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.
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
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
> I'm rather confused why not contact a lawyer and pursue legal action?
What kind of legal action would you pursue?
She likely has no funds whatsoever to go after. I would contact a lawyer in this case, for sure - but I don't think it makes any sense to pursue legal action here - legal action is very expensive, and it is very likely throwing good money after bad money.
The only actions that make sense to me are police/interpol complaints, and (possibly, depending on lawyer advice) public naming and shaming - which this website does.
Note that the "naming and shaming" doesn't actually give anything back to those who were scammed - it's mostly a public service for the rest of the world.
If all she's been getting out of the "potential investor" scam is free dinners/trips/etc. and doesn't have significant assets, suing her is probably a money-losing proposition.
since i don't know how to contact you elsewhere, I am going to ask in a thread. I just noticed in your profile you mentioned moving from copenhagen to the US. what happened?
Family & work reasons. My parents live in the U.S., and I had a contract position at a university in Copenhagen that was extended a few times and recently ended, so it was a good time for a move. Copenhagen's a nice place to live though!
I was thinking the same thing, but if he was booking her plane tickets (or other people have in the past) would they not need to book user her real name (so it matches her passport).
Absolutely, the owner of this website could be sued for slander. If everything in this story is true then just sue Cecile because she obviously committed fraud, the case should be a slam dunk. Then expose her once she has been sentenced to prison.
Does it look like a serious VC to anybody? there is absolutely no information whatsoever. Remember the legend about about nigerian scammers? they make it so obvious it is a scam to screen people, that website feels a bit like that.
Quite right. I should have been more clear: Criminal libel laws may still be in the statute books, much like laws may still exist requiring someone carrying a red flag to walk in front of horseless carriages. But we should expect prosecutions under criminal libel laws to fail because of the modern interpretation of the First Amendment (and state constitutional protections that may be broader).
For instance a court in the 1990s struck down Montana's criminal libel law as unconstitutional: https://casetext.com/case/state-v-helfrich-1 But as far as I know it is still on the books.
d) a host shared by another 18,000 websites (according to Bing)
This company genuinely does not look real. I understand that the writer would be extremely excited by the prospect of a $4m investment, but I also feel like he should have done a little more due diligence. Based on what I see, I can't imagine genuinely expecting to receive $4m from this firm...
I don't know if Bing's numbers are completely accurate and you may find better ways to get this information (dnsstuff.com is sure useful). In this case, I was looking into world-glance.com so I will use that website as an example.
1) ping world-glance.com - this shows an IP address of 94.136.40.15
2) Go to bing.com - search for 'IP:94.136.40.15' (without the quotes)
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.
>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.
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.
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.
I don't think she's "not right in the head", nothing to me said mental health problems. She just seems like she is scamming people and quite smart about it.