CEO of $1.5 Billion AI Startup Accused of Massive Fraud by Justice Department

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Noel Joshua Hadley

The AI boom has brought with it untold levels of fraud and graft. One of the largest schemes so far, concealed within the record-breaking valuations of the AI hype cycle, was iLearning Engines, a relatively young tech company which quickly scaled itself to a $1.5 billion market cap.

A scathing statement by the US Department of Justice alleges that iLearning, an “out-of-the-box AI platform that empowers customers to ‘productize’ their institutional knowledge,” has been faking “virtually all its customer relationships and revenues” since January 2019.

The DoJ named iLearning founder and CEO Puthugramam “Harish” Chidambaran and CFO Sayyed Farhan Ali “Farhan” Naqvi as co-conspirators in a “continuing financial crimes enterprise,” charging them with a bevy of charges related to securities and wire fraud.

Basically, the federal government alleges the duo hitched a ride on the AI bandwagon in order to dupe investors into believing they were a fast-growing AI upstart. In reality, they say, the vast majority of the company’s on-paper customers — and revenue — were faked.

“As alleged, the defendants exploited investor excitement over the AI boom and presented a rosy financial outlook to investors and lenders that was built on lies,” the DoJ statement reads. “While the defendants pitched iLearning as a way to revolutionize training and education through AI, the truly artificial part of the defendants’ story was iLearning’s customers and revenues.”

Chidambaran was arrested in Maryland last Friday, while Naqvi was arrested in California. The two are alleged to have scraped in millions in stock options, salary, and bonuses. Chidambaran is alleged to have received over $500 million in common stock alone, on top of a $700,000 salary between 2023 and 2024, and $12.5 million in restricted stock units.

The scale of the alleged fraud is dumbfounding: in 2023 alone, the two posted a revenue of $421 million, based on supposed AI licenses iLearning sold to enterprise customers. In reality, the DoJ argues, that revenue was padded “through an intricate web of sham contracts with purported customers,” some of which amounted to tens of millions of dollars every year.

According to the Hill, the FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report identified over 22,000 complaints related to AI fraud in 2025 alone, the losses of which are estimated around $900 million — about a 33 percent increase from the previous year. It seems that until the AI music finally stops, the grifters will keep on dancing all the way to the bank.

More on AI scams: Man Pleads Guilty to Making $8 Million by Creating Music With AI and Using Bots to Drive Zillions of Fake Streams

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IN the summer of 2019, I was seated in the wine cellar of a walled Medieval town high above the Dordogne Valley of France, not far from Sarlat-la-Canéda, making phone calls, writing reports. I have given this story in other places and it appears as though you’re about to hear it again. Rob Skiba is a name you that you might be familiar with. Though he had made a name for himself as a Nephilim researcher, more recently Rob had taken a dive into the deep end of the pool via flat earth research. The recorded interviews I conducted between he and Rick Hummer, a fellow flat earth investigator and close friend of his, was published while still occupying that very wine cellar. Read all about it. Chicago Is Not a Mirage.

Word quickly spread. Within a few short weeks, dozens of flat earth researchers began accepting my invite for a private interview, if not a series of interviews. From a 17th-century tower built by King Louis XIV, and with a stunning view of the Alps, I sat down with Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conferences, conducting multiple sessions. While staying in Dumfries, Scotland, David Weiss agreed to take part in the interviews, as did Bob Knodel of Globebusters. There were others. But when I asked the interviewees to discuss the moments that shaped their lives, among the many PSYOPs, false flag attacks, and hoaxes that were discussed, only these men committed commentary to the false 9/11 narrative.

The resulting recordings ballooned into The Unexpected Cosmology, a book which became a website and was even intended as an anthology. And of course, the following discourse was originally a chapter. It was Walt Disney who stated, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Those sentiments remain applicable here as well. American Sensationalism: The 9/11 Interviews was always intended to be expanded upon with the inclusion of new researchers. So I’m sorry to say the project became stagnant during the Covid-19 psychodrama. I took a break to tackle other projects. We lost Rob Skiba. Rob offered hours of private conversation regarding his life but we never got around to the big one. 9/11. It was in the cards. Sadly, Bob Knodel died soon afterwards. Voices are being squeezed from an entire generation. Gnosis passes with them.

In the aftermath, the FE community became fractured. People began going their separate ways. Robbie Davidson, among a noted few others who were interviewed for the project, got up and left the movement altogether. It is not my intent to erase his or the contributions of others if only brief. They came, they went, their testimonies remain.

The original vision may have hit roadblocks but it is not forgotten. I expanded this paper a few years later to include testimony from author Pauly Hart, a dear friend of mine. I had wanted to continue that trend every year thereafter but you know how it goes. For the 25th anniversary of the attack I have redirected my efforts to its first large scale expansion, including Andrew Hoy and Darrin Geisinger into the mix. Perhaps others will lend their experiences to the recorder in time.

The following is their report.

Read the 9/11 Interviews

Watch the Interviews