my confidence. The situation was handled perfectly kudos to Cory and his team. To top things off robin offered to D-winterize my boat at no charge in the spring. That is the example of good customer service.

To be successful in life one must rely on the expertise of their "guy." Tax guy, Mortgage guy, Lawn guy, Dent guy, Auto repair guy, etc. I've been doing business with Kory Toone at Executive Boat for 5 years now and that makes him my Boat guy. Executive has sold two boats for me and helped me purchase my latest boat. Unless you have endless amounts of time on your hands DO NOT sell your boat on your own. Executive has always got me the number I wanted for my boat and I didn't lift a finger. Well, unless you count dropping it off as lifting a finger. I also take my boats to Executive for all of my service needs. After trying a handful of boat mechanics, I guarantee you there is nobody better and most importantly honest and priced fair. Kory and team eat, sleep, and breathe boats and will take great care of you.

Executive helped me buy this boat in Texas.

We have had a great experience working with Kory at Executive Boat and Yacht. He has always been attentive, helpful and trustworthy and they have done a great job servicing our boats over the years. He was also able to get us a great deal when we sold our most recent boat through him! Highly recommend Kory and the rest of the team.

5 other reviews that are not currently recommended

Best of Salt Lake City

Things to do in Salt Lake City

Other Places Nearby

Find more Boat Dealers near Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

Find more Boat Repair near Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

Find more Boating near Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

Browse Nearby

Restaurants

Boat Dealers Near Me

Boat Repair Near Me

Boating Near Me

Related Cost Guides

Advertising

Career Counseling

Editorial Services

Graphic Design

Music Production Services

Private Investigation

Shredding Services

Car Brokers

Car Dealers

Gas Stations

Motorsport Vehicle Repairs

Oil Change Stations

Transmission Repair

• 13 More Cost Guides

People Also Viewed

Toys Services & Upholstery

RecreationFix

Marine Products

Robertson’s Marine

Nautique Boats of Utah

Roger’s Performance Marine

Neptune Divers

Taylor’s Boats

Epic Rentals of Utah

• © Roadtrippers
• © Mapbox
• © OpenStreetMap
• Improve this map

• Salt Lake City

Executive Boat & Yacht Brokerage

3600 S Main St, Salt Lake City , Utah 84115 USA

• Independent
• Pet Friendly
• Wheelchair Accessible
• More in Salt Lake City

Learn more about this business on Yelp .

Reviewed by Mario C.

Three weeks ago I called Executive boat and yacht to express interest in one of their boats, a 2000 28' Chaparral, and made a $30,000 cash offer. It took these guys over two weeks to get me a... Read more

Reviewed by Misti D.

I had put a $1000 deposit down on a 2019 Regal boat on April 24,2021. The deposit was refundable if the boat was not satisfactory or I could not obtain financing. I was working with my own lender... Read more

Reviewed by Cameron D.

I had a pretty serious concern after having my boat winterized. I called in to voice my concern and was immediately invited to bring my boat back for their review. The issue was addressed the same... Read more

View 6 reviews on

• Mon - Fri: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
• Sat: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

Problem with this listing? Let us know .

Has RV parking changed? Let us know .

• Check Parking
• Check Pets Allowed
• Unknown Restrooms
• Unknown Wifi
• Check Wheelchair Accessible
• Unknown Credit Cards Accepted

Nearby Hotels

Click to discover a great deal!

Related Trip Guides

Pay tribute and reflect at these us monuments and memorials, the ultimate road trip guide to canyonlands national park, how to best experience zion national park, road trip to the filming locations of 'dumb and dumber', keep exploring with the roadtrippers mobile apps..

Anything you plan or save automagically syncs with the apps, ready for you to hit the road!

Connect with us and hit up #roadtrippers

Tall tales, trip guides, & the world's weird & wonderful.

