from Hacker News

Modus Operandi: Poses as an investor to be wined and dined, then disappears

by levifig on 7/19/15, 8:51 PM with 42 comments

• by idlewords on 7/19/15, 9:45 PM

  I have extensive experience prosecuting cases like this and would be happy to assist the OP. I ask that he fly me to New York City at his earliest convenience (after wiring me a good-faith deposit) so that we may discuss this in person.

• by lingben on 7/19/15, 9:11 PM

  I'm rather confused why not contact a lawyer and pursue legal action?

  world-glance.com screams caution since there is so much missing, team info, personal names & bios, contact, address, etc. and it was only registered in Feb 2015 and has whois privacy protection

  http://whois.domaintools.com/world-glance.com

  privacy protection is not normally an issue but when a COMPANY (not personal!) webpage has no personal details, address, phone, etc. it is a huge redflag

  don't mean to criticize a victim of fraud but no reputable VC or investor would be asking for money for petty expenses like a cab or flight, etc.

  The whole point of this is that they are the ones that are supposed to have money and they may or may not give it to you.

  Not the other way around :/

  But I get it, she was using the 'boiling frog' strategy

• by gkoberger on 7/19/15, 9:47 PM

  Having read through this, it seems less like she wanted to be wined and dined (given how the "victim" flew to London), and more that she just wanted to seem important. A lot of people want to be VCs; and it turns out you can get most of the VC experience without having money if you just never invest. (On the flip side, a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs but have no product.)

  Having been through bad experiences with wannabe investors in the past, I made a rule that I would only ever deal with investors that were well-known or were heavily vouched for by someone I knew that had been invested in by them.

• by anon1385 on 7/19/15, 9:48 PM

  >Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

  Sounds like a perfect YC founder to me.

  http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

• by glynjackson on 7/19/15, 9:58 PM

  I really feel sorry for the guy, but even just a few simple due diligence checks would have shown the company has no money even the accounts are overdue: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/07335249/WORLD-GLANCE-LIMI... http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk//compdetails On top of that the website screams fake. A limited company should always show company number and have contact details.

• by bbcbasic on 7/19/15, 10:10 PM

  Scammers prey on people who want things so badly that they blind their instincts. I think the lesson is to not be desperate for investment and assume an equal standing of both parties (i.e. the investor is not some superior deity). Also an appropriate due diligence throughout the whole process.

• by kossTKR on 7/19/15, 10:49 PM

  My impression is that much of top-tier financing is riddled with people like her, maybe not as unstable, but just as ruthless and without any empathic regards at all. The only difference is the numbers and the complexity of the scams committed. Spiderwebs of companies, incomprehensible systems and networks of hedge-funds, company-carousels, lobbyism, and straight up corruption. Just look at the scandals of the last ten years.

  The fact that webpages like this are not made about them and mostly about low-level charlatans, is because of the legal repercussions.

• by laurentoget on 7/19/15, 10:08 PM

  maybe she is a performance artist making a movie about how out of touch with reality startup executives are.

• by marczellm on 7/20/15, 8:37 PM

  Cecile's text messages are horribly sloppy regarding spelling and grammar, I'd never trust a person like that.

• by Frozenlock on 7/20/15, 12:41 AM

  It's the little things, but I read

  > Hindsight is 2020

  as "Hindsight is two thousand twenty"

  I would invite the writers to use '20-20'.

• by DanBC on 7/19/15, 9:48 PM

  What did the police say when you filed a report?

• by nycspicebo on 7/19/15, 9:33 PM

  Brian Lefevre

• by ild on 7/19/15, 9:59 PM

  The apartment is so hipster/yapster (bikes on the wall, the kitchen design), it is actually tacky.

• by crablar on 7/19/15, 9:25 PM

  This post is worse than Cecile's actions.

  She's obviously not right in the head, you are basically saying "Watch out for crazy people", and she has to be the scapegoat for your messaging.

  This is super cruel and merciless.