The founder of the chatbot startup ia gameon charged with fraud in San Francisco

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters)-The founder of Gameon, an artificial intelligence start-up from San Francisco, was charged for having led “cheeky and large-scale” fraud over six years which cost more than 60 million dollars to the ‘Company and investors, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.

Alexander Beckman, 41, who was also Managing Director of Gameon, was charged with 23 counts. His wife Valerie Lau Beckman, 38, a lawyer who worked on Gameon affairs, was also charged and charged with 16 counts.

Everyone faces accusations of fraud, fraud in securities, conspiracy, theft of identity, and Lau Beckman faces a hindrance accusation. Both were arrested and pleaded non -guilty on Thursday. The couple got married in October 2023.

Beckman’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comments. He was not clearly clear if this lawyer also represented Lau Beckman. The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has filed related civil accusations against the two accused.

Thursday’s accusations come ten months after Ismail Ramsey, the American prosecutor in San Francisco, said in an interview that his office targeted AI start-ups before they were made public.

Founded in 2014, Gameon proposed a chatbot which claimed to be “the conversational AI platform of the leader of the sector”, whose customers included teams and professional sports leagues and leading fashion brands.

The authorities said Beckman had misleaded investors by describing tens of millions of dollars in non -existent income, inflated cash flow and false customer relations.

They declared that Beckman had also made bank statements and audit reports, including an allegedly emanating from the accounting cabinet of “Big Four” Pwc, and had passed in writing for at least seven people to share false Information.

Lau Beckman, who worked in a venture capital fund, would have given her husband real audit reports to help her create false reports, and would have tried to delete hundreds of files related to Gameon from sound files Employer after the start of an investigation before a large jury.

Prosecutors also said that the couple had spent $ 4.2 million in investment funds for a house in San Francisco, private school payments, luxury vehicles and their wedding place, among other elements.

The stratagem would have taken place until Beckman’s resignation on July 1, 2024 as director general, according to court documents.

Ten days later, Gameon announced that his financial statements were false and dismissed almost all of his employees, said the dry.

“La Bay Area is home to incredible innovation and hard work entrepreneurs,” said the first assistant prosecutor in the United States, Patrick Robbins, “but innovation cannot develop through fraud”.

Gameon was renamed on platform and was not billed. He did not immediately respond to a comment request.

(Report by Jonathan Stempel in New York; edited by Jamie Freed)