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.
By David Jeans, Forbes Staff
For weeks, Pentagon officials had been bracing themselves for the arrival of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, wondering who the world’s richest man had tapped to oversee an unprecedented overhaul of the U.S. government’s single largest department.
Now, Forbes has learned that one of Musk’s chosen employees to take a chainsaw to the Pentagon’s nearly $1 trillion budget is a serial entrepreneur with a master’s in terrorism studies named Justin Fulcher, according to a Pentagon official and two other people briefed on his work.
A glance at his career suggests he’s a successful entrepreneur: the founder of a global telehealth startup and a charity focused on boosting access to internet connectivity and healthcare in South Carolina. He was also behind a $500 million plan to invest in an advanced manufacturing plant that was hailed by the Biden administration.
And like a number of DOGE hires before him, Fulcher, who started his first software company as a teenager, has impressive programming chops, according to former colleagues and collaborators who spoke with Forbes; multiple people said he claimed to have done programming work for the FBI as a teenager (the FBI declined to comment).
But a closer examination of Fulcher’s career also suggests his accomplishments don’t always add up, according to internal company documents and interviews with 10 people who have worked with him. 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. And the half-billion-dollar manufacturing facility promoted by the Biden administration appears to be one of a few claims that never materialized.
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Fulcher’s national security credentials are also unclear. In 2023 he received a master’s degree in nonproliferation and terrorism studies from Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. One of his professors there, Jason Blazakis, described him as “a bright guy, hard worker.” On his LinkedIn, Fulcher also claims a doctorate of international relations and affairs from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. But John Bates, who oversees student records at the university told Forbes that “we have no record of this individual as a student.”
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. In a statement, Shannon Wiley, general counsel for the South Carolina secretary of state’s office, said the organization was incorporated as a non-profit, but “has not registered to solicit charitable funds in the state of South Carolina.” The IRS declined to comment.
Fulcher didn’t respond to multiple comment requests. After Forbes contacted him, the Palmetto Initiative’s website removed mention of it being a charity. On his LinkedIn page, mention of his Johns Hopkins doctorate was updated to state it is “in progress.”
The Musk-led DOGE effort has brought both hope and despair to the federal government workforce, promising to cut long unchecked bureaucracy and costs — and thousands of jobs. At the Pentagon, where officials are planning to slash up to $50 billion from its budget, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has celebrated DOGE’s arrival. “They’re going to be incorporated into what we’re doing at DoD to find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget in the federal government,” he said in a February address. “We are focusing as much as we can on headquarters and fat and top-line stuff that allows us to reinvest elsewhere.”
On Monday, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a video posted to X that DOGE had identified programs to cut that would “probably save $80 million in wasteful spending,” citing initiatives linked to “strengthening democracy” and DEI. “We are working hand in glove with DOGE,” he said.
Forbes couldn’t determine how Fulcher was connected to the DOGE team, or whether he has a security clearance. Forbes previously reported that DOGE staffers would be employed directly by the Defense Department to focus solely on the efficiency-focused mandate.
The Pentagon declined to comment and referred Forbes to DOGE, which is overseen by the White House. The White House declined comment.
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 Musk, telling Forbes in a 30 under 30 application in 2017 that the billionaire was his “dream mentor.” More recently, he’s publicly called for more rank and file public involvement in government. “Each of us has a role to play in the ongoing story of our nation,” he wrote in an August 2024 blog post. “To serve with courage, and to contribute in whatever way we can to the enduring story of America.”
Fulcher moved to South East Asia after dropping out of Clemson University in 2011. There, he started RingMD with a goal to help impoverished communities with telehealth services. In 2017, as part of his 30 under 30 application, he told Forbes the company had doctors from more than 30 countries serving hundreds of thousands of RingMD users. “We’ve literally connected thousands of people for their first ever conversation with a qualified doctor!” he wrote.
He appeared to embody the successful startup entrepreneur, moving the company into an upmarket office in Singapore. Microsoft, which was providing its Azure cloud services to RingMD, published blog posts promoting Fulcher’s work in the region. He was selected for the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list that year.
But in 2018, RingMD ran out of money, stopped paying employees and went bankrupt, according to Singapore filings and six people who worked with him. In an email in October 2018, Fulcher apologized to employees and pledged to repay them, but suggested that “investors are actively fighting against the team receiving absolutely anything.”
Such implosions are typical for startups. But Fulcher wasn’t done with RingMD, relaunching the company in the U.S. the following year. With an undisclosed investment from a Boston-based doctor named Ben Harvey, he enrolled the company in Y Combinator in 2020, and claimed the company would now generate $632,000 in annual recurring revenue thanks to emerging telemedicine efforts in Chile, the Philippines, and India. The attention helped raise a small amount of seed funding, according to Pitchbook.
While the company didn’t announce any other funding rounds, Fulcher went on to announce large-scale investments. In November 2023, ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the White House touted $50 billion in private sector investments in the Asia-Pacific region. RingMD was among them, claiming to invest $5 million into “digital infrastructure” to promote telehealth in India and $6 million to modernize Vietnam’s Ministry of Health’s medical records system. The Vietnam health ministry and a representative for Digital India, which oversaw RingMD’s India partnership, didn’t respond to a comment request.
On stage at the APEC CEO Summit in San Francisco, 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 plant would “generate an estimated $500 million investment value,” he said, adding “this ambitious figure transcends mere statistics.”
The project remains a mystery. It is not mentioned on RingMD or Pasaca’s websites nor are there other public announcements about the project. Pasaca and RingMD did not respond to a comment request. Alex Parle, an executive at the National Center for APEC, which hosted the CEO event, said, “aside from providing the stage for the announcement, we have no other connection to the project.”
Then in December 2024, Harvey, whose investment helped re-launch the bankrupt RingMD in the U.S., sued the company, claiming in a letter filed with the court that Fulcher owed more than $500,000 for a cash advance, unpaid consulting fees and interest. RingMD has yet to respond to the lawsuit. Harvey declined to comment. (On his LinkedIn, Fulcher still lists himself as a current cofounder of RingMD but doesn’t specify his role; as recently as January, Fulcher was a director and president of RingMD, according to Delaware business filings.)
Now, three months later, Fulcher is ascendant at DOGE, where his dream of being mentored by Musk appears to have come true. His work in the Veterans Affairs department has won early accolades from those who interacted with him, who recall “positive conversations,” according to one report. But soon after DOGE’s arrival, the department announced it was laying off 1,000 workers.
At the Pentagon, Fulcher’s work will have far greater impact, where defense officials are considering cuts that could affect as many as 50,000.