In January 2016, now-retired U.S. Navy chief petty officer Tim Clark says he was in Las Vegas with his wife — also a veteran — for a wedding when a solicitor for Starpoint Resort Group approached them “at the 50-yard line of the Strip” and urged them to buy a timeshare in the Jockey Club, the building directly above their heads.

Clark recalled that his wife’s family had thoroughly enjoyed timeshares they’d acquired through a different company years before. Especially tempting for the pair, Clark said, was a promise that they wouldn’t just have rights to a property as in a typical timeshare, but become actual owners of a unit in the neon-lit tourist mecca.

Within hours, Clark says he and his wife got hustled into a crowded conference room and signed off on what he thought was a grand opportunity to own a piece of Las Vegas, and to access Starpoint’s other properties across North America by trading days with other customers.

Yet Clark said the couple found themselves ambushed by a bevy of costs and complications quite at odds with the glittering promises in the sales pitch — but familiar from countless complaints against Starpoint and its affiliates on the Better Business Bureau website, Facebook groups, Reddit forums, Yelp reviews and a 2019 class action lawsuit that accused the company of running a bait-and-switch scheme: rapidly escalating maintenance fees, poor accommodations at other resorts they could only escape by buying an “upgrade,” an incomprehensible “points” system for booking and the stunning discovery that they actually did not own their timeshare at all.

“Fraud (intentional misrepresentation) was used as the method to maximize profits,” the suit alleged. “Defendants knew that this was unlawful and have continued to use such means as fraud, misrepresentations, and omissions.”

Starpoint ultimately settled the case in 2022 without admitting wrongdoing. Clark said he was unaware of the suit, but after shelling out tens of thousands of dollars, he and his wife simply stopped paying. After an initial black mark on their credit, he said Starpoint gave up pursuing them.

"What they represented and asked you to sign, and the basis they told you it was sold on, didn't actually match with what reality was,” recalled Clark. “I think what they do is they know they're going to get some money out of you, then the music stops, and they decide that's all we're going to get out of this person.”

In the cache of paperwork that Clark provided, a single name recurs: Michael J. Muldoon, the GOP megadonor who has lured countless vacationers into his convoluted web of timeshare companies: Starpoint, Sapphire Resorts, GeoHoliday Club, Resortstay International, BQ Resorts, Getaways Resort Management.

Unlike the Clarks and Starpoint’s other irate customers, Muldoon actually holds property in Las Vegas. County records and Google Maps disclose his stuccoed abode in the guard-gated community of Spanish Trail — a brilliant emerald patch in the desert metropolis’ sand-colored sprawl. Billing itself as “the area’s premier upscale private residential community,” Spanish Trail is attached to an exclusive country club of the same name, with tennis courts, a fitness center and a 27-hole golf course that comes right up to Muldoon’s backyard.

It was from this address that Muldoon donated $50,000 to the Ted Cruz Victory Fund in May 2024, $15,000 into committees affiliated with West Virginia Gov.-elect Patrick Morrissey that February, and $50,000 to the Republican National Committee in August 2023, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

But public records reveal something more: Muldoon doesn’t live there alone. Voter files show that Kash Patel, the conspiracy-theorizing Donald Trump loyalist that the president has nominated to lead the FBI, has been registered at the address since January 2022. Just weeks after Muldoon cut his check to Cruz’s leadership PAC, the North Carolina and Nevada state Republican parties transferred funds to Patel at the timeshare tycoon’s Spanish Trail address, marking the fifth such disbursement he received at Muldoon’s home in as many months.

What’s more, Clark County Election Department records show that Patel cast mail ballots from Muldoon’s luxury residence in the presidential primary in February 2024, the state and federal primaries that June, and then in the November general election.

“I am proud to call Las Vegas my home,” Patel boasted at a Trump campaign event in the city last September, where Trump foreign policy envoy Ric Grenell even suggested Patel might someday serve as one of Nevada’s U.S. senators. “I moved out here after our administration ended. You all have welcomed me with open arms, and I cannot thank you enough.”

