back to article Silicon Valley CEO admits $1.5m wire fraud: Bouxtie boss forged signatures to investors

Bouxtie had everything you can dream of in a Silicon Valley startup. A stupid name (it's pronounced "bow-tie"), a vastly over-confident CEO with a story, millions in VC money, and a nonsensical business model built around an app. And yet this week its chief exec Renato Libric pleaded guilty, in a US federal district court, to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BS

    The last sentence is the best and very funny.

  2. Steve K

    What a crap idea

    Unless I am missing something then I agree that this is a crap idea, so it is a miracle that anyone invested without him having to forge anything...

    You could take a printable gift voucher from Amazon and copy & paste it into any other document and print it...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can only envy Branson's debonair charm

    "He told me, 'Renato, you have a much bigger vision than can be realized here. You are too small for Europe and the UK, but if you really want to change the world and have those kind of big ideas, the money is in San Francisco'," Libric was quoted as saying.

    Me, I'd have gone for a disbelieving guffaw and "That's your product!? Get the fuck out of here!", but Branson suavely got him the fuck out of the continent.

  4. Mark 85

    Followed the link....

    I smelled a lot of BS in that article like no fact checking. Did he actually speak with Richard Branson? The articles reads like a marketing hack wrote it.

    If it looks like BS, smells like BS, don't step in it.

  5. EveryTime

    The author of the Forbes story, Murray Newlands, apparently writes puff pieces as a business. Or does "Influencer Marketing". Or "Media Training". Or any of a dozen other marketing things.

    He apparently no longer writes for Forbes. He published a whole sluice full of stories about a year ago, but they suddenly stopped 8 months ago. He is currently identified as a "subscriber" on the author link. Hmm...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "... He published a whole sluice full of stories ..."

      I am sure you are hinting as something but it just illudes me at the moment :)

  6. StuntMisanthrope

    BlackAdder Capital.

    I'll write the script for the .app. It involves a pitch, the investor, seventy one percent of the same code and a new business process. It should be a fifty percent success rate, before money and ego gets involved. Be warned the moneymaker will bury you and your house is on the line, not his. #cunningplan #sixdecimalplaces

    N.B. There's more money spent on Bitmoji than any UK start-up and I'd probably guess Europe. FWIW.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is "Las Vegas Based Company" a euphemism?

    If so, he's lucky he can still walk.

  8. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    The idea is everything*

    * Please refer to Enron for further details.

  9. Flakk

    Maybe the Real Lesson...

    ...is that we are deep into Dot Bomb 2.0? How else can one explain why otherwise brilliant people are dropping LSD in order to come up with that next great idea?

  10. JLV
    Boffin

    "worth more than $100bn in America" ??? inquiring minds want to know

    100000000000 / 300000000 => $333.33

    I know gift cards are a big deal and I also guess it's a market that could be disrupted. But do you really mean to tell me that each American spends, on average, about $300/year on gift cards? Or is the combined market cap of the main actors $100B? Which is a very different number.

    Otherwise, great article about gullibility, fluff pieces and the mendacity of some bad actors.

  11. J27

    Yeah...

    it's pronounced "bow-tie"

    No it isn't, pronunciation is descriptive. That means the reader decides how to pronounce it and you'll never convince people to call it that long-term.

    1. Tikimon
      Facepalm

      Re: Yeah... mais non..

      This terrible name is obviously meant to appear French, at least to say out loud. Problem is, that "Boux" would pronounce as "Boo" and the company name is "Bootie". Little socks, how cute!

      The "Bo" (long O) sound would be spelled Beau (or Beaux plural). However, using that for "bowtie" leads to "Beautie" which looks like Beauty. Having chosen to weirdly spell a common word as their name, the obvious pseudo-spelling didn't work so they chose to mispronounce it as well.

      If you have to jump through so many hoops to make it fit, it ain't working guys!

      Ah hell, let's have some fun. One could use "Beaux Tie" (plural to include all genders) for a bondage supply company. Just sayin'.

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