09/03/2025

Former Silicon Valley CEO Charged With Fraud And Obstruction Of Justice

United States Attorney's Office Northern District of California

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging a Hawaii man with wire fraud, securities fraud, and obstruction in connection with a scheme to defraud investors of $170 million as the CEO and Founder of the social media company Get Together, a privately held social media startup known as “IRL.”

According to court documents, Abraham Shafi, 38, of Pepeekeo, Hawaii, allegedly committed fraud in connection with Get Together’s 2021 “Series C” funding round, which raised $170 million at a valuation of over $1 billion. In seeking investment, Shafi told potential investors that IRL was spending only $50,000 a month in paid advertising and that user signups “were not incentivized or paid.” However, Shafi had spent millions of dollars on paid advertising in the form of incentive advertising, a type of advertising in which users are provided a reward in a third-party app if they download IRL. In the lead up to Series C, Shafi asked his vendor for a “big burst” of ads for “a few days” to drive more installs of the IRL app. During the Series C process, investors specifically asked about paid advertising, and Shafi falsely responded that “[u]nlike other apps that spend aggressively to acquire new users, we spend very little.” Shafi concealed IRL’s spending on incentive ads by having them invoiced to a third-party firm, ensuring that the nature and amount of the expense did not appear on IRL’s ledger.

Shafi continued to conceal the amount that IRL was spending in incentive ads after the Series C closed, instructing an IRL employee to create false invoices that listed the ad spending as being related to infrastructure, or “infra costs,” and falsely telling his investors that the money spent on incentive ads had instead been used for other forms of advertising. When the SEC opened an investigation into IRL, Shafi restored his cell phone to a previously saved backup, resulting in the deletion of records, and instructed other IRL employees to lie about his involvement in the scheme.