SEC: Startup had 'no functional streaming service', raised $1.3m anyway

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a media company based in Florida with defrauding investors about its ability to stream content on a functioning media platform, and accused its CEO of misappropriating over $450,000 of investor funds. According to the complaint [PDF], Oi2Go Media Technologies Inc and its …

[elsergiovolador]

Centrix

One red flag is that any x-centric service always eventually fail, when people get bored of x-centric content and want to see other things as well, so to not stay in the bubble.

[BOFH in Training]

Re: Centrix

People get bored of x-centric content and want to see other things as well? So as to not to stay in the bubble??????

I think you forgot the fans of Fox.

Or all those who cut ties with people who don't follow whatever conspiracy they are following currently.

Am sure those are in love with whatever bubbles they are in and will only be unwillingly dragged out of the bubble.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Centrix

I think he;s talking about, eg the "History" channel and all their non-history programming, the SyFy channel with lots of fantasy and horror, and the Horror channel with lots of SciFi etc. In particular, since it's in the tech news this week, TLC or The Learning Channel which is not all about learning any more, although I'm sure after their recent travails, "lessons will be learned" :-)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Centrix

>people get bored of x-centric content

Many of the profitable X content providers specialise in X-centric X content and do very well out of it

(or so I hear, no personal experience of course)

[David 132]

Re: Centrix

Only the rich can be x-centric.

The rest of us poors have to put up with merely being mad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next use Kickstarter and...

dodge all legal responsibility.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Next use Kickstarter and...

They forgot to add the :

The documents provided contain statements related to our future business and financial performance and future events or developments involving XXXX that may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by words such as "expect," "look forward to," "anticipate" "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek," "estimate," "will," "project" or words of similar meaning.

ps. when you cut and paste this from some fortune 500 company remember to replace XXXX with your own company name - I've seen a few startups that forgot !

[doublelayer]

How far did they get

I'm wondering whether they just took the money and ran, always a popular choice. There's the other one I've seen happen: some non-tech people have an idea, start defrauding investors, then eventually hire one or two technical people (either fresh graduates straight off their degrees or my mate who fixed my laptop once) and tell them to build the entire service because "How long could it take to build a thing like Netflix?".

I'm never sure whether the companies who do that are just really stupid about how any project is built (I've seen people not trying to defraud investors who make that mistake, so it's at least possible), or are attempting to have some scapegoats to explain why their service didn't get built.

[teknopaul]

Re: How far did they get

Still fraud. If you say you are going to build a dam you have to know the basics of how expensive it is to build a dam.

[doublelayer]

Re: How far did they get

This case is fraud as are most of the ones I described. There are some startups that manage to be so clueless that they don't get anything, but that's more in the realm of negligence than fraud. The key is that the operators of the company committing fraud know where the money went and the negligent idiots probably don't have any idea. Either way, there's likely to be lawsuits.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: How far did they get

Reminds me of the Fyre festival.

[katrinab]

Re: How far did they get

You can do a Jellyfin server quite cheaply. Scaling that up to support more than 1 simultaneous user; that’s a lot more challenging.