WASHINGTON – Getting arrested didn't made Rep. Chris Collins any poorer.
In fact, the value of the millionaire lawmaker's assets increased between 3.8% and 5.5% in 2018, the year he was charged with fraud, conspiracy and lying to an FBI officer in connection with an alleged insider stock trading scheme. He was worth somewhere between $40.4 million and $114.1 million at the end of last year, up from between $38.9 million and $108.1 million a year earlier.
Meantime, his non-congressional income last year totaled between $2.4 million and $12.6 million – up by about half since 2017.
Those are the key takeaways from the 2018 personal financial disclosure statement Collins filed with the Clerk of the House in May, which became publicly available late last month.
The same documents show Western New York's two other members of Congress are not doing nearly as well financially, and one remains one of the least-wealthy representatives.
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A close look at Collins' last three such statements show that he took a big hit in 2017 when the stock price of Innate Immunotherapeutics – an Australian biotech firm the lawmaker touted to friends, family and staff – collapsed. But the year 2018 found him on the road to financial recovery.
That happened even though Collins stands accused of telling his son Cameron in June 2017 that Innate's one product had failed in clinical trials, thereby setting off a series of what prosecutors call insider stock trades. Collins, who maintains his innocence and is set to go on trial in New York next February, is not accused of dumping any Innate stock himself.
Regardless of Collins' arrest last August, the federal reports indicate that several of his cash investments increased in value last year as he sold off other assets.
A Clarence Republican, Collins made his mark in business before entering politics, and he's still earning a lot more than his $174,000 congressional salary through his businesses.
The congressman's stake in ZeptoMetrix, a Buffalo-based biotech company, was worth between $25 million and $50 million, thereby making up more than half of the assets listed in Collins' 2018 financial report. What's more, he garnered between $1 million and $5 million in income from the firm last year.
Collins' investment in another venture, Volland Electric of Buffalo, was worth less – $5 million to $25 million. But like ZeptoMetrix, Volland provided him with between $1 million and $5 million in income last year.
Volland brought Collins far less income in 2017. In fact, Volland's improved performance is the main reason his income increased so dramatically last year, the federal reports show.
At the same time, Collins curtailed his involvement in several companies in 2018. He resigned as director and chairman of ZeptoMetrix and left the boards of both Innate and ICU Diagnostics, another biotech firm. He also left two real estate partnerships.
Collins remained as a director of Volland, Audubon Machinery Corp. of North Tonawanda and the Greater Niagara Frontier Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He also continued as a partner in nine real estate ventures.
Collins' Innate losses didn't ruin him
Asked a series of questions about Collins' involvement in private businesses, his spokeswoman, Jennifer Brown, replied: “Neither Congressman Collins, nor his wife Mary, have an active role in any company and are passive investors. As a result, Mr. Collins barely spends a few minutes a month on his investments."
Collins' financial reports indicate that while he took a bath on Innate's stock in 2017, he endured only a light rinse last year.
As part of what it called "a wider branding refresh" after the name "Innate" appeared 99 times in the Collins indictment, the company now goes by the name Amplia Therapeutics. And Collins – once Innate's largest shareholder – held a stake in Amplia worth between $250,001 and $500,000 at the end of last year after selling shares worth between $15,001 and $50,000 in June 2018.
At the end of 2017, Collins' stake in Innate was worth much more: between $1 million and $5 million.
And at the end of 2016, when Innate's stock was on a meteoric rise, Collins owned shares in the company worth somewhere between $25 million and $50 million.
In other words, it appears that sources close to Collins were a bit conservative in late June 2017, when they estimated that the 92 percent drop in Innate's stock price cost him about $5 million. Bloomberg estimated at the time that Collins suffered a loss of $16.7 million, while Statnews, another business news website, put Collins' loss at $44 million. Based on his financial reports, his actual loss appears to be somewhere between those two figures.
Whatever Collins lost on Innate, it didn't exactly ruin his finances. His 2016 personal financial disclosure showed that his assets were worth between $44 million and $133.3 million at the end of that year. That means the overall value of his assets fell between 8.2 percent and 14.4 percent between 2016 and 2018.
And those figures underestimate what Collins is really worth. Thanks to the loose financial reporting requirements Congress has placed on itself, Collins didn't have to report the value of his home in Clarence's Spaulding Lake subdivision, nor his homes in Washington and Florida. Nor did he have to report his wife's salary at ZeptoMetrix and the Worth Collection, a New York fashion designer.
In addition, Congress doesn't require its members to report the exact value of their assets or their income streams. Instead, lawmakers only have to report those figures in dollar-amount ranges. That's why any federal lawmaker's personal financial disclosure statement provides only an out-of-focus snapshot of his or her true wealth.
Collins, long one of the richest member of Congress, is by far the wealthiest in Western New York.
Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican who represents the Southern Tier and parts of the Finger Lakes region, and his wife, Jean, reported assets of between $232,006 and $630,000. But the Reeds also reported liabilities of between $215,003 and $550,000, which included mortgages on homes in Corning and on Keuka Lake as well as an auto loan.
The Reeds, who retain a stake in their family medical billing and debt collection businesses, reported non-congressional income of between $115,004 and $250,200.
Reed was also the only local member to report taking a foreign trip paid for by an outside entity. He was one of 30 members on a week-long trip to Paris for a conference with French officials. The conservative Ripon Society sponsored the trip and paid the $13,008 tab for Reed and his wife. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of the Hudson Valley and Rep. Kathleen Rice of Long Island, both Democrats, were the only other New Yorkers on the trip.
Rep. Brian Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat and long one of the least wealthy members of Congress, reported assets of between $7,007 and $105,000. His income off those investments ranged between $407 and $3,000.
Higgins also reported a mortgage of between $100,001 and $250,000 on his South Buffalo home.
