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- Startup Scammer Steals $1,000,000
Startup Scammer Steals $1,000,000
+ Unbanked becomes Unsolvent
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We almost had a munity last week - I advised against investing in Throne Labs, but 44% of readers said they would still invest after reading my article.
In today’s newsletter:
🏭 Rogue Worker: A former Boxabl employee scams $1M+ from investors
🧠 Tri-AI: The 3 AI updates you need to know about
💳 Unsolvent: A crypto neobank goes under, and 6,000 investors are affected
My friends at Bullish launched a YouTube show called this week in money, covering all things money, business, investing and culture. Hosted by Equity Animal CEO (and former fboy island star!) Mark Moran and Bullish Studio CEO, Brian Hanly.
Topics on this week’s episode include:
Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison on May 30
Montana becomes the first state to ban TikTok
Is George Santos getting kicked out of Congress?
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![Yanni Tassev, Former Tech Startup Employee, Accused of Multi-Million Dollar Theft | HackerNoon](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/3580f6bc-1ac7-45e1-8bf5-e65ddcdf4292/905f3957-6dd7-479e-a066-2ea66b43a698_1078x1046.jpg)
An ex-Boxabl employee is being sued by the company for allegedly selling fake shares in the company to investors.
A scam coming from an actual employee sounds extremely convincing. It would be as if the Nigerian prince low on cash emails you from an @NigerianPrince.com address. Tough to know it’s a fraud, and the scammer was able to dupe 10 investors.
Here’s what we know:
Yanni Tassev was a former Boxabl employee, with an official title of ‘Efficiency Specialist’
Tassev allegedly told potential investors that he owned a significant amount of Boxabl shares that he could sell to them at a heavily discounted price
Tassev did not own shares like he mentioned, but instructed the investors to wire funds to a bank account - his own.
Tassev managed to wrangle over $1M from 10 unassuming investors.
Boxabl became aware of the ruse after one of the investors informed them of the stock transfer. Boxabl claims to have solicited a full confession from Tassev and contacted the FBI to ensure proper procedure took place
It’s rumored that Tassev has fled the country. Prior to his Instagram being taken down, some had reported that he was seen posting on the social network from Bulgaria
The Boxabl lawsuit attempts to claw back some of the stolen funds and restrain Tassev from spilling company secrets and bad-mouthing the company
Be careful out there, make sure you are using official portals to make your investments!
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![Fake AI-generated image of Pentagon explosion goes viral | Al Jazeera Newsfeed - YouTube](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/70cdf8b2-a975-42e1-b9ac-ec22dc1c1f4b/8209c1de-358a-4b4c-b1a3-4b85aff0217b_1280x720.jpg)
Blink and you’ll miss it → here are three AI updates that all happened in the last 7 days:
Someone used AI to generate a fake image of an explosion taking place by the Pentagon in an attempt to tank the stock market. Several news outlets got duped, and the scheme kinda worked
Adobe Photoshop releases ‘Generative Fill’. The tool alters selected areas of images based on text prompts. The demo is really neat - see it here.
Nvidia adds $200B in market cap after announcing an extremely upbeat quarter - their GPU units are poised to power the AI gold rush
For context, there are only 52 companies in the world worth more than $200B!
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A lot can change in 30 days…
Unbanked was a new bank that bridged the gap between crypto and traditional currency.
In April they won StartEngine’s pitch competition, received an investment from Kingscrowd Capital, and were rated a ‘top deal’ by Kingscrowd’s analysts.
30 days later, the business is closing up shop.
Unbanked was funded by 6,000 retail investors who poured $4M into the company. Unfortunately for them, this will most likely result in a 100% loss of their investment.
To read more about this situation, read our writeup here.
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