CEOs of crashed tech upstart Bitwise accused of swindling $100M from investors - Duo paid themselves $600K salaries as the cupboard was emptying::Duo paid themselves $600K salaries as the cupboard was emptying
I worked there AMA.
I still dont have access to my 401k.
What do you want to share using the anonymity of this platform?
I don’t know enough to even ask a good question.
Thats the neat trick, never assume anonymity. Def in a case like this one. I treat people with respect even here.
But I guess if I had to share, im still really pissed that our 401ks are still locked and I cant access it from John Handcock. Plus some people got 2 paychecks taken instead of just the last one. We had to cancel our old bank account because bitwise post Jake/Irma tried to come after past checks from multiple people. If my bank didnt protect me, direct deposit apparently will happily allow them to take past checks back. And BW did not talk to us this entire time after we were furloughed. After 3 weeks of being furloughed, we were still technically employed and had ex-bitwisers try to tell us not to talk to the media, to trust the system. I am still angry about how it all went down.
…what do people actually do in places like this?
Having never worked in an office at all, I wonder what happens in those that have no obvious way of doing anything really
We would get a large amount of client projects, create an app that solves their problem, deploy it on their infrastructure. Rinse and repeat. I was specifically on the software development and later devops side. My job was a huge amount more profitable than the rest of the org.
Basically subcontracting
Yep.
How much did you pay yourself?
I wasnt part of the leadership, but I was a software developer for over 10+ years. I made 6 figures, but that isn’t unheard of in this industry.
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There was a DJ over there for weeks on end. Like every day, DJ was out in the parking lot. It was surreal coming into the job and wondering why the were paying for a DJ to come to a mostly empty parking lot/building.
Sounds like you worked at Entertainment 720
Nero playing music as Rome was burning kinda thing.
That’s surreal for sure.
Sounds like something right out of Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley series.
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Boardroom:
- people will like coming into the office if we create a fun atmosphere
- like a party!
- we can’t have an actual party
- ok, how about a DJ
HR, legal, and so on: they can go in the parking lot.
Weeks later an admin is told to book a DJ, I don’t care what it costs but they have to work in the parking lot.
DJ has to be set up in the parking lot but will only do it if they can be there all day otherwise too much set up and take down.
Ok, if they have to be here I want them playing all the time. Otherwise, we are wasting money.
Contract shows up with “daily, renewed every month unless 30 days written notice.”
And so on.
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Was it obvious they were indulging while they could or did it seem like they were trying to make it work? Just curious.
Its a little of both. Like most orgs there were some who did their job and did it well. The org was in existence for a little over 10 years. Most of that time, they didnt have venture capital. They were a very small org that suddenly got big and decided to expand outside their local community. There were parts that were very profitable, just not the building and how top heavy it got at the end. Both CEOs would take month long vacations and leave us to do…whatever it was they did. The family/friends thing was definitely a problem.
The unlimited vacation was a kind of red flag to me. Most orgs who do that really just want you working 24/7 and not take any real time off. Also 401k took 3 years to vest but no partial vesting period. It was all or nothing.
most of these CEOs are fucking criminals one way or another, more money less (legal) risk
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The co-founders and co-CEOs of failed startup Bitwise appeared in a California court Thursday accused of cheating investors out of $100 million by making up bank statements and revenue figures.
Irma Olguin, Jr and Jake Soberal self-surrendered after a federal complaint charged them with conspiring to commit wire fraud by misstating the assets of their “transformative technology” biz.
The sudden collapse came just four months after Bitwise announced an $80 million funding round on a $500-million-plus valuation and promise to expand to Chicago’s South Side.
“In 2022, defendants Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin, Jr falsified documents and misled investors while raising approximately $70 million,” the SEC complaint [PDF] alleges.
According to the financial watchdog, Olguin and Soberal have agreed to resolve the SEC’s charges against them; that will likely involve them being fined and facing other forms of punishment, to be determined later by the courts.
While being grilled by federal investigators, Olguin and Soberal admitted they conspired to lie to their board, investors, and banks about Bitwise’s finances so they could fraudulently obtain venture capital and loans, prosecutors said.
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