The Ship That Was Always Almost Ready: Curtiss Jackson and the Semisub One Fraud

For close to two decades, more than four hundred investors were told the same thing about a strange tour boat in Honolulu: it was almost ready. In 2009 the offering documents said Semisub One was ninety percent complete. In 2018 investors heard it was finished. In 2019 they heard it was at the finish line and needed one more push of one to two thousand dollars each. Behind those updates, the U.S. Coast Guard had inspected the vessel thirty-eight times and handed the company a work list of forty deficiencies.

In this episode of Unleashed 101, Jeremy Hanson tells the full story of Semisub Inc., the Hawaii company run by Curtiss Edward Jackson and Jamey Denise Jackson that federal prosecutors say raised more than twenty-eight million dollars on the promise of a semi-submersible vessel and a fleet of copies to be sold for thirty-two million dollars each. The episode walks through the state securities orders in Pennsylvania and California, the claimed partnerships with the Department of Homeland Security and BlackRock that the SEC says never existed, the share price that went from a promised dollar fifty to five cents, and the investor money the SEC says went to rent, a Mercedes, groceries, psychics and recreational drugs.

Then the story leaves the boardroom. A video titled Death of FBI Informants. A fully fueled boat slipping out of Kewalo Basin the day before a bond hearing. An arrest at sea off Barbers Point. A 2024 conviction, a thirteen-year federal sentence, and more than sixteen point seven million dollars in restitution ordered against his former wife and co-defendant.

Semisub One was real. It floated, it passed inspection, and it carried tourists. That is what makes this case one of the clearest lessons in the series: a real product does not make the promises around it true.