Silicon Valley investors duped out of $500M by grifters using fake projections, false bank statements and brazen lies

Investors have been fleeced out of more than $500 million by scammers who claim to be selling shares in Silicon Valley’s hottest companies.The AI gold rush has attracted plenty of grifters, who have used fake sales reports, doctored bank statements or inflated share prices to dupe investors chasing the next tech jackpot, according to federal prosecutors.The feds have brought fraud cases against pre-IPO investment platform Linqto, AI startup SKAEL and chatbot company GameOn.Former executives at the first two companies have pleaded guilty; the founder of GameOn remains under indictment, awaiting trial.“This is the worst we’ve seen in the 40 years I’ve been auditing and observing the industry—companies just saying whatever they want, in particular in pre-IPO situations,” Francine McKenna, a CPA and former PricewaterhouseCoopers internal auditor who teaches accounting at Montclair State University, told The Post.The cases offer a warning as Anthropic prepares for a blockbuster IPO later this year and OpenAI also pursues a listing — which would put the AI boom within reach of ordinary investors.San Jose-based Linqto made more than $450 million from over 13,000 customers by promising access to coveted private companies such as Kraken and Ripple before they went public, but collapsed into bankruptcy in July 2025, according to the federal case against them.Founder William Sarris allegedly imposed markups with a median of 60% — although some exceeded 200% — while telling customers they were paying “market” prices, prosecutors claimed.Days before Linqto introduced a pricing tool in 2023, Sarris joked it would be “a little Wizard of Oz… don’t pay attention to that man behind the screen,” then added, “fake it till you make it, baby,” according to the indictment against him.The company also allegedly manufactured scarcity, telling customers offerings were “sold out” when shares actually remained available, feds claimed.After a compliance me...