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Ex-employee here. Adam Rogas is a pathological liar and sociopath who dragged this out for years. I don't know how multiple audits failed to raise red flags ove
by pstoica 6y ago
Ex-employee here. Adam Rogas is a pathological liar and sociopath who dragged this out for years. I don't know how multiple audits failed to raise red flags over multiple $999,999.99 fake Stripe payouts. He literally inserted millions every few lines that didn't match up with the data around it. They never asked anyone else to produce the same report. Everyone involved should never be responsible for this amount of money again (looking at you, Lightspeed).
If your CEO is actively siloing all financial and customer information, your entire company needs to speak up and get on the same page. Don't let this happen to you.
- wakeywakeywakey 6y agoWhy did you choose not to blow the whistle?
- pstoica 6y agoI didn't have all the information that's coming out now. People tried. Read the article. The last investment was finalized days after someone raised concerns after realizing we didn't contact 70% of our customers.
- wakeywakeywakey 6y agoThe details of your post go beyond those mentioned in the article. Could you provide additional links?
- pstoica 6y agoI was someone at the bottom of the totem pole who tried to do my job and ask what questions I could. I certainly noticed a lack of analytics or basic traffic/revenue/customer data. Retroactively, it was obvious that this was essentially a fake job, but I couldn't piece this together and there wasn't enough company-wide transparency. The fake financial statements were publicly released: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1317641/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1317641...
- edm0nd 6y agoHow much were you being paid a year to do basically nothing?
- pstoica 6y agoDecent salary, but that's not the point. I'm distraught to realize I spent 5 months on nothing, and it's not something I'm proud to have or explain on my CV. It's cruel how much money these people throw away, but we were misled into thinking it was real. I wouldn't have taken this position to support such a scumbag.
- CatShitTodd 6y agoWhat is cruel is I am having to file bankruptcy because of this.
- NationalPark 6y agoWere you an investor?
- CatShitTodd 6y agoNo, not an investor. Without giving a way too much, we are a company in the technology space. They paid us a fee per user. They paid us fees based on these fake numbers of users that they submitted to their investors. Which means they essentially over paid us what is a lot of money for our small company. We made business decisions around that money in the past and for the future. Now it looks like that not only will we get no more money, but they also want like 90% of what they paid us back.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- caymanjim 6y agoNot sure if you're being serious, but if you were an early investor, isn't it on you to make sure the business is legit? Anyone can be misled by a fraudster, but some responsibility lies with the VCs and angel investors throwing money at these companies and enabling this sort of thing to happen.
- pjc50 6y agoWhy would you? Even if you've got all your ducks in a row you've made yourself a target for media attention and lawsuits.
- libria 6y agoWhy not? Anonymously demanding moral action from others makes me righteous and costs me nothing. =)
- pstoica 6y agoAnyway folx, don't invest in a "hot startup" you've never heard of.
- elliekelly 6y agoDo you know when the company/Rogas first came under investigation?
- pstoica 6y agoThe SEC tried investigating since December 2019, possibly earlier. Again, public information.
- tomashertus 6y agoAnd how was the quality of product? Was it something breathtaking that it attracted $157.9M in funding?
- pstoica 6y agoHell no, a $400 million valuation made no sense, but he kept feeding us these lies.