Fintech CEO and Forbes 30 Beneath 30 alum has been charged for alleged fraud

By now, the Forbes 30 Beneath 30 list has turn into extra than quite notorious for the amount of entrants who race on to be charged with fraud. Considerable alumni consist of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Frank CEO Charlie Javice, Joanna Smith-Griffin, founding father of the AI startup AllHere Education, and “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, amongst others. Now, one other member of the list has been hit with federal costs.

Gökçe Güven, a 26-300 and sixty five days-passe Turkish national and the founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, become once charged final week with alleged securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

The Fresh York-essentially based fully fintech startup — which uses the “Flip Your Rewards into [a] Income Engine” tagline — says it can probably succor companies blueprint and monetize particular particular person rewards programs. The firm become once founded in 2022, and offers participating companies the chance to develop ongoing income streams by task of partner affiliate sales, Axios previously reported.

Güven become once featured in final 300 and sixty five days’s Forbes 30 Beneath 30 list. The journal notes in the writeup that Güven’s purchasers integrated basic chocolatier Godiva and the World Air Transport Association, the commerce organization that represents a majority of the arena’s airlines. Kalder moreover claims to hang loved the backing of a different of renowned VC companies.

The U.S. Division of Justice alleges that, for the length of Kalder’s seed round in April of 2024, Güven managed to elevate $7 million from extra than a dozen patrons after presenting a pitch deck that become once rife with faux info.

In accordance with the authorities, Kalder’s pitch deck claimed that there were 26 manufacturers “the affirm of Kalder” and one other fifty three manufacturers in “are residing freemium.” Alternatively, officials disclose that, surely, Kalder had, in a lot of conditions, handiest been offering heavily discounted pilot programs to tons of those companies. Totally different manufacturers “had no settlement with Kalder by any potential—no longer even for free products and companies,” officials acknowledged in a press liberate asserting the indictment. The pitch deck moreover “falsely reported that Kalder’s habitual income had regularly grown month over month since February 2023 and that by March 2024, Kalder had reached $1.2 million in annual habitual income.” 

The authorities moreover accuses Güven of having kept two separate items of business books. One of those items integrated “faux and inflated numbers,” and become once offered to patrons or doable patrons to mask the “supreme financial situation of the firm,” the authorities claims. The DOJ moreover alleges that Güven dilapidated lies about Kalder moreover solid documents to gain a category of visa reserved for individuals of “extra special ability,” that would permit her to are residing and work in the United States.

TechCrunch reached out to Güven by her inner most web intention. The CEO acknowledged that she would be sharing an announcement about the costs on Tuesday.

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