Enron’s announced it’s back on Monday — exactly 23 years after it filed for bankruptcy. Credit: X / @Enron

With a con-artist headed back to the White House and the Dow Jones hovering around record highs, it only makes sense that the company at the center of one of the nation’s largest financial scandals is making a comeback.

Houston-based energy venture Enron announced that it’s back from the dead on Monday — exactly 23 years after the company went belly-up in what at the time was the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Even so, it appears that Enron’s return – which appears to be part of a cryptocurrency scheme – may be more of a joke than an actual revival, U.S. Patent and Trademark office filings suggest.

Enron’s iconic red, green and blue logo was sold by Arkansas-based College Company LLC to Charles Gaydos for $1 in June, U.S. Patent and Trademark office filings show.

Gaydos is the CEO of College Company, the same LLC that owns the trademark to “Birds Aren’t Real,” a satirical online movement that maintains that our fine feathered friends are actually government surveillance drones.

A month prior to the sale of the Enron trademark, an account using those same trademarks popped up on social media platform X. That account has posted a couple of promotional videos that at first may seem legit. However, with repeat views, they reveal themselves to possibly be a veiled gimmick poking fun at corporations’ diversity and inclusion commercials.

Adding to the confusion are rumors that the return of Enron could be a gimmick promoting the launch of a cryptocurrency.

Enron’s recently launched website includes language including “permissionless innovation” — a term often used in crypto circles — and it teases the company’s role in advancing “decentralized technology,” a term synonymous with blockchain.

What’s more, the Houston Chronicle reported Monday that the new reincarnation of Enron is “likely entirely unaffiliated with the Enron that has become synonymous with the 2001 financial scandal.”

For folks who may have forgotten or weren’t even alive, the original Enron was at the center of one of the largest accounting scandals in U.S. history.

Among other things, the Houston-based energy firm used a technique known as mark-to-market accounting to inflate its value and hide its losses, which equated to $74 billion at the time of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

The new Enron’s leadership is dedicated to “setting a high standard for ethical business practices, transparency, and sustainability, serving as a model for corporate responsibility worldwide,” if a Monday press release is to be believed.

So is Enron back as a joke or a moneymaking crypto venture? Looks like folks may have to wait until Dec. 9, when the company is set to make a “big announcement.”

One thing is sure: sensible Texans may want to take a long, hard look at the numbers before sinking cash into the new company.

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This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 10, 2024.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...