City Hall has an Agora expert: The ethics director worked at the publishing giant for 20 years

Among those who work with him at City Hall, Baltimore ethics director J. Christoph Amberger is considered a meticulous researcher with a dry wit. A German-born renaissance man, he’s a competitive fencer and an author who became a lawyer late in life.

But few seem to know how the 62-year-old spent the first half of his career: as a bombastic personality dispensing financial advice and hot takes on politics for Agora Companies, a Mount Vernon-based global internet marketing and supplements company.

Amberger’s imprint at Agora sold books that offered how to trade on “‘insider information’ legally and profitably” and advised “how to become a stone-cold profit predator.” He also appeared in video segments called “Amberger’s Smackdown,” in some clips still online comparing Democrats to Nazi figures.

Now Amberger’s current employer is suing his former employer. Baltimore recently filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Agora, alleging deceptive marketing practices.

The city’s lawsuit claims that Agora’s companies “target older consumers with exploitative business practices” such as making misleading claims about the efficacy of health supplements and promising “lifetime” newsletter subscriptions that don’t actually last.

Company officials say that Agora is “a marketplace of ideas” protected by the First Amendment and will defend against the lawsuit “vigorously.”

Agora declined an interview request about Amberger, citing the litigation from the city, but said in a statement that Amberger “built and ran one of our top financial publishing divisions.”

The ethics board isn’t involved in the lawsuit, and Amberger hasn’t worked for Agora since 2010. He declined to talk to The Banner about his time there.

He later self-published a book that seemed to skewer Agora’s practices, though a synopsis that remains online didn’t name the company. In promotional materials, he said the book “lifts the veil of secrecy that shrouds the garish email newsletter promotions.”

In his city government role, Amberger is considered Baltimore’s authority on ethical behavior. Colleagues say he’s a consummate professional — and a fascinating guy.

Stephan W. Fogleman, chair of the Baltimore ethics board, had the highest praise for Amberger’s city work, saying he does “incredible legal research and writing.”

“We’re lucky to have him,” Fogleman said. He wasn’t aware of Amberger’s time at Agora.

Colleagues do know about some of his passions, though. He’s been in the competitive fencing world for four decades — and has the facial scars to prove it. He’s a sword expert with an extensive collection. He’s written hundreds of articles and published five books. He’s been a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and on a Discovery Channel documentary series called “Deadly Duels.”

Born in West Berlin and schooled in Germany and Scotland, Amberger eventually landed in the Maryland. He earned a master’s degree from St. John’s Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts in Annapolis and worked for a conservative think tank based in Baltimore, the Calvert Institute.

He joined Agora as an intern in 1989 and rose over two decades to executive publisher operating under the banner of Taipan Group.

Taipan appears to have stopped publishing some time around 2012. The Banner reviewed cached versions of its web pages, as well as trade publications that wrote about it.

The name Taipan came from the “swashbuckling entrepreneurs who amassed great fortunes from the China trade during the 19th century,” according to the company’s archived website.

“The name suits us because we, too, are after great fortunes.”

Agora, which began in 1978, has said it has millions of subscribers. It describes itself as a holding company for a web of affiliates, such as Taipan, that dispense health and investment advice and products.

Taipan said in a 1994 newsletter that a “runaway mutant virus” would kill millions in a “New Plague” and offered a “free special report” that would identify companies positioned to “develop life-saving cures ... as well as provide a fantastic opportunity for you to profit!” according to a review by a trade publication. The newsletter itself is no longer available.

Amberger boasted in a press release that he and his team of analysts had, for example, advised readers to invest in the “anti-terrorism stock” of Taser International. “Readers who acted on the recommendation cleaned up,” the press release says.

Briton Ryle worked for Amberger from 2001 until 2006 after submitting “pedantic term papers from college with my resume.” He recalled that Amberger told him, “Don’t worry, we’ll teach you how to write.”

“And they did,” Ryle said. “Agora and Christoph embraced giving people freedom to pursue curiosity and learning, and to then turn that into interesting and engaging content.” He’s no longer with Agora but continues to write about trade strategy.

When Taipan began posting videos online, Amberger had five-minute segments in which he mused about politics and life. Thirty videos are archived online, mostly from 2007-2008.

“As Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary in 1933, radio and press are at our disposal. Even money is not lacking this time,” he said in one video. “Sounds like an internal Obama campaign memo, doesn’t it?”

The circumstances behind Amberger’s departure from Agora in 2010 are unclear. But he soon wrote a book titled “Secret Words that Bring You Riches. Or Not!”

“Make sure you know what’s being sold to you ... and how marketers and copywriters have learned to push your buttons,” Amberger wrote in a summary of the book.

In an email reiterating that he didn’t want to talk to The Banner, he dismissed “Secret Words” as “an inside joke-y e-book on direct marketing lingo” that was never printed and has “dissipated into digital oblivion.”

If a Banner reporter wanted a book on “late Renaissance German wrestling and sword techniques that I happen to own,” he continued, “that would be a different matter…”

Soon after his departure from Agora, Amberger began attending law school at the University of Baltimore. In 2015, at age 51, he earned a degree. His first job was clerking with the law firm of Bates & Garcia, working for current Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates.

Attorney Tony Garcia recalled that Amberger was thorough in his work. Becoming a lawyer later in life “made him much more serious, much more focused, more more intentional about the things that he does,” Garcia said.

Amberger’s second act in life took him from Agora’s wild world of edgy financial advice to assessing police misconduct and politicians’ ethical dilemmas.

He was hired at the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office under then-top prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, working mostly to coordinate the release of police internal affairs files to defense attorneys.

In July 2022, he was hired as the city’s ethics director under the Office of the Inspector General. In that role, he’s paid a salary of $108,000 to advise city employees and elected officials on ethical issues.

One of the first issues he encountered involved that of his old boss, when the ethics board ruled that then-City Council President Nick Mosby violated ethics rules in connection with a legal defense fund established for himself and then-wife Marilyn Mosby.

Nick Mosby appealed the board’s findings, and a judge upheld findings that he violated city ethics rules by soliciting donations or facilitating the solicitation of donations from controlled donors to the fund and by failing to disclose the fund on his annual financial disclosure form.

Fogleman, chair of the ethics board, praised Amberger’s ability to stay impartial on the matter.