• Roadpass Digital
• Mobile Apps

Business Tools

• Partnerships

Get Inspired

• Road trip ideas by state
• National parks
• Famous routes
• Voices from the Road

Fresh Guides

• The ultimate guide to Mammoth Cave National Park
• The Ultimate Guide to Badlands National Park
• Route 66 Leg 2: St. Louis to Tulsa
• Route 66 Leg 1: Chicago to St. Louis
• Route 66 Leg 3: Tulsa to Amarillo
• Top 10 things to do in Ohio
• Offbeat Road Trip Guides
• Road Trip USA
• Scenic Routes America
• National Park Road Trips
• Terms and Conditions

Business | South Florida yacht brokers hit with lawsuits…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)

Daily e-Edition

Evening e-Edition

• Real Estate
• Consumer Reviews

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Business | south florida yacht brokers hit with lawsuits that claim 10% commissions violate antitrust laws.

Two newly filed federal lawsuits claim that 10% sales commissions required by South Florida’s yacht broker industry are anticompetitive and violate antitrust laws.

The claims follow an October finding by a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, that the National Association of Realtors conspired with brokers to artificially inflate commissions paid to real estate brokers. The ruling, and a March 15 settlement by the Realtors, is expected to radically change how homes are sold in the United States.

Both lawsuits involving yacht brokers name as defendants the International Yacht Brokers Association, based in Fort Lauderdale, the Yacht Brokers Association of America, Boats Group LLC and YATCO LLC.

Also listed as defendants in both suits are a who’s who of South Florida-based yacht brokers, including Denison Yacht Sales, MarineMax Inc., Galati Yacht Sales Inc., Allied Marine Inc., Tournament Yacht Sales LLC and Northrop & Johnson Yacht Ships, among others.

Nearly all of the defendants are headquartered in South Florida.

The most recent suit, filed on March 22, proposes a class of plaintiffs that includes anyone who listed vessels on certain Multiple Listing Services using a listing agent or broker affiliated with one of the defendants and paid a buyer’s broker commission since March 22, 2020.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Kip Lamar Snell, identified as an Alabama resident. Snell entered into an agreement with Galati to sell a 41-foot Express Cruiser Sea Ray in July 2020 and ended up paying a $12,000 commission on the $120,000 sale price, the suit states. The lawsuit lists as defendants 15 brokers and six organizations that promote the yacht trade or operate Multiple Listing Services.

That lawsuit follows one filed on Feb. 29 that proposes a class of plaintiffs that includes anyone who paid a commission to a listing broker affiliated with the defendants since Feb. 19, 2020. It lists as defendants 11 brokers and five organizations that promote the yacht trade or operate Multiple Listing Services.

The lead plaintiff in that suit is Ya Mon Expeditions, a Wyoming company that paid a “substantial broker commission” when it sold a vessel in January 2023 while represented by Tournament Yacht Sales of Tequesta.

The most recent complaint accuses the trade associations of colluding with brokers to “enforce an anticompetitive restraint that requires (sellers of pre-owned yachts and boats) to pay a brokerage fee to the buyer’s broker and a total aggregate commission fee that is inflated as a condition for selling their yachts.”

The complaint states the typical commission is 10% and is shared between the seller’s broker and the buyer’s broker under terms spelled out in Central Listing Agreements provided by the brokers associations, including the International Yacht Brokers Association and the Yacht Brokers Association of America.

Only boat brokers are able to list boats and yachts on such Multiple Listing Services as YachtWorld.com, BoatTrader.com and Boats.com, and the Multiple Listing Services will not accept listings from owners who want to sell their vessels themselves, the lawsuit states.

Yacht owners are “severely disadvantaged” if they do not list their boats for sale on the listing services, while buyers suffer because their brokers are “financially incentivized” to show boats that will earn them standard “and inflated” commission rates of 4% to 5% through co-brokerage transactions, the complaint states.

None of the defendants contacted for this story responded to a request for comment, and no response has been filed yet in either case.

