The website of the American private military company Silvercorp USA, which was involved in a botched kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, apparently plagiarised some third-party websites without proper references - a fact first pointed out by a Twitterian called @Z3dster.
Silvercorp's homepage features a piece taken entirely from the PR firm Tucker/Hall's website with only the name of the company replaced in the text. Silvercorp registered its online domain in February 2018, but the piece in question was on Tucker/Hall's website long before that, according to the Wayback Machine, a website page archive. The plagiarised part has been on the PR firm's page at least since August 2017.
Silvercorp also apparently ripped pieces of text from the US Department of Homeland Security, online educational platform MasterClass, and famous inspirational speaker Tony Robbins. The company's website doesn't reveal who was responsible for its creation, however, an anonymous friend of the firm's founder Jordan Goudreau, cited by AP, claims that Goudreau designed the website himself.
Botched Raid
Both Goudreau and his Silvercorp recently came into the limelight after two of its employees were captured by the Venezuelan military. One of them, Luke Denman, later confessed that he was hired by Silvercorp to prepare a military incursion into Venezuela and capture its president Nicolas Maduro, with the aim of smuggling him out of the country. Denman's confession was broadcast by Venezuelan TV.
Goudreau acknowledged Silvercorp's involvement in the botched Venezuelan raid. He said that he was hired for the job by the Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido, who enjoys the full support of the US but denies hiring Silvercorp. In April 2019, Guaido attempted to overthrow Maduro's government, but his coup ultimately failed.
Maduro accused the US and President Donald Trump of being the mastermind behind the planned raid, but Washington denies any involvement despite close ties to Guaido. The latter paid a whopping $213 million to Silvercorp for the raid, according to a report by The Washington Post, citing a document obtained from Venezuela's opposition.
