Tech couple that allegedly stole $60 million claimed to work with the NBA, NHL, PGA, PwC, and Coca-Cola. The SEC says it was all part of an elaborate scheme
A Bay Area couple is facing years in prison after allegedly stealing from investors, according to criminal and civil complaints. ·Fortune·Getty Images - RoyalFive
The alleged house of cards at AI chatbot platform GameOn continues to unravel with fresh accusations the founder and his wife faked business contracts with marquee names to bolster its standing with investors.
New details are emerging in the shocking accusations engulfing GameOn chatbot platform founder Alexander Charles Beckman and his wife, Valerie Lau.
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the duo faked an audit report with the logo and signature of Big 4 accounting firm PwC that it sent to investors along with phony financials claiming millions in revenue from supposed customers like the NBA, NHL, PGA and Coca-Cola. The reality, authorities said, is that PwC never audited GameOn, and those other organizations either never worked with GameOn—or the contracts involved the chatbot platform paying them to use their branded content in some cases.
Beckman, 41, and Lau, 38, were arrested this past week in San Francisco and face a combined 25 counts in an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The couple allegedly managed to raise $60 million from investors using deceptive means, the indictment states, and instead of investing in the business, they used the money to pay for their wedding venue, posh new residences in San Francisco, a Tesla, and private school tuition for Beckman’s children. Meanwhile, the indictment states the company barely had enough cash on hand to make payroll, and often missed it or paid employees late for their work.
In addition to the criminal charges from the Justice Department, the SEC’s civil suit against the couple is seeking monetary penalties repayment of Beckman and Lau’s ill-gotten gains.
“Beckman falsely represented to investors that GameOn had generated tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue and positive net income from dozens of contracts with high-profile customers,” the SEC said in a statement about its complaint.
“But in reality, GameOn’s annual revenue never exceeded $500,000, the company was never profitable, and GameOn was losing millions of dollars every year. In addition, Beckman repeatedly provided investors with fictitious company balance sheets reflecting millions of dollars in cash when the true cash position was a tiny fraction of what was represented—and at times close to zero.”
Beckman, who founded GameOn in 2014, resigned his CEO and board role at the company on July 1, 2024 and GameOn subsequently laid off nearly all of its employees. The maximum penalty for multiple charges included in the DOJ’s criminal indictment means the two could face decades in prison. Lau also faces an obstruction of justice charge for allegedly deleting hundreds of files from her laptop related to the years-long scheme when she was questioned about her role in the alleged fraud.
According to the SEC, GameOn wasn’t charging the high-profile customers it claimed to have using its platform, but instead paid them significant fees or offered a free or low-cost pilot program to companies. Investors and venture funds bought the company’s securities after it got doctored financial records that purported to show these companies were paying dearly to use its AI chatbots, the agency alleged.
But the actual NBA contract required GameOn to pay $5 million in licensing fees, while the NHL contract asked for $2 million over three years. The PGA contract terms required $1 million in fees over two years. The Coca-Cola contract did not exist, the SEC said in its complaint. At the time of Beckman’s resignation, the company owed the NBA $1.1 million and the NHL was seeking $1.1 million in past-due invoices.
Beckman and Lau, who worked with the company as an outside lawyer, went to great lengths to deceive investors, according to authorities. The SEC’s complaint lists at least 10 alleged instances of false documents that were sent to multiple investors and board members, and at least five instances of fake identities or impersonation. The alleged scheme ran from 2019 to 2024, and ramped up near the firm’s collapse.
In November 2023, GameOn hired a financial consultant to review its internal financial information, which raised numerous questions for the board about irregularities in the data. The board then demanded Beckman provide it with detailed information about the company’s financials and details from the supposed PwC audit.
In response, Beckman allegedly impersonated several bank employees and two financial consultants and worked with Lau to magic up a forged account statement. Beckman used those fake identities to send emails to himself that he then forwarded to a board member and an investor. One investor, after getting forwarded the fake-email exchange, asked for a phone number to verify the information with a real person. The investor called the number and later told the board he thought the person who answered sounded like a disguised version of Beckman’s voice, the complaint states.
Lau also allegedly roped in an unwitting bank employee into the scheme. A board member asked to see a financial statement directly from a bank showing GameOn’s cash balance of $13.3 million. Lau was captured on security footage allegedly going into the bank, meeting with an employee, and asking her to print out a paper copy of a bank statement to give to Beckman and the unnamed board member.
A few hours later, Lau emailed the bank employee and asked her to print a counterfeit statement and leave it in an envelope for Beckman. Beckman and the board member went to the bank together, got the envelope, and left. The actual account balance was near $0, the SEC claims, but the counterfeit statement showed millions in cash in the account.
After Beckman’s resignation, the company’s interim co-president emailed investors to say the previous financial information they got was false, and that Beckman used “elaborate lies and deception” to mislead the board about the company’s cash position. The email also stated that Beckman told investors the company had more than $10 million on hand, but the balance was only $0.37. The cash crisis forced the company to lay off nearly all the 60 people who worked there.
Attempts to reach Beckman and Lau were unsuccessful. Coca-Cola, the NBA, NHL, PwC, and the PGA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