Robert Allen Jr., whose Miami-based law firm Robert Allen Law represents the International Yacht Brokers Association, did not respond to emails or return a phone call.

A woman who answered the phone at the International Yacht Brokers Association said, “We have no comment on that,” and hung up after a reporter asked for her name.

Of six brokers contacted for comment about the lawsuits, only Tournament Yacht Sales responded to emails. “No comment,” the company’s response stated.

Overall commissions have increased faster than the rate of inflation in recent years as the price of larger boats and yachts have increased, according to the lawsuit that lists Snell as lead plaintiff.

The result is that boat owners pay “hundreds of millions of dollars” in inflated commissions each year, the suit alleges.

Both lawsuits allege violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act that are upheld by “brokers who should be competing with one another but, instead, cooperate with each other to the detriment of pre-owned boat sellers.”

Some brokerages represent both buyers and sellers and retain the entire 10% commissions, the suits state.

The trade associations enforce rules requiring brokers to offer their boats through a listing service and to share commissions, the suits state, adding that they can impose significant penalties on members who do not comply with their rules.

Yacht purchasers are disadvantaged by the current system, the lawsuit alleges, because their agents would otherwise negotiate for their business by decreasing their commission rates.

But buyer brokers’ commissions have remained constant despite their diminishing role, the suits state. Many buyers today find boats they are interested in purchasing through online searches and enlist the services of a buyer’s broker only after identifying the yacht they want to buy, the suits claim.

The lawsuits seek an order declaring the commission structure to be illegal, a permanent injunction outlawing what they describe as anticompetitive conduct, plus damages and/or restitution, pre- and post-judgment interest, and attorneys’ fees.

Paul Geller, an attorney for one of two law firms representing the class that includes Snell, acknowledged “parallels between the allegations relating to commissions in the real estate and yacht markets.”

In the real estate matter, the National Association of Realtors on March 15 agreed to a $418 million proposed settlement that would free home sellers from paying commissions to brokers for both sellers and buyers.

After a jury ruled for the plaintiffs in the case against the National Association of Realtors in October, numerous lawsuits were filed across the country with similar allegations, including one in December against the Florida Association of Realtors and 16 brokerages.

“At bottom, the goals of (the suit against the yacht brokers) are similar: protecting consumers by challenging what we allege to be anti-competitive conduct,” Geller said by email. “We believe in the universal truth that consumers benefit by increased transparency and the competitive pricing that results from negotiated terms, including commissions.”

Geller is a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, which specializes in securities litigation on behalf of investors. The firm has offices in 10 cities, including Boca Raton.

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at [email protected].

More in Business

Environment | Uranium is being mined near the Grand Canyon as prices soar and the US pushes for more nuclear power

An inflation gauge closely tracked by the Federal Reserve shows price pressures easing gradually

Florida News | Are Disney and DeSantis making up? Both look ready to work together

Environment | Biden administration restores threatened species protections dropped by Trump

• Guided tour

River Cruise on Luxurious Radisson Boat

• Description
• Choose date

Equipped with ice-breaking technology, these huge fancy yachts are the only river cruisers running all year around. The round trip journey takes two and a half hours and floats past all the big sights like the White House, Novodevichy monastery and the Kremlin. There’s a large open air observation deck up top, while the main body of the ship houses a restaurant with a dance floor for a romantic post dinner dance. For a particularly romantic experience take one of the evening boats and admire the bright lights of the city skyline at night.

The most relaxing and picturesque tour that Moscow can offer: a great way to see the city center and its main attractions. This is a perfect alternative to exploring the city by car, if you only have time to do sightseeing during weekday rush hours.

Your English-speaking guide is eager to share every bit of their knowledge about the surrounding landscape, the architecture and historical details.

We conduct Moscow river tour on Radisson Flotilla boats all year around!  It’s warm inside during winter months, while there’s air conditioning during hot summer days. You may also treat yourself to drinks, lunch or dinner on board (drinks and food are not included in tour price).

