The company building Trump Media’s tech has historic links to Iran, Russia, and China

The companies—WorldConnect IPTV and JedTec—formed a joint venture, named WorldConnect Technologies, which served as the middleman between Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and Perception TV CDN, the company hired to build the tech infrastructure needed to power Truth Social’s foray into video streaming. 

To better understand the nature of TMTG’s burgeoning media holdings and the companies building it, Fortune examined dozens of business filings from the U.S. and abroad, and spoke to seven sources that previously worked with Perception’s cofounders, its current chair Matjaz “Matt” Vidmar and CEO John Mills.

What emerged from these sources was a “no questions asked” policy at Perception and previous companies connected to Vidmar and Mills that led them to work with Chinese and Russian state-backed propaganda networks, Islamist television channels, and Iranian corporations. TMTG chose to work with Perception despite the fact that in the past it did business with now-sanctioned entities.  

Vidmar and Mills’ interests in the U.S. were represented by a tag-team of Louisiana salesmen, Jarret Flood and Von Boyett, who run WorldConnect IPTV, a company with no website. JedTec, the other half of the joint venture, is registered to James E. Davison—a powerful but reclusive Louisiana businessman and major Republican donor. Davison counts multiple Republican presidents as friends and has a reputation as a statewide powerbroker. Since 2014, Davison has made personal political contributions to the GOP of at least $2.8 million, according to Federal Election Commission data. In the 2024 election cycle, Davison made $465,000 in personal political contributions, according to data from OpenSecrets. 

JedTec, which is registered in Davison’s name, had no clear role in the deal, according to those involved. “We never even heard about that company,” Vidmar told Fortune in an interview. “I know about JedTec as much as I read in the press and in SEC filings.” WorldConnect and lawyers representing Davison’s companies did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

For negotiating the deal, announced in July, WorldConnect and JedTec received 2.6 million shares of TMTG between them, with the option for another 2.5 million upon completion of the project, according to documents filed with the SEC. TMTG will also purchase Perception’s source code from WorldConnect for $17.5 million, payable over three years, according to a disclosure made with the SEC when the deal closed in August.

When sent a detailed list of questions regarding TMTG’s business dealings with Perception, WorldConnect, and JedTec, a TMTG company spokesperson brushed them off. 

“This story, which combines nonsensical insinuations about our company and our partners with false allegations appropriated from other publications, is a textbook example showing why Americans now dismiss the legacy media as a collection of politicized hacks,” they said.

‘Just another customer’

TMTG hired Perception to build a “content delivery network” (CDN). These networks essentially retrieve content from servers in data centers and load it onto a user’s device so it can be streamed without interruption, wherever they might be watching. In recent months, TMTG has been clear that it wants to build its own CDN to achieve its dream of creating a media company that wouldn’t be subject to denials of service from the companies that manage the internet’s plumbing. The CDN was “created with the goal of rendering the service uncancellable by Big Tech,” the company said in an SEC filing earlier this month.

One former Perception employee expressed surprise at TMTG’s decision to work with the company. “It’s surprising that Trump Media would sign a deal with such a small company that is just a few developers in Ljubljana,” the source said.

Perception has a convoluted corporate structure that spans three countries and two continents. A holding company called Perception Group is listed in Ontario, Canada. It includes two subsidiaries: one in London and another in Ljubljana, Slovenia, according to documents from the Ontario Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery. The Slovenian offices house Perception’s software development arm called Fora. Filings in Companies House, the U.K’s official business registry, show the London-based company, Perception TV CDN, was unprofitable with net liabilities of £20,000 and had about two employees in 2023. When asked about Perception’s finances Vidmar said, “Could be, I am not into accounts detail.” Vidmar added that the U.K. company wasn’t the main source of the Perception’s revenues.

Perception previously worked with at least two Iranian companies: the Iranian telco Baran Telecom and the IT firm Fanap, according to Perception’s website. In 2015, Perception announced it would design a CDN for Baran, Vidmar told Fortune in an interview. A month later Perception announced a joint venture with Fanap, called Perception Gulf, that aimed to sell the company’s services throughout the region, according to a press release. Fanap is part-owned by the semi-public Pasargad Bank, which the U.S. directly sanctioned in 2020 over fears money from the bank would be used to fund Iran’s nuclear program. 

Vidmar said Perception stopped working with Baran Telecom as soon as sanctions were announced, and that Perception Gulf—the joint venture with Fanap—was canceled without conducting any additional deals. He cast Perception’s work in Iran as a consequence of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, that stabilized the relationship between Iran and the West. Many countries “were eager to re-establish trade and investments in Iran,” Vidmar said in a statement. 

Some of Perception’s other clients include the Saudi Arabian media giant Rotana Media and the Sudanese telco Zain. There were no allegations of wrongdoing or sanctions violations involved in these deals. 

TV channels for Russia, China, and Islamic fundamentalists

Vidmar’s previous company, Vision247, also had a history of working with clients that ran afoul of regulators. Vision247, founded by Vidmar in 2005, was a London-based company that made a business of rebroadcasting channels from different countries in the U.K. and across the world. Mills also worked at Vision247 alongside Vidmar, according to business records. Vidmar and Mills stepped away from Vision247 in 2019, according to former employees and filings from Companies House in the U.K. 

The company exhibited little discernment regarding who it would work with, striking deals with Russia Today (RT), China Central Television (CCTV), and several Islamist networks, former employees told Fortune. 

