AI founder Joanna Smith-Griffin arrested for fraud: Forbes '30 Under 30' pipeline to prison

The Forbes 30 Under 30 is a list of 30 people under 30 years from various categories who made a difference and brought a change in society.
But somehow the list took a negative turn and an interesting pattern has surfaced that shows the connection between alumni and their propensity to commit white-collar crimes.
And now founder of an artificial intelligence startup Joanna Smith-Griffin made it to the list.
On Tuesday Griffin, the founder and CEO of AllHere Education, Inc., was arrested in North Carolina on charges of securities fraud, wire fraud and identity theft, according to a news release from the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office.
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday alleges that Smith-Griffin lied to potential investors about the revenue that AllHere Education generated and the number of school districts the startup had contracts with over the last few years.
In total, prosecutors allege in the indictment, Smith-Griffin fraudulently obtained nearly $10 million from AllHere Education investors, transferring at least $600,000 to her personal bank account, and using some of the money to pay for a home down payment and to finance her wedding.
US Attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Joanna Smith-Griffin orchestrated a deliberate and calculated scheme to deceive investors in AllHere Education, Inc., inflating the company’s financials to secure millions of dollars under false pretenses. The law does not turn a blind eye to those who allegedly distort financial realities for personal gain.”

Samuel Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, 32, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for his orchestration of multiple fraudulent schemes. Bankman-Fried, who was the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research, misappropriated billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX, defrauded investors in FTX of more than $1.7 billion, and defrauded lenders to Alameda of more than $1.3 billion, as per the US state department of justice.
Bankman-Fried was also found guilty on two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Sam made to the Forbes list in 2021.
Elizabeth A Holmes, former chief executive of the blood-testing company Theranos, was sentenced today to 135 months (11 years, 3 months) in federal prison for defrauding investors in Theranos, Inc. of hundreds of millions of dollars, announced United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Assistant Commissioner for Criminal Investigations Catherine A. Hermsen, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) San Francisco Division Acting Inspector in Charge Kevin Rho. The sentence was handed down by United States District Judge Edward J Davila.
The Securities and Exchange Commission 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 US Security and Exchange Commission.
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. Shafi hid those expenditures with offering documents that significantly understated the company’s marketing expenses and by routing advertising platform payments through third parties.

Caroline Ellison was sentenced to 24 months in prison by a federal judge for her role in the FTX collapse, despite helping prosecutors in the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, her former boss and boyfriend.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on the two-year sentence on the 29-year-old, calling Ellison’s cooperation “remarkable” and praising her testimony during the fraud trial. But Kaplan noted that the case was one of the “most serious” financial frauds ever committed and that her cooperation can’t be a “get out of jail free card.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Charlie Javice, the founder of the now shuttered student loan assistance company previously known as Frank, with fraud in connection with the $175 million sale of the company to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., (JPMC) in 2021. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMC into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used Frank’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.
Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for committing securities fraud and securities fraud conspiracy, to be followed by three years’ supervised release. The Court also ordered Shkreli to pay a $75,000 fine and $7.3 million in forfeiture. Earlier this week, the Court signed a Preliminary Order of Forfeiture, which will allow the government to seize substitute assets to satisfy the forfeiture judgment if necessary, including $5 million held in an account that had been used to secure Shkreli’s bail, the “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin” album by the Wu Tang Clan, the “Tha Carter V” album by Lil Wayne, and a Picasso painting.
Shkreli was the founder and managing member of hedge funds MSMB Capital Management LP (MSMB Capital) and MSMB Healthcare Management LP (MSMB Healthcare) and the former Chief Executive Officer of Retrophin Inc. (Retrophin), a biopharmaceutical company that trades under the ticker symbol RTRX.