Greg Lindberg

Before his name emerged in the news for large political donations, Greg Lindberg was a relatively unknown businessman whose company dabbled in a wide range of industries, from insurance and health care software to publishing data on sports memorabilia cards. But now, the Durham entrepreneur is charged with bribery and conspiracy in an investigation that has also ensnared the North Carolina Republican Party chairman. Greg E. Lindberg, 48, of Durham, North Carolina, and founder and Chairman of Eli Global LLC (Eli Global) and the owner of Global Bankers Insurance Group (GBIG was indicted in April 2019 for alleged participation in a bribery scheme involving independent expenditure accounts and improper campaign contributions. He was indicted along with John D. Gray, 68, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a consultant for Lindberg; North Carolina state political party Chairman Robert Cannon Hayes, 73, of Concord, North Carolina; and Chairman of a Chatham County political party and an Eli Global executive John V. Palermo, 63, of Pittsboro, North Carolina, with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and aiding and abetting. Hayes is also charged with three counts of making false statements to the FBI. On or about Aug. 28, 2018, FBI agents interviewed Hayes about his involvement with and knowledge of the alleged improper campaign contributions. During the interview, Hayes allegedly lied to FBI agents about directing funds, at Lindberg’s request, from Lindberg’s campaign contribution to the North Carolina state political party to the Commissioner’s re-election campaign; about having any discussions with the Commissioner about Lindberg or Gray; and about discussing with the Commissioner personnel issues related to the Commissioner’s office. Lindberg, a California native, started the company from his dorm room at Yale University in 1991. (Eli is a nickname for Yale graduates. It comes from the school’s namesake, Elihu Yale, a wealthy merchant who worked with the East India Company.) The company was at that point just a health care newsletter, according to its website. Its headquarters is now a nondescript building in southern Durham, where employees manage the company’s conglomeration of subsidiaries and hunt for new companies to acquire and grow. The company says it acquires around 30 new companies a year, ranging in size from $2 million deals to $300 million, and brags that it never sells a company once it has bought it. The growing empire of Eli Global apparently made Lindberg an extremely wealthy man — or at least one capable of owning multiple mansions across the United States, taking million-dollar vacations and buying a Gulfstream jet and leasing another one. A spokesman has previously given his net worth as $1.7 billion at the end of 2017, which would be a significant increase from his early days in the Triangle. Lindberg’s net worth was around $12.8 million in the early 2000s, when he was living in Chapel Hill, according to a premarital agreement he signed with his now-estranged wife, Tisha. Greg was born in San Mateo, CA in 1970, the youngest of five children. His father was an airline pilot and his mother was a homemaker. He started a high school newspaper the Gryphon’s Tale at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough CA and later graduated cum laude. While a freshman at Yale, Greg founded Eli Magazine, a political satire magazine. Later at Yale, Greg started the company that would become the Eli Global group of companies. In 1991 he launched Home Care Week, a reimbursement newsletter for home health agencies that one Eli Global company still publishes today. Greg graduated from Yale magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with an honors economics degree in 1993.