Justin Fulcher ran a telehealth startup that went bankrupt, is being accused of unpaid bills and appears to have overstated his credentials. Now he’s among those leading DOGE’s effort at the Pentagon. Fulcher’s Singapore-based telehealth company, RingMD, for instance, went bankrupt after he raised more than $10 million from investors. His attempt to restart it in the U.S. led to litigation with a business partner, who claims Fulcher owes him hundreds of thousands of dollars Like a number of DOGE hires before him, Fulcher, who started his first software company as a teenager, has impressive programming chops In 2023 he received a master’s degree in nonproliferation and terrorism studies from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and ne of his professors there was Jason Blazakis. On his LinkedIn prfile, Fulcher also claims a doctorate of international relations and affairs from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, but the school hs no evidence he ever attended the program. The South Carolina-based non-profit Fulcher started in 2023, the Palmetto Initiative, stated on its website that it was a U.S. 501(c)(3) U.S. public charity. But the organization’s employee identification number does not match Internal Revenue Service records. Since 2020, Fulcher has donated almost $40,000 to Republican lawmakers and political action committees, according to FEC records. He’s a longtime admirer of Elon Musk. Fulcher moved to South East Asia after dropping out of Clemson University in 2011. With an undisclosed investment from a Boston-based doctor named Ben Harvey, he enrolled the company in Y Combinator in 2020. On stage at the APEC CEO Summit in San Francisco, in 2023 Fulcher announced even bigger news: RingMD had partnered with California-based Pasaca Capital to invest in an advanced manufacturing facility in South Carolina to produce medical devices and pharmaceuticals. The project remains a mystery.