Oregon Officials Accused of Secretly Selling Off Public Broadband as Value Skyrocketed

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a civil enforcement action yesterday against several Morrow County Public Officials and Community Leaders who orchestrated a self-dealing sale of the broadband company, Windwave Communications, at a sharply undervalued price, out of an NPO intended for the benefit of the community, just as the value of the company soared.

Oregon AG Sues Morrow County Officials & Leaders Over Sale Of Broadband Company

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed the lawsuit in Morrow County alleging that that a small group of “insiders”—including the Port of Morrow’s General Manager, two Port Commissioners, and a Morrow County Commissioner—abused their positions as board members of Inland Development Corporation, a nonprofit formed in 2004 to expand fiber-optic internet access in underserved public institutions including rural schools, hospitals, courthouses, and libraries in eastern Oregon.

AG Rayfield said:

This nonprofit was created to connect eastern Oregon communities—not to quietly enrich a handful of officials behind closed doors.

Windwave experienced significant growth in value as large data centers, such as Amazon, began relocating to the northeastern Oregon region.

The insiders, including the General Manager of the Port of Morrow, were aware that Windwave’s revenues were surging and that the company was entering a new period of unprecedented profitability.

The manager had direct involvement in Amazon’s plans to acquire land for multiple new data centers that would further boost Windwave’s value.

Despite having access to up-to-date financial information indicating that Windwave was thriving, the defendants provided an outside valuation firm with outdated and incomplete data from 2017, omitting key data.

The old information was then used to justify their insider deal to buy Windwave in 2018 for just $2.6 million.

Internal emails indicate that the insiders knew the company had already earned $1.5 million in profits that year, and this was likely to increase with Amazon’s plans to expand its footprint in Eastern Oregon; however, they went ahead with the sale for their own personal financial benefit.

The Oregon Department of Justice is seeking damages of at least $6.9 million or the voiding of the sale of Windwave, an injunction, and other remedies to ensure accountability and to safeguard the principle that nonprofit resources created for public benefit must not be converted into private profit.