The US authorities have accused a founder of the technological application of fraud, claiming that its application of publicized electronic commerce of artificial intelligence actually depended on human workers in the Philippines.
Albert Saniger of Barcelona, ​​Spain, founder and former CEO of the Nate company, was accused of a position of fraud of values ​​and electronic fraud, said the Department of Justice in a declaration of April 9, while the Bolsa and Securities Commission presented a parallel civil action.
Judicial documents say that Saniger founded Nate around 2018 and launched an application of the same name in July 2020, marketing it as a universal purchasing cart with AI engine that offered users the ability to complete online retail transactions, including the filling of shipping details and dimensions, without human contributions.
The Department of Justice claimed that, in reality, “Saniger used hundreds of contractors, or” purchase assistants “, in a call center located in the Philippines to manually complete the purchases that occur on the Nate application.”
Fountain: Office of the United States Prosecutor, South District of New York
Investors gave Saniger more than $ 40 million, the federals say
The United States interim lawyer for New York Matthew Podolsky claimed that Saniger cheated investors by “exploiting the promise and charm of AI technology to build a false narrative about innovation that never existed.”
Under the appearance of investing in the application with AI, Sangier supposedly requested more than $ 40 million in investments of risk capital companies and told employees to hide the true source of Nate automation.
“This type of deception not only comes to innocent investors, capital diverts from new legitimate companies, makes investors skeptical of real advances and finally prevents the progress of AI development,” said Podolsky.
The company acquired AI technology from a third party and caused a team of data scientists to develop it, but the authorities affirmed that the application never achieved the ability to constantly complete electronic commerce purchases, and its real automation rate was effectively zero.
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During a holiday season occupied in 2021, it is alleged that Sanger ordered the Nate engineering team to develop bots to automate some transactions in the application along with human workers.
Nate stopped operating in January 2023, and Saniger ended all Nate employees after the media reports began to put doubts about the application capabilities, according to the presentation of the SEC court.
The values ​​and cable fraud have a maximum sentence of 20 years after bars. The demand of the SEC is asking the courts to prohibit Saniger to occupy a position in any similar company and return investor funds.
Cointelegraph contacted Nate to comment. Information about Saniger’s lawyers was not immediately available.
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