Tagged: fraud

June 26, 2014 @ 3:23 pm By Samantha Hurst  |  

Just a week after WeTag’s iFind raised over $500,000 during its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, the platform has made the decision to suspend the project following the rise of doubts from its backers. As previously reported by Crowdfund Insider, the iFind is considered the “next generation item… Read More

June 23, 2014 @ 12:54 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Securities and Exchange Commission has published an “Investor Alert” on Affinity Fraud.  Basically they are pointing out what should be obvious.  There are always fraudsters out there looking to dupe the unsuspecting.  Confidence schemes (hence the term “con” man) have been around since the… Read More

May 12, 2014 @ 11:22 am By JD Alois  |  

YouAnonNews (YAN), a news collective site that is associated  with the Anonymous movement, ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo last year raising funds to launch their site. To quote the campaign;  “Our goal as YAN contributors will be to take what we have learned over… Read More

May 1, 2014 @ 6:51 pm By JD Alois  |  

First State Enforcement of Crowdfunded Project – Asylum Playing Cards Raised Funds on Kickstarter. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson today filed the a consumer protection lawsuit involving crowdfunding claiming to be the first in the nation.  The AGO lawsuit is against Edward J. Polchlepek… Read More

April 29, 2014 @ 8:36 am By JD Alois  |  

The fraud drums keep pounding louder in China as search giant Baidu has stomped on peer to peer (P2P) lending sites by scrubbing them  from their search results.  The short term approach of removing the reported 800 P2P sites from their pages are expected to… Read More

April 8, 2014 @ 7:02 pm By JD Alois  |  

In a double header day, SEC Commissioner Kara M. Stein also addressed the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) at their 2014 Public Policy conference in Washington, DC. Introduced by NASAA President Andrea Seidt from Ohio, Commissioner Stein dove right in to addressing the pressing… Read More

March 20, 2014 @ 10:21 pm By CJ Cornell and Charles Luzar  |  

Crowdfunding is exploding as a new way of attracting funding and financing for individuals, small businesses and entrepreneurs around the world. In 2013 alone the global crowdfunding industry was responsible for between $3 and $5 billion in funding. With the passage of the JOBS Act… Read More

March 20, 2014 @ 10:08 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Steve Swink is an Arizona-based game developer and the man behind Scale, a video game that raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter in a round that closed late in 2013. The game looks incredible, by the way. It elicits thoughts of Portal with a bit of… Read More

March 12, 2014 @ 12:22 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

If you want a case study in how a Kickstarter can go horribly wrong, look no further than the campaign for SOAP, a touchscreen home automation router. The campaign is fully funded despite bleeding almost $4,000 since we caught wind of scam allegations surrounding the campaign… Read More

March 9, 2014 @ 12:38 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

The above comment sums up the general tenor surrounding a currently-running Kickstarter campaign for the Soap home automation router. The device’s campaign promises to deliver an Android-based home automation unit that allows the user to control all of his or her at-home digital devices. The… Read More

February 20, 2014 @ 11:38 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Back on February 11th, Lending Club posted an article to the company’s blog discussing online scams. The post is entitled “How to Protect Yourself from Online Scams and Swindles.” In it, Lending Club points out that there are individuals out there using the Lending Club… Read More

December 28, 2013 @ 1:09 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

AARP The Magazine recently ran an article on crowdfunding dealing with the possibilities (and perils) of the evolving means of capital formation. Kickstarter, RocketHub and EarlyShares all get mention in the piece alongside Sherwood Neiss of Crowdfund Capital Advisors. Rockethub’s Alon Hillel-Tuch and EarlyShares’s Heather Schwarz-Lopes… Read More

December 12, 2013 @ 11:42 am By Charles Luzar  |  

The Rock smartwatch was able to garner almost $40,000 in pledges from crowdfunding backers before Kickstarter finally had to pull the plug on the campaign. The run-up to how that happened should strike fear into anyone looking to pull a fast one on the crowd…. Read More

November 30, 2013 @ 1:11 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

The competent operation of the crowdfunding platform or portal is essential for the prevention of fraud in equity crowdfunding. Based on my experience with the ASSOB platform we have learned that it is very unlikely that fraudsters would be bothered jumping through all the hoops… Read More

November 16, 2013 @ 12:41 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

CrowdCheck Blog | Due Diligence: It doesn’t just protect investors Brian Knight of due diligence service provider CrowdCheck built upon a recent Crowdfund Insider article that explored the circumstances surrounding the Luci project on Kickstarter. Here he explains how due diligence can protect issuers and investors in crowdfunded… Read More

November 13, 2013 @ 11:03 am By Charles Luzar  |  

The same individual backed over 150 projects. We have been in communication with a number of project owners, all of whom have been duped out of money by this scammer. This scam has been going on for months; one project backer lost over $5000, and… Read More

November 12, 2013 @ 10:05 am By JD Alois  |  

With only a few days left to go in this crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, LUCI, Advanced Lucid Dream Inducer was cancelled after having raised $363,302 on a goal of just $40,000.  Funds raised had reportedly broken the $400,000 mark but as allegations of fraud started… Read More

November 9, 2013 @ 12:38 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Pledge a huge amount of money. Secure the promise of an awesome reward. Wait for the rewards to ship. File a dispute with Amazon Payments. Get your money back. It is a simple scam, and it may have worked for one “Encik Farhan” to the… Read More

October 17, 2013 @ 4:01 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Under the direction of Ohio Division of Securities Commissioner Andrea Seidt, the NASAA has recently released an updated list of their top investor threats for 2013. Among them: “unregulated third party service providers,” a category that would include crowdfunding portals. Seidt explained the reason for… Read More

October 17, 2013 @ 3:47 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

SoMoLend and the Ohio Division of Securities have been on a crash course since a notice of intent to issue a cease and desist was filed back in August of 2013. The hearing, originally scheduled for this week, has been postponed until January according to… Read More