There’s no record of Patel residing anyplace in Las Vegas except with Muldoon.

And Muldoon has a history of nuzzling up to figures in law enforcement in the Silver State. The Nevada Independent reported that he dumped tens of thousands of dollars during the last decade into the campaigns of former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, whose office received dozens of complaints about Starpoint’s business practices but never pursued Muldoon’s companies legally. One of Patel’s first public political events in Nevada was a rally for Laxalt in February 2022, just weeks after he registered to vote at Muldoon’s home.

Now, if Patel hurdles the Senate confirmation process and becomes the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Muldoon and his continent-spanning timeshare empire could count one of the most powerful lawmen in the land as a friend.

Reached briefly by phone, Muldoon maintained he was "in a remote part of the world" and "not in a position to answer questions." He severed the call almost immediately upon the mention of Patel’s name. Muldoon did not respond to repeated queries about the exact nature of their arrangement and relationship sent via text and via the messaging platforms WhatsApp and Signal, which allow for communication from distant parts of the globe.

The attorney who represented Muldoon’s companies in the 2019 civil suit, former Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, did not reply to repeated calls or emails. Neither did Starpoint Chief Operating Officer Doris Azevedo.

And there’s plenty of evidence that Patel and Muldoon are more than landlord and tenant, or merely roommates. 

A company that Patel formed in Nevada in 2021, Skeleton Coast LLC, utilized an incorporation service in Reno and a Carson City-based law office that Muldoon has used for his own business ventures. The limited liability company’s name closely resembles that of the also Nevada-based Skeleton Coast Living Trust that subsequently assumed control of Patel’s Washington, D.C., condo. The full holdings and operations of these entities aren’t public information.

The connection between Patel and Muldoon appears to stretch back half a decade at least — to 2019, the year Patel joined the Trump administration as a National Security Council (NSC) staffer, following his tenure as an aide to then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). Nunes is now CEO of the company behind Trump’s Truth Social app, where Patel sits on the board.

In August of that year, Equiant Financial Services — which court records and Better Business Bureau reviews document is the longtime payment collector for Muldoon’s timeshare empire — shared a photo of a corporate golf excursion to the Royal Dornoch golf course in Scotland. 

The image features Patel — called a “colleague” — and Muldoon, identified as a “client.” The Equiant executive who attended the outing and shared the image on LinkedIn did not respond to phone calls or emails, including how Patel got invited, and who paid the costs associated with the trip.

As a federal employee on the NSC, Patel would have been barred from receiving gifts, including travel, lodging or even a round of links, according to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Charles Kupperman.

Kupperman, who hired Patel under what he described as unstinting pressure from Trump, recalled that when the photo was taken the NSC was close to breaking its budget, and the office was refusing to approve any trips — even those within the United States. Further, staffers would have to report any excursions overseas, whether for work or pleasure.

But Kupperman said he did not know if Patel did so, and an NSC spokesperson maintained the office did not possess any reports from the first Trump administration. The National Archives said that materials from that period will not be publicly accessible until 2026.

Patel, for his part, did not respond to inquiries on any of the above matters made via phone, email and WhatsApp.

Clark, the Navy vet, said that Equiant took his payments during his entanglement with Starpoint. Yet he remained agnostic about Patel’s potential ascent to leadership of the FBI.

“It is what it is,” he said, adding he felt he didn’t “have any dog in that race.”

Clark never took part in any legal action against Muldoon’s companies, even though he maintains that he believed their activity was criminal.

"It would've been probably more trouble than it was worth,” he said. "I just wanted to cut our losses and move on.”

Will Bredderman is a freelance investigative reporter focused on corruption, concealed dealings, and illicit influence. His reporting has earned awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing and the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists. He has worked for The Daily Beast, Crain's New York Business, and the New York Observer, among other publications.