[hd95489]

“ No sane person is going to invest in a scheme to turn lead into gold, but early-stage startups—and even some mid- and late-stage startups—rarely present such a clear-cut profile”

Why not? If the founder is sufficiently charismatic, huge followers and lots of suckers willing to pile in. Sure the odds of a real product are zero but odds of a 100x exit are non zero. It may be a decent enough investment dispite being outright fraud. If you think you are in early enough in the scam and you can get out.

[maxbond]

You may well have to give that money back however (eg, early investors with Madoff had to compensate later investors decades later).

[hd95489]

Maybe, but failing to turn lead into food isn’t technically fraud. It’s just an inability to mature the technology into a viable long term product. Happens all the time with crypto, jucero etc. Movie pass was probably too close to Fraud though and risked clawback