Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup

Now that you mention it, is it even allowed that someone outside the DAs office try criminal cases? The DA is the legal representative of the state in that case, and I don't know if someone else can just step in there.

I see nothing about her researching these founders prior to agreeing to work for them, nothing about a signed contract, something like this would never happen to me, sounds like this girl needs a good lesson in street smarts. Way too gullible.

She obviously had a contract seeing as how she had to get it revised multiple times before she signed. If you did research and couldn't find enough about the CEO, you would see the CTO, the other founder, was legitimate with press releases by companies that were eventually acquired by big names like IBM.

Saying this would never happen to you is pretentious and ignorant.

This is Charlie. I met the CEO (not sharing his name, though it is in this thread) through his brother in law, Jay. Jay worked with me at a prior company. He was a data scientist and factual. He mentioned his brother in law came to Silicon Valley to do a startup having made some money as an investment banker.

As we talked, the CEO stated he is putting in $2M to fund the startup in November. In December, with $400k or so in the company with the rest coming, we started to build. We grew steadily till about April with a prototype. At which point, the CEO kept mentioning money was coming and with a few different reasons on why it did not arrive.

I bridged May and June. As the stories piled up, I started to ask more pointed questions. I met Bernie, the lawyer who was real. Bernie has an office with Montgomery McCracken in NYC. I insisted the CEO to fly twice to NYC to meet with Bernie and resolve the funding issue. On the last trip, he claimed he got a $500k loan from his lawyer, Bernie, and his cousin, Tommy. The last payroll with ADP was made.

I did not find out till the beginning of August that the money for the last payroll came from one of the employees. I thought there was $500k available starting July. It became apparent it was not available shortly thereafter.

In July, Penny joined. We went through more stress at the company with the CEO stating every other week money was coming from a variety of sources – a line of credit from Mackie Research due to his personal connections, his money making it over, and different investors. None of it came to pass.

In August, I thought it better to let some of developers go as there was no funds to pay them and ask the other ones not to come to work until money is in the bank. An investor did come in that allowed us to make July’s payroll a month late.

I did not see any of the wire transfer confirmations till later as I was showed by a couple of the employees. I did not get a confirmation personally. The team was paid for that wire transfer (July).

In August, I tried to validate his story with his brother in law with no success. I was not able to corroborate any of his story after contacting his educational institution and prior institutional employer. This lack of trust came to a head a week ago and we parted ways.

The current story from the CEO right now is that the team will get paid for August on Monday to Wednesday this week. I have no idea if it is true.

To this day, I don’t understand the game plan from the CEO. Why accelerate into a brick wall? None of it makes sense.

I am currently out the bridge, expenses, August office rent and back pay.

It never occurred to me, till too late, that somebody would misrepresent so much of his story. For being naïve and believing in the dream, I am truly sorry.

You're confusing Criminal Charges which is what a DA would handle vs. Civil (suing for back pay) which some attorneys will take on a contingency (30% of payout) but not pro-bono.

Pro-Bono is usually for criminal defense for folks who can't afford a lawyer and when public defenders aren't available.