RT and CCTV are the state-backed media outlets of Russia and China respectively. Vision247 also carried the broadcast channels of the Islamist media companies Peace TV and Almajd Network. Almajd is an Arabic-language media company that has close ties to the Salafi branch of Islamic fundamentalism. In 2019, Peace TV’s content led to it being banned from broadcasting in the U.K. in 2019 for inciting violence and hate speech. Peace TV was a client of Vision247 at the time it was booted from British airwaves. 

“I remember they had about five channels with us,” the former employee said. 

Vidmar and Mills were no longer involved with Vision247 at the time Peace TV had its broadcasting license revoked. RT also had its license banned in multiple countries, including the U.S. and U.K. following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. RT was no longer a Vision247 client by that point. 

When asked about Vision247’s past work with Peace TV and RT Vidmar said the company never provided service to banned channels. “We provided broadcast distribution services, and as long as clients complied with regulatory and licensing requirements, we continued servicing them,” he said in a statement to Fortune. 

Vidmar added that other broadcasting companies carried RT before it was banned. 

Several of Vidmar and Mill’s former coworkers said they were supportive mentors. Vidmar was praised for his foresight in the broadcasting industry—two former employees called him a “visionary.” 

However, others said he cultivated a company culture that did not evaluate the content it broadcasted. “We don’t see it that way,” the former employee said. “We were broadcasting channels from everyone, we never judged anyone on their content.”

Vidmar echoed those sentiments, saying television was an international business. “CCTV was just another customer for whom we provided satellite distribution.” 

A Louisiana hamlet turned tech hub

It was during his tenure at Vision247 that Vidmar was introduced to WorldConnect, run by Boyett and Flood, the two Louisianans who would ultimately broker Perception’s deal with TMTG. Vidmar told Fortune he first met Flood and Boyett when the two were representing the television channel SonLife Broadcasting, which belonged to Louisiana televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. (A former employee told Fortune Vision247’s clients included Christian evangelist channels and adult networks, such as the popular U.K. soft porn channel Babestation. Vidmar said Babestation briefly rented studio space from Vision247). 

WorldConnect then continued to work with Perception, culminating in the July agreement with TMTG. Vidmar, though, said he doesn’t know how the deal came about. “I don’t have a clue,” Vidmar told Fortune. “I never asked. It’s none of my business. Genuinely, I never even ask … Never even came to my head. Why would I even ask?”

When Fortune pointed out that in a literal sense it was Vidmar’s business, he replied that it was a standard sales process, which didn’t warrant additional scrutiny. “I meant it’s not really for me to interrogate somebody on how they find the customer,” Vidmar said. 

A tech hub in Dodson, Louisiana, pop. 294

WorldConnect is headquartered in Dodson, Louisiana, a village with a population of just 294, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Flood and Boyett appear to be serial entrepreneurs with at least 16 businesses between them, eight of which are no longer active, and three that list them both as directors, according to Louisiana state business filings viewed by Fortune. The website for WorldConnect was taken down shortly after ProPublica sent the company a list of questions regarding its relationship to JedTec and Davison, according to the publication. 

However, an archived version of their website shows a bare-bones page with a smattering of information that lists a disconnected phone number. Vague press releases on the website announce projects like Vision247’s deal with CCTV, and a meeting with the mayor of a “key Southern city” to convert it into a “Gigabyte City.” A series of headshots for employees are identical to those shown on the website for the Von Boyett Corporation, a separate company owned by Boyett and an associate named Blake Boyett. One of the headshots belongs to Mills, the Perception CEO, who is named as WorldConnect’s U.K. Business Developer. (Mills did not respond to a request for comment). 

WorldConnect shares not only a staff but an address with the Von Boyett Corporation. In fact, the same Dodson address, 1405 Highway 505, is listed on dozens of Louisiana state filings dating back more than 20 years—all carrying the Boyetts’ names. One of Boyett and Flood’s regular associates, Kayla Nelson, who is featured on both websites and numerous business filings, lists her address as 1796 highway 505, a three-minute drive from the address Boyett uses, according to Google Maps. (Nelson did not respond to requests for comment).

Flood, WorldConnect’s other principal, says he is a doctor, although he does not appear to practice medicine, according to searches in state medical databases. However, in addition to his various businesses with Boyett, Flood also owns several healthcare-related businesses. Vidmar said Flood was Perception’s main point of contact and that he expected to see him in Dubai for a trade show this month. Flood and Boyett did not respond to multiple requests for comment made via email, phone, and social media.

The Boyetts and Flood appear to have operated primarily in the energy sector, the same industry where Davison made much of his fortune. 

Von Boyett is currently listed as the CEO of the Von Boyett Corporation, which operates in a wide variety of highly complex businesses such as the sale of power plants and petro-chemical equipment, financing for their purchases, and investing in medical technologies, according to its website. His personal professional background features an equally astounding set of professional qualifications: 30 years of experience in the petro-chemical, telecommunications, and “product sourcing” and 15 years of servicing solar turbines and medical equipment. 

Boyett’s bio also details several links to Russia. He sold equipment to Russian energy giant Gazprom in the 1980s and claims he negotiated the sale of the first foreign television program in the Soviet Union.

Flood, Boyett, and Davison appear to have further plans to continue their partnership. On Aug. 5, the same day TMTG issued a press release announcing its CDN was up and running, the three filed articles of organization for a new limited liability company called WCT Streaming headquartered at 1405 Highway 505 in Dodson. It is not yet clear what WCT Streaming will do, or whether it will service TMTG. 

Fortune did reach the Von Boyett Corporation via the number listed on its website. A man answered and said to call back in 30 minutes for an interview with Boyett. Fortune’s follow up calls went unanswered.