Posted on 11/20/2023 4:58:10 PM PST by Libloather
A San Francisco venture capitalist who was once dubbed 'Silicon Valley's Party Animal' has been convicted of fraud totalling $19 million - and now faces up to 60 years in prison.
Michael Brent Rothenberg, who was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family in Georgetown, Texas, used his dense network of successful Ivy League friends to set up his own VC fund in 2012 based on the strategy of throwing opulent parties.
He rubbed shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, rented out baseball stadiums for networking events, and threw all-day-and-night parties in a bid to attract investors and companies to invest in.
This month, Rothenberg, 39, was convicted of wire fraud, money laundering, bank fraud, and making false statements to a bank - after being investigated by the FBI.
His guilty verdicts followed a seven-week jury trial, which showed that Rothenberg's VC schemes resulted in approximately $18.8 million in missing money.
The jury found Rothenberg, 39, committed wire fraud at two of the venture capital funds that he managed in 2015 and 2016.
Rothenberg founded Rothenberg Ventures Management Company, and between 2012 and 2018, he used it to raise and manage four annual venture capital funds.
In 2015, Rothenberg founded River Studios - but he told his employees and investors, that the venture had been 'self-funded' by him and that no venture capital funds were used. This was a lie, the jury found.
The Department of Justice said in a statement: 'The evidence showed, however, that Rothenberg misappropriated a large amount of venture capital fund money to pay for River Studios' operations during that period.
'In addition to using venture capital funds to pay for River Studios' operations, the evidence also showed that Rothenberg routinely took excess fees from the venture capital funds that he managed throughout 2015 and 2016...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Interesting that they chose to mention he was “raised in a Jehovah’s Witness family.”
A very little known fact is the number of frauds that occur all the time in Silicon Valley.
One company from India scammed 100M from Intel.
They were supposed to use it to write software for a new Intel processor.
They used the $$$ to setup an Indian outsourcing company in Sacramento.
(has been convicted of fraud totalling $19 million)
Was that wrong?
Should he have not done that?
He didn’t pay off the right person or he offended woke.
We will definitely see this one as a future episode of American Greed.
Isn’t the president of the company allowed to do anything they want?
Woohoo!!! 🎉🎉🎉
And the best part is knowing politicians and the politically connected grabbed their cut before the scam was busted knowing ‘they’ were the ones who would drop the hammer.
Our system is a joke... 60 years.... Ha! Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos defrauded BILLIONS and got 11 years. To top it off, she behaved ‘nicely’ during the first 6 weeks of her sentence so she is on track to get her sentence knocked down to 9.5 years.
**Interesting that they chose to mention he was “raised in a Jehovah’s Witness family.”**
Yes, he probably wanted to get away from ‘The Watchtower’. Now he’ll be surrounded by watchtowers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.