1. Erik Dean Prince was born on June 6,1969 and is an American businessman, investor, author, and former US Navy SEAL officer, and the founder of the private military company Blackwater.
49 Facts About Erik Prince
1. 2.
Erik Prince served as Blackwater's CEO until 2009 and as its chairman until its sale to a group of investors in 2010.
3.
Erik Prince is the son of engineer and businessman Edgar Erik Prince, and the brother of former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
4.
Erik Prince was accepted into the United States Naval Academy and attended for three semesters before leaving, explaining that he loved the Navy but disliked the academy.
5.
Erik Prince deployed with SEAL Team 8 to Haiti, the Middle East, and the Balkans.
6.
Erik Prince moved to Virginia Beach and personally financed the formation of Blackwater Worldwide in 1997.
7.
Erik Prince bought 6,000 acres of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and set up a school for special operations.
8.
Erik Prince built a shooting range on his rural Virginia land to serve as a nearby training facility to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
9.
Erik Prince said he believes that much of this criticism stems from politics.
10.
In 2012 Blackwater's successor company, Academi, paid a combined $49.5 million to settle charges of arms trafficking violations dating back to the period Erik Prince was CEO and chairman of the company.
11.
In 2020 Erik Prince again became the focus of an FBI investigation into arms trafficking violations related to the conversion of crop dusters into military aircraft.
12.
Erik Prince has defended Blackwater's work, pointing to the fact that during the course of 40,000 personal security missions, only 200 involved guards firing their weapons.
13.
Erik Prince resigned as CEO of Blackwater on March 2,2009, and remained chairman of the board until he sold the company in late 2010 to a group of investors.
14.
Erik Prince was part of a CIA task force created to engage in targeted killings of suspected terrorists.
15.
Erik Prince alleged that the House intelligence congressional committee leaked his name to the press.
16.
Erik Prince has said that he is convinced that former CIA director Leon Panetta revealed him as a CIA asset, after shutting down the covert CIA training operation in 2009.
17.
Erik Prince helped the UAE found a new company named Reflex Responses, or R2, with 51 percent local ownership, carefully avoiding his name on corporate documents.
18.
Erik Prince worked to oversee the effort and recruit troops, among others from Executive Outcomes, a former South African mercenary firm hired by several African governments during the 1990s to defeat violent rebellions in addition to protecting oil and diamond reserves.
19.
In 2011, Erik Prince was invited to Moscow by the Russian Federation.
20.
The Russian Federation requested that Erik Prince build "a Blackwater capability" in Russia.
21.
Erik Prince trained and drank with Alpha Group, the special forces unit of the Federal Security Service.
22.
Erik Prince leads a private equity firm called Frontier Resource Group, and until April 13,2021, he was chairman of Frontier Services Group Ltd, a Bermuda-incorporated logistics and transport company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
23.
Erik Prince's ventures advise and support Chinese investment in oil and gas in Africa.
24.
In 2014, Erik Prince commissioned the company to modify Thrush 510G crop-dusters with surveillance equipment, machine guns, armor, and other weapons, including custom pylons that could mount either NATO or Russian ballistics.
25.
The New York Times reported in May 2018 that Erik Prince arranged an August 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, attended by himself, Donald Trump Jr.
26.
Erik Prince had stated in his November 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that he had no formal communications or contact, nor any unofficial role, with the Trump campaign.
27.
UAE officials reportedly believed that Erik Prince was representing the Trump transition and Dmitriev was representing Putin.
28.
Erik Prince testified to the House Intelligence Committee that "I didn't fly there to meet any Russian guy", although the Mueller report found that he and Nader made significant preparations to meet Dmitriev.
29.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff announced on April 30,2019, that he was sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department alleging Erik Prince had provided false testimony to the committee.
30.
On December 30,2019, it was reported that Erik Prince had traveled to Venezuela to meet with a top aide of Nicolas Maduro.
31.
Erik Prince has been referred to the United States Treasury Department for possible violations of sanctions against the Maduro government.
32.
Erik Prince reportedly arranged for Project Veritas employees to receive intelligence training, which ended when the trainer quit because the group "wasn't capable of learning".
33.
Erik Prince continued to support Project Veritas after the organization's failure to disclose to state regulators the criminal conviction of its founder, James O'Keefe, resulted in the revocation of their charitable organization status in multiple states, and caused other donors to withdraw their financial support.
34.
In May 2021, The New York Times reported that Project Veritas, with the assistance of a former British spy and Erik Prince, secretly surveilled government employees during the Trump administration with the goal of discrediting perceived critics of former President Trump.
35.
The planning, management and financing of the Erik Prince's project was done using three firms from the United Arab Emirates, including Lancaster 6 DMCC, L-6 FZE and Opus Capital Asset Limited FZE, which were using a web of shell companies.
36.
Erik Prince was under an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his alleged involvement in the attempted sale of Jordanian arms to the UAE-backed Khalifa Haftar, as part of the 2019 plan.
37.
Apart from the investigations, Erik Prince was not charged with a crime.
38.
The UN Group of Experts claimed Erik Prince intended to broker a deal that involved the deployment of over two thousand mercenaries from Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina into North Kivu, a region known for its richness in minerals.
39.
Additionally, Erik Prince made claims against presidential candidate Luisa Gonzalez, drawing accusations of foreign interference in national politics.
40.
In 2025, Politico reported that a group, led by Erik Prince, had pitched the Trump administration on a proposal for deportations with the support of the private sector.
41.
Erik Prince converted to Catholicism in 1992 and describes himself as a practicing member of the church.
42.
Between 1998 and 2007, Erik Prince donated more than $200,000 to Republican and third-party causes.
43.
In 2006, Erik Prince contributed money to the Green Party of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, as part of a failed effort to help Republican Rick Santorum defeat Democrat Bob Casey.
44.
Erik Prince has donated to the Family Research Council, a beneficiary of the Prince and DeVos families since the 1980s,.
45.
In 2016 Erik Prince contributed $250,000 to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and $100,000 to Make America Number 1, a Trump-aligned super PAC helmed by Rebekah Mercer.
46.
Erik Prince serves as vice president of the Erik Prince Foundation, an organization his parents founded in 1979.
47.
Erik Prince has frequently donated to conservative Christian organizations, including the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty and the Prison Fellowship, and conservative political groups such as the Council for National Policy, of which his father was vice president at the time of his death.
48.
Erik Prince later wrote that he had an affair with Joanna Ruth Houck, his children's nanny, while his wife was dying.
49.
Erik Prince is married to Stacy DeLuke, a former Blackwater spokesperson.