The cost of an excursion with a personal guide for 1 person

Quay at Radisson Collection Hotel

Government Headquarters ("the White House")

Kievsky Railway Central

Novodevichy Convent

Luzhniki Stadium

Academy of Sciences

Monument to Peter I

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Moscow Kremlin

St.Basil's Cathedral

Novospassky Monastery

U-turn and back to Quay at Radisson Royal Hotel

Choose your dates

Who's going.

• Excursion River Cruise on Luxurious Radisson Boat
• Date and time:
• Who's going:

See photo of the meeting point

Jeffrey Epstein’s Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker

Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein ’s notorious “pedophile island” in the years prior to his death left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their own homes and offices. Maps of these visitations generated by a troubled international data broker with defense industry ties, discovered last week by WIRED, document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender .

The data amassed by Near Intelligence, a location data broker roiled by allegations of mismanagement and fraud, reveals with high precision the residences of many guests of Little Saint James, a United States Virgin Islands property where Epstein is accused of having groomed, assaulted, and trafficked countless women and girls.

Some girls, prosecutors say, were as young as 14. The former attorney general of the US Virgin Islands alleged that girls as young as 12 were trafficked to Epstein by those within his elite social circle.

The coordinates that Near Intelligence collected and left exposed online pinpoint locations to within a few centimeters of space. Visitors were tracked as they moved from the Ritz-Carlton on neighboring St. Thomas Island, for instance, to a specific dock at the American Yacht Harbor—a marina once co-owned by Epstein that hosts an “ impressive array ” of pleasure boats and mega-yachts. The data pinpointed their movements as they were transported to Epstein’s dock on Little St. James, revealing the exact routes taken to the island.

The tracking continued after they arrived. From inside Epstein's enigmatic waterfront temple to the pristine beaches, pools, and cabanas scattered across his 71-acres of prime archipelagic real estate, the data compiled by Near captures the movements of scores of people who sojourned at Little St. James as early as July 2016. The recorded surveillance concludes on July 6, 2019—the day of Epstein’s final arrest.

If you have information about Jeffrey Epstein's island, its visitors, or the data broker industry, contact Dhruv Mehrotra at [email protected] or via Signal at dmehro.89; contact Dell Cameron at [email protected] or via Signal at dell.3030.

Eleven years earlier, the disgraced financier was sentenced to 18 months in jail after a guilty plea in 2008 for soliciting and procuring a minor engaged in prostitution, securing a secret “ sweetheart ” deal to avoid any federal charges. Renewed interest in the case, notably prompted by a Miami Herald investigation , spawned new charges against Epstein, who was apprehended at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport in July 2019. A raid of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse by federal agents yielded a cache of child sexual abuse material, nearly 50 individually cut diamonds, and a fraudulent Saudia Arabian passport, which had expired. He reportedly died by suicide a month later while incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal detention facility that closed shortly after Epstein’s death.

Ghislaine Maxwell, former British socialite and an Epstein accomplice, was convicted in 2021 on five counts including sexual trafficking of children by force. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire, tracked to a million-dollar home by federal agents using location data pulled from her cell phone .

Little is known publicly about Epstein’s activities in the decade prior to his 2019 arrest. The majority of women who came forward that year to accuse the convicted pedophile in court say they were assaulted in the ’90s and early 2000s.

Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

Medea Giordano

Andy Greenberg

Now, however, 11,279 coordinates obtained by WIRED show not only a flood of traffic to Epstein’s island property—nearly a decade after his conviction as a sex offender—but also point to as many as 166 locations throughout the US where Near Intelligence infers that visitors to Little St. James likely lived and worked. The cache also points to cities in Ukraine, the Cayman Islands, and Australia, among others.

