{"id":106265,"date":"2024-08-01T15:18:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T15:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/01\/irl-founder-of-collapsed-social-media-site-charged-with-fraud\/"},"modified":"2024-08-01T15:18:07","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T15:18:07","slug":"irl-founder-of-collapsed-social-media-site-charged-with-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/01\/irl-founder-of-collapsed-social-media-site-charged-with-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"IRL: Founder of collapsed social media site charged with fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IRL:<\/div>


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Authorities in the US have charged the founder of the former social media company, IRL, with a $170m (\u00a3133m) fraud.<\/p>\n

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accuses Abraham Shafi of defrauding investors by making misleading statements about the company\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n

IRL – which was once considered a potential rival to Facebook<\/a> – took its name from its intention to get its online users to meet up in real life.<\/p>\n

However, the initial optimism evaporated after it emerged most of IRL’s users were bots, with the platform shutting<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

As well as accusing Mr Shafi of defrauding investors, the SEC also says he concealed his and his fianc\u00e9e’s extensive use of company credit cards to pay for personal expenses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is alleged he and Barbara Woortmann spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal expenses, including clothing, home improvements and travel.<\/p>\n

Monique C. Winkler, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office, said: \u201cAs we alleged, Shafi took advantage of investors’ appetite for investments in the pre-IPO technology space and fraudulently raised approximately $170m by lying about IRL\u2019s business practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestors in this space should continue to be vigilant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SEC says it believes Mr Shafi raised about $170m by portraying IRL as the new success story in the social media world.<\/p>\n

It alleges he told investors that IRL had attracted the vast majority its supposed 12 million users through organic growth.<\/p>\n

In reality, it argues, IRL was spending millions of dollars on advertisements which offered incentives to prospective users to download the IRL app. <\/p>\n

That expenditure, it is alleged, was subsequently hidden in the company\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

Mr Shafi has not responded to the charge, but in a post on LinkedIn a year ago, amid widespread reports that as many as 95% of IRL’s customers were actually bots, he defended his role in the company<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The SEC’s complaint was filed in the US district court for the northern district of California. <\/p>\n

Among other penalties, it seeks a ban against Mr Shafi from holding directorship of companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities in the US have charged the founder of the former social media company, IRL, with a $170m (\u00a3133m) fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accuses Abraham Shafi of defrauding investors by making misleading statements about the company\u2019s growth. IRL – which was once considered a potential rival to Facebook – took its name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/7bfb\/live\/003e8600-5009-11ef-b2d2-cdb23d5d7c5b.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[13753,31408,5325,6229,88099,3200,13199,2291],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106267,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106265\/revisions\/106267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}