Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Ike Perlmutter, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Chris Wade, donald trump

How Ike Perlmutter Posing as Marvel Janitor Led to Presidential Pardon

How Ike Perlmutter posing as a Marvel janitor ended up getting a Presidential Pardon for Christopher Wade.

In 2020, Bleeding Cool ran the article "Marvel's Ike Perlmutter Persuaded Trump To Pardon Christopher Wade". Former and now-re-elected President Donald Trump issued several Presidential pardons before the end of his first presidency, including for American mercenaries, political allies, family members and… Christopher Wade. Who? Well that got lots of people curious. The White House stated that "President Trump granted a full pardon to Christopher Wade. Isaac Perlmutter, Mark Templeton, and numerous current and former law-enforcement officials supported Wade's pardon. Mr Wade served two years' probation after pleading guilty to various cyber crimes. Since his conviction, he has shown remorse and sought to make his community a safer place."

It was former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter's involvement that got Bleeding Cool's attention and justified the article. Ike is a personal friend of Trump and a local member of Trump's Palm Beach, Florida club, Mar-A-Lago. Ike Perlmutter and his wife Laura were two of Trump's biggest donors, with around $25 million of donations supporting Trump's unsuccessful 2020 campaign alone. Laura served on Trump's Inauguration Committee four years ago, and Trump appointed Ike to the Veterans Affairs Department.

But regarding Christopher Wade's pardon, Wade's sentence was under seal, as were the offences under which he was convicted, leaving the White House to define them simply as "cyber-crimes".Highly redacted court documents were released to the New York Times that showed he was charged with conspiracy to commit spamming, spamming, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, attempted access device fraud, and unauthorized computer access in 2006 when he was 22 years old, along with two others, and that he was a computer programmer but that he had already served his sentence.

We now know that Christopher Wade is the Australian-born computer programmer Chris Wade, founder and CTO of the software company Correllium. On the same day he got the pardon from Trump, Correllium won a legal battle against Apple, which had claimed that they had copied the iPhone as part of a virtual testing kit for other programmers. Apple appealed, lost again, filed trademark infringement clauses, and eventually settled in 2023.

We still had no idea why Ike Perlmutter showed such an interest, why Donald Trump agreed, why the details were kept private, why the court case was sealed, why it was still mostly redacted. Bleeding Cool reached out to Wade to try and find out more but heard nothing until yesterday. When Wade got in touch and pointed us towards an article on the Semafor website. Which explained so much.

While waiting for his Green Card to come through in the U.S., he was creating bots for internet forums, and was asked if he would sell them to send spam, something he agreed to, only for a customer to be an informant for the US Secret Service, cracking down on email spam. He got his Green Card, became a computer programmer, was arrested by the Secret Service in 2005, admitted to everything he'd done, and was promised if he provided help to them, they would lighten the sentence. So he began working with the agency before being transferred to work with the FBI. Wade moved to New York, where he became involved with the FBI and befriended agents like Tarbell. His conviction restricted his travel, and after he was sentenced in 2012, without jail time, deportation was nonetheless a strong possibility.

However, Wade owned a rare fish that needed medical attention after he moved to Florida. He has already created an operating system called Fish OS to automatically test water chemistry and manage lights around a 1,000-gallon tank of coral and tropical fish. The attending marine doctor was so impressed that he wanted to introduce Wade to another of his equally obsessed clients. And that's how Wade met Isaac Perlmutter at the Miami Seaquarium, where Perlmutter told Wade he was a janitor at Marvel Entertainment. Though one who drove a two hundred grand car. Ike later admitted to being chairman of Marvel. Wade gave Perlmutter a piece of coral for his own aquarium, and they and their wives became good friends.

So when the computer system that controlled Florida's unemployment benefits payment system broke during the pandemic, Perlmutter recommended Wade, who rebuilt it for free and without acknowledgement over three months. But his road to citizenship was stalled by his conviction, and he had failed to get his conviction quashed, with his lawyer telling him that his only other avenue for staying in the country would be to get a presidential pardon.

And Wade knew Perlmutter. And Perlmutter knew Trump. And all the shoes began to fall. In a statement, Perlmutter said, "I got to know Chris years ago through our shared interest in saltwater fish tanks and live reef aquariums. Over the years, our relationship broadened and grew into one based on genuine friendship and respect. When I learned Chris was seeking a pardon, I was happy to support his effort". Not bad for a janitor. But he was joined in that by letters from FBI agents and other members of the community. And he got the pardon, delivered by phone by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Who would both join Wade, Perlmutter and their wives for a steak dinner to hear the tale…

Ike Perlmutter as a Marvel janitor. That was his secret identity, folks! It all makes sense now!

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