Near Intelligence, for example, tracked devices visiting Little St. James from locations in 80 cities crisscrossing 26 US states and territories, with Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York topping the list. The coordinates point to mansions in gated communities in Michigan and Florida; homes in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts; a nightclub in Miami; and the sidewalk across the street from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The coordinates also point to various Epstein properties beyond Little St. James, including his 8,000-acre New Mexico ranch and a waterfront mansion on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, where prosecutors said in an indictment that Epstein trafficked numerous “minor girls” for the purposes of molesting and abusing them. Near’s data is notably missing any locations in Europe, where citizens are safeguarded by comprehensive privacy laws.

Near Intelligence’s maps of Epstein’s island reveal in stark detail the precision surveillance that data brokers can achieve with the aid of loose privacy restrictions under US law. The firm, which has roots in Singapore and Bengaluru, India, sources its location data from advertising exchanges—companies that quietly interact with billions of devices as users browse the web and move about the world.

Before a targeted advertisement appears on an app or website, phones and other devices send information about their owners to real-time bidding platforms and ad exchanges, frequently including users’ location data. While advertisers can use this data to inform their bidding decisions, companies like Near Intelligence will siphon, repackage, analyze, and sell it.

Several ad exchanges, according to The Wall Street Journal , have reportedly terminated arrangements with Near, claiming that its use of their data violated the exchanges’ terms of service.

Officially, this data is intended to be used by companies hoping to determine where potential customers work and reside. But in October 2023, the Journal revealed that Near had once provided data to the US military via a maze of obscure marketing companies, cutouts, and conduits to defense contractors. Bankruptcy records reviewed by WIRED show that in April 2023, Near Intelligence signed a yearlong contract with another firm called nContext, a subsidiary of the defense contractor Sierra Nevada.

nContext secured six federal contracts to provide data in support of the National Security Agency and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, according to reporting by Byron Tau , author of Means of Control , an exposé of the data-broker industry and its ties to the US surveillance state. According to information released during a $100 million funding round in 2019, Near claims to have information on roughly 1.6 billion people in 44 countries.

“The pervasive surveillance machine that has been developed for digital advertising now enables other uses completely unrelated to marketing, including government mass surveillance,” says Wolfie Christl, a Vienna-based researcher at Cracked Labs who investigates the data industry.

The data on Epstein’s guests was produced using an intelligence platform formerly known as Vista, which has now been folded into a product called Pinnacle. WIRED discovered several so-called Vista reports while examining Pinnacle’s publicly accessible code. While the specific URLs for the reports are difficult to find, Google’s web crawlers were able to locate at least two other publicly accessible Vista reports: one geofencing the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands and another targeting Saipan-Ledo Park in El Paso, Texas.

The Little St. James report features five maps, one of which reveals locations of devices observed on the island over more than three years prior to Epstein’s arrest. Two of the maps indicate the inferred “Common Evening Locations” and “Common Daytime Locations” for each device that had visited the island. According to the Vista report, these metrics are meant to show visitors’ “most frequented location on weekdays” as well as weeknights and weekends.

A fourth map shows the “general geographic areas from which a location generates the majority of its visits.” The fifth details visitors’ locations 30 minutes before and after they arrived on Epstein’s island, producing a trail of signals that show phones and other devices carried over by helicopter and boat from the main island.

WIRED extracted the location data from the charts and maps to conduct its analysis, which is ongoing. For this story, we reproduced some of the maps created by Near, while excluding any precise location data that could be used to identify properties or individuals, to protect the privacy of anyone uninvolved in Epstein’s crimes.

Crippled by debt, Near Intelligence filed for bankruptcy protection in December, reporting liabilities of approximately $100 million, less than a year after being listed by Nasdaq. An independent investigation commissioned by the company's board alleged multiple executives engaged in a years-long “concealed scheme” to cheat the company out of tens of millions of dollars. (One of those former executives has filed a claim against the company alleging defamation.)

Near Intelligence has since quietly resumed operations, under the same leadership that initiated the bankruptcy proceedings, rebranding itself as a newly incorporated entity called Azira.

