The US authorities have charged a founding father of the fraud tech app and claimed that his advertised e-commerce app for artificial intelligence was actually based on human staff within the Philippines.
Albert Saniger from Barcelona, Spain, founder and former CEO of the Nate company, was charged with a variety of securities fraud and cable fraud, the Ministry of Justice announced in an announcement on April 9, while the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted a parallel civil lawsuit.
According to court documents, Saniger Nate founded around 2018 and launched a app of the identical name in July 2020, which marketed it as an AI-powered universal shopping cart, which offered users the chance to finish online trading transactions, including the filling of shipping details and the scale, without human input.
The Ministry of Justice claimed that in point of fact “Saniger had used lots of of contractors or” shopping assistants “in a call center within the Philippines to finish purchases via the Nate app.”
Source: US public prosecutor, Southern District of New York
The investors gave Saniger over 40 million US dollars, the Feds say, in accordance with the Feds
The reigning US lawyer of New York Matthew Podolsky allegedly cheated by “exploiting the promise and attraction of AI technology to accumulate a flawed story about innovations that never existed”.
Under the guise of investing within the AI-driven app, Sangier allegedly called for greater than $ 40 million in investments by risk capital firms and asked the staff to cover the true source of the automation of Nate.
“This style of deception is just not only an innocent investor, but additionally derives capital from legitimate startups, makes investors skeptical about real breakdowns and ultimately hinders the progress of AI development,” said Podolsky.
The company acquired the AI technology from a 3rd party and had a team of knowledge scientists developed them. However, the authorities claimed that the app had never reached the power to consistently complete e-commerce purchases, and the actual automation rate was effectively zero.
During a busy holiday season in 2021 it’s claimed that Sanger has instructed Nates' engineering team to develop bots to automate some transactions within the app along with human staff.
Nate hired the operations in January 2023 and Saniger announced all Nates' employees after the media reports had defined doubts in accordance with the SEC court functions.
The securities and wire fraud calculates a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars. The grievance of the SEC calls on the courts to ban Saniger from the office in an identical company and to return investor funds.
Cointelegraph contacted Nate to get a comment. Information in regards to the lawyers of Saniger weren’t immediately available.
