The US Justice Department has indicted Albert Saniger, founder and former CEO of shopping app startup Nate, for securities fraud and wire fraud.
Prosecutors allege Saniger raised over $40 million from investors by falsely claiming Nate’s “single tap” checkout app used advanced proprietary AI for seamless purchase automation.
The reality, according to the indictment? The #DOJ states the AI tech “never achieved the ability to consistently complete purchases” and the actual automation rate was “effectively zero percent.” Instead, Nate allegedly relied heavily on hundreds of human workers in overseas call centers (Philippines, Romania) to manually process transactions in secret, mimicking AI.
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