Honey app exposed documentary – inside trading, fraud, IP theft and more
I’ve been tracking the crimes, fraud, and unethical behavior of Honey (Honey Science Corporation) for several years now. So much of it is out in the open if you look at all the court documents, law suits, and affidavits. And a documentary on Honey just dropped, getting many millions of views in the first few hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk&t=14s.
A couple of months ago, a global insider trading claim came out against them. A Hong Kong company has been called out in national news for having inside information prior to Honey Science’s $4 billion purchase by PayPal. Source (and more will be posted as news breaks this week): https://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news/section/1/266971….
And recently, there is inside information leaking that Honey is firing employees when they reach a certain age, which is highly unethical. And in some cases, the founders coerced, extorted, and tricked employees out of their shares before PayPal bought them for $4B, which caused some of these early employees to lose millions of dollars.
What I also learned along the way is pretty shocking. Firstly, in an open letter, it appears the Honey founders conned, scammed, and defrauded their first venture investors by lying about their entity, company, and more. At the time, Dickson Concepts owned 24.8 million shares of Honey, or 3.73 percent of the issued share capital. How did they get this information early that PayPal was going to acquire them? Furthermore, who on the U.S. side was working to provide this kind of upside to a Hong Kong billionaire?
From the start, Honey Science Corporation was called out for deceiving their original venture capital investors. They secured funding, then changed company names/concepts, etc. One cached link here: https://pastebin.com/5fc5Qmeh – where a well-known Venture Capitalist wrote an open letter to the community stating that this “startup” defrauded the accelerator’s investors by changing the company name, business accounts (commingling?), and business type, and then not paying out the original investors. In short, the Honey founders raised money for a dating app, then started a coupon app, and cut out the investors.
Honey has also been accused in federal court of outright copying the coupon code IP in the court case RetailMeNot, Inc. v. Honey Sci. LLC. So it appears Honey and their team have no respect for IP. And if this is not enough, again, Honey was brought to court in 72LUX, Inc. v. Honey Science Corporation et al for allegedly stealing patented codes from another digital coupon company in operation.
I have strong reason to believe there is even more coming out on Honey and the founders, in the near future. Hopefully, it will be before their new scam like company (another browser app) gets any traction, as I, along with others, have reason to believe their new middleman company is also a scam. There’s also a documentary exposing this app.
The conspiracy here is crazy: PayPal buys a company using a link-fraud system. Did they not do their own due diligence? Furthermore, how much more scamming is going on here? Lastly, why are the founders of Honey not being arrested and charged with crimes? The amount of money defrauded seems to be in the millions, which in U.S. law carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison under federal fraud statutes, including wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343) and mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), depending on the specifics of the case and the damages involved.
And if the insider trading portion was planned and global, as the recent evidence may show, these charges become even more severe, potentially including securities fraud under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, with penalties of up to 25 years in prison per violation, significant fines, and restitution orders. Global coordination could also trigger investigations by multiple regulatory bodies, such as the SEC and foreign counterparts, leading to compounded legal consequences.
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42500054
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