In May 2024, the website of ad-tech firm Kubient touted that the company was “a perfect blend” of ad veterans and developers, “committed to solving the growing problem of fraud” in digital ads. Like many corporate sites, it also linked old blog posts from its home page, including a May 2022 post on “How to create a world free of fraud: Kubient’s secret sauce.”
These days, Kubient’s website cannot be reached, the team i
10 Comments
micromacrofoot
it's always the ones you most expect
cm2187
For once it's not crypto.
neverokay
[flagged]
paulpauper
This is not unheard of for the fraud-fighters to be fraudsters themselves even after reforming, in which the redemption arc becomes just another scam.
Barry Minkow
Frank Abagnale
Aurornis
> Revenues for the first quarter of 2020 were shown as $1.38 million, a huge jump from $177,635 in Q1 2019, thanks to "two enterprise customers" that "successfully beta tested KAI."
TL;DR: Their revenue was the result of round-tripping spending through a partner company who agreed to “spend” the same amount of money back into Kubient. They created fake reports to show to auditors to cover up the synthetic revenue.
They generated fake revenue with the help of another company and then IPO-ed months later. Truly a sign of the times in that era of SPACs and other ridiculous market offerings.
nextts
Small enough to fail and jail.
rvz
A new candidate for the running for being the Theranos of AI has just been found.
aaplok
> Paul Roberts is due to serve one year and one day in prison.
What's the point of the extra day? Is there some kind of special procedure for people who get strictly more than a year?
globalise83
[flagged]
moralestapia
"CEO of AI ad-tech firm pledging “world free of fraud” sentenced for fraud"
Classic of the genre.