Joanna Smith-Griffin allegedly inflated the revenues of her school chatbot company to secure investments.
A once-vaunted member of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 club was indicted this week on charges that she defrauded investors out of nearly $10 million while leading a chatbot company that worked with some of the nation’s largest school districts.
AllHere raised approximately $8 million in funding and Smith-Griffin allegedly used approximately $150,000 of the money she received from selling her own shares in the company to investors to make a down payment on a house in North Carolina. During the course of the years-long scheme, Smith-Griffin also allegedly transferred at least $600,000 in company funds to her personal accounts.
When AllHere began raising money in a Series B funding round, Smith-Griffin allegedly inflated the company’s revenue numbers again, claiming that it had generated nearly $22 million in revenue from 2021 through 2022 when in fact the actual revenue was less than $500,000, according to the indictment. The alleged scheme began to fall apart in May 2024 when one of AllHere’s investors contacted the company’s accountant—instead of getting updates directly from Smith-Griffin, as investors had previously done—and received an accurate financial statement that showed the company was pulling in far less revenue than its CEO had been claiming.
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