SEC Charges Founder of Social Media Company “IRL” with $170 Million Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Abraham Shafi, the founder and former CEO of Get Together Inc., a privately held social media startup known as “IRL,” with defrauding investors by making false and misleading statements about the company’s growth and concealing his and his fiancée’s extensive use of company credit cards to pay for personal expenses. According to the SEC’s complaint, Shafi, who resides in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, raised about $170 million from investors by portraying IRL as a viral social media platform that organically attracted the vast majority of its purported 12 million users. In reality, IRL spent millions of dollars on advertisements that offered incentives to download the IRL app.