An entrepreneur from Turkey, who had made it to the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 cover page, has been handed down a 25-month jail term in federal prison for deceiving venture capital investors about her tech startup and using those lies to procure a visa for individuals with “extraordinary ability” in the US. Federal prosecutors said this on Friday.
Gökçe Güven, 27, who founded and ran Kalder Inc., should also forfeit $6,717,997 and pay the same amount in restitution to her victims, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed the sentence in Manhattan.
“Gökçe Güven committed a brazen fraud at Kalder, her technology startup,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said.
McDonald stated that Güven told more than a dozen venture capital investors that Kalder’s revenue and customer base…
This category refers to crimes committed by employees or insiders against their own organizations. It is often the most damaging because the perpetrator has authorized access to systems.
- Asset Misappropriation: The most common form, involving the theft of company resources. This ranges from simple “skimming” (taking cash before it’s recorded) to complex schemes involving the theft of inventory or intellectual property.
- Payroll Fraud: Employees may create “ghost employees” on the system, falsify their own timesheets to claim unworked overtime, or divert salary payments to their own accounts.
- Financial Statement Fraud: Management deliberately misrepresents the company’s financial health by inflating revenue or hiding liabilities to attract investors or meet performance bonuses.