CEO of Kubient sentenced for fraud

arstechnica.com

167 points by pseudolus a month ago


moralestapia - a month ago

"CEO of AI ad-tech firm pledging “world free of fraud” sentenced for fraud"

Classic of the genre.

Aurornis - a month ago

> Revenues for the first quarter of 2020 were shown as $1.38 million, a huge jump from $177,635 in Q1 2019, thanks to "two enterprise customers" that "successfully beta tested KAI."

TL;DR: Their revenue was the result of round-tripping spending through a partner company who agreed to “spend” the same amount of money back into Kubient. They created fake reports to show to auditors to cover up the synthetic revenue.

They generated fake revenue with the help of another company and then IPO-ed months later. Truly a sign of the times in that era of SPACs and other ridiculous market offerings.

paulpauper - a month ago

This is not unheard of for the fraud-fighters to be fraudsters themselves even after reforming, in which the redemption arc becomes just another scam.

Barry Minkow

Frank Abagnale

micromacrofoot - a month ago

it's always the ones you most expect

cm2187 - a month ago

For once it's not crypto.

rvz - a month ago

A new candidate for the running for being the Theranos of AI has just been found.

aaplok - a month ago

> Paul Roberts is due to serve one year and one day in prison.

What's the point of the extra day? Is there some kind of special procedure for people who get strictly more than a year?

neverokay - a month ago

[flagged]

globalise83 - a month ago

[flagged]

nextts - a month ago

Small enough to fail and jail.