SEC Charges Silicon Valley Start-Up and CEO With Defrauding Investors

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a Mountain View, California-based technology start-up and its chief executive officer with defrauding investors by making false and misleading statements about the company’s finances and sources of revenue. The SEC’s complaint alleges that from 2018 to 2019, Shaukat Shamim, the founder and CEO of YouPlus, a private company that purported to have developed a machine-learning tool to analyze videos on the internet, raised funds from investors while repeatedly misrepresenting the company’s financial condition. According to the complaint, Shamim falsely told investors that YouPlus earned millions of dollars in annual revenue and had more than 100 customers, including Fortune 500 companies.