Peter Schiff

Business career

Schiff began his career as a stockbroker at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage in the early 1990s.

In 1996, Schiff and a partner acquired an inactive brokerage firm and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital, and began operating it from a small office in Los Angeles. They relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut, in 2005, and later to Westport, Connecticut, where it is currently headquartered with branch offices across the US in Scottsdale, Arizona; Boca Raton, Florida; Newport Beach and Manhattan Beach, California; and New York City. Schiff sold Euro Pacific Capital, which is now called Alliance Global Partners.

Schiff founded Euro Pacific Bank, a full reserve banking operation originally in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Schiff was born to a middle-class Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, was the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Schiff's parents divorced when he was young and he moved around the country with his mother and his brother, Andrew, from Connecticut to Manhattan to Florida and finally to Southern California. Peter Schiff credits his father for introducing him to the Austrian School of economic thought.

Irwin Schiff was a prominent figure in the US tax protester movement. He died in federal prison in October 2015 while he was serving a sentence of at least 13 years for tax evasion. Peter Schiff did not share his father's radical stance and by 1980, had urged him to stop his tax protest activities which he saw as "futile resistance". He later stated that while he had come to find his father's intellectual case "compelling", he was disinclined to follow his methods and his "idealism". Schiff commented, "The problem with my father is that he's not practical. He was always going to lose." On October 20, 2015, four days after the death of his father, Schiff accused the Federal Bureau of Prisons of inhumanely treating his father and not allowing the usual humanitarian release.

2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign.

2010 US Senate campaign

In December 2008, some Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against incumbent senator Christopher Dodd. Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the website. On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign.

In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the US Senate, and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50". In June 2009, Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by only four percentage points. On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website.

After giving some hints he would run on The Daily Show, Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show. By October 2009, Schiff had received more than 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world. Schiff's campaign received endorsements from Ron Paul and Steve Forbes.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election challenge from Rob Simmons. Schiff failed to qualify for the primary at the convention but became the only Republican candidate to successfully petition to be placed on the ballot. McMahon won the primary with 49% of the vote. Simmons came in second with 28% of the vote, and Schiff came in third with 23% of the vote.

The general election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.

Investigation and lawsuit

On June 30, 2022, the Puerto Rico Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF) announced they had suspended the operations of Schiff's Puerto Rico-based Euro Pacific International Bank, which was suspected of having facilitated money laundering and tax evasion. The Commissioner stated that it had found numerous violations of its regulations and that the bank had "not wanted to comply". Regulators liquidated the bank, and Schiff paid $300,000 in fines.

Schiff claimed that the OCIF actions were due to allegations made by 60 Minutes Australia and The Age newspaper, saying, "There was no way those allegations were true, but once those stories broke, the bank's business imploded." In 2022 Schiff filed a civil action against the Nine Network and The Age newspaper for defamation over the 60 Minutes Australia interview and subsequent Age articles. Later in 2022, an Australian judge ruled that 60 Minutes had defamed Schiff but The Age had not.

By December 2023, the civil action was settled. Schiff was paid $360,000, and the respondents removed all versions of the 60 Minutes broadcast.

Schiff has stated that he lost millions of dollars due to the investigation.

In August 2024, Schiff filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on claims that it failed to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to provide information regarding its suspension of Euro Pacific Bank's operations.