US senator Ron Wyden in early February urged federal regulators to launch investigations into Near Intelligence, citing reporting by The Wall Street Journal that found its platform had been used by a third party to geofence “sensitive locations,” including roughly 600 reproductive health clinics at the behest of a conservative group that waged a multiyear antiabortion campaign. US regulators have begun to designate certain types of locations “sensitive,” including health clinics, domestic abuse shelters, and places of religious worship, in an attempt to shield Americans from predatory data brokers amid the US Congress’s years-long failure to pass a comprehensive privacy law .

In an email to WIRED, Kathleen Wailes, speaking on behalf of Azira, acknowledged that Near Intelligence had deliberately collected the data on Epstein’s island for its own purposes. Wailes declined multiple invitations to discuss how the data was collected, which prospective client may have created the report of Epstein’s island, and what purpose it served.

“Azira is committed to data privacy and responsible access to and use of location data,” Wailes said. “To this end, Azira works to track and respond to legal developments under emerging new state laws, FTC guidance and prior enforcement examples, and best practices. Azira is developing procedures to protect consumers' sensitive location data. This includes working to disable all sample offering accounts created by Near.”

Although the discovery of the Epstein island data involved many additional steps, WIRED also found it could be easily retrieved with a simple Google search.

A Department of Justice spokesperson for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was prosecuted in 2019, declined to comment on whether its investigators ever did business with Near.

While many of the coordinates captured by Near point to multimillion-dollar homes in numerous US states, others point to lower-income areas where Epstein victims are known to have lived and attended school, including areas of West Palm Beach, Florida, where police and a private investigator say they located around 40 of Epstein’s victims.

"Most of the clients who come to me, their number one concern is privacy and safety,” says attorney Lisa Bloom, who represented 11 of Epstein's alleged victims. “It's deeply concerning to think that any sexual abuse victims’ location will be tracked and then stored and then sold to someone, who can presumably do whatever they want with it.”

Legislation introduced during multiple sessions of Congress have aimed to restrict the sale of location data, chiefly to prevent US law enforcement and intelligence agencies from tracking Americans without a warrant. So far, those efforts have failed. Separately, US president Joe Biden issued an executive order in February instructing the Justice Department to establish new rules preventing US companies from selling data to rival nations, which might include Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. This order is unlikely to impact Azira’s business in the United States.

“The fact that they have this data in the first place and are allowing people to share it is certainly disturbing,” says Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights nonprofit. “I just don’t know how many more of these stories we need to have in order to get strong privacy regulations.”

Updated 3/29/2024, 10:03 pm ET: In an email following publication, Kathleen Wailes, Azira's third-party spokesperson, says that WIRED's description of the Epstein island data as "deliberately collected" was "incorrect and misleading." Instead, she says, "[t]he data referenced in the story was compiled by someone using a free trial, not an employee of Near. The parameters of that report were determined by the user and not Near Intelligence."

Wailes further says that Azira, as a new company, "is not accountable for the actions and business practices of Near Intelligence referenced in the article."

"While some parties have used geolocation data in the past for purposes that are inappropriate, Azira’s management team is committed to doing everything possible to protect consumer data, adhere to known laws and regulations, and safeguard the proper use of consumers’ data," Wailes says. "Our policies are clearly stated on our website."

Also following publication, Azira temporarily made the Epstein island data public after having removed it prior to WIRED's publication. The data was again removed after WIRED alerted the company to the public availability of the report.

You Might Also Like …

In your inbox: Introducing Politics Lab , your guide to election season

Google used her to tout diversity. Now she’s suing for discrimination

Our in-house physics whiz explains how heat pumps work

The big questions the Pentagon’s new UFO report fails to answer

AirPods Pro or AirPods Max? These are the best Apple buds for your ears

Dell Cameron

Ali Winston

Dhruv Mehrotra