Authorities in the United States have accused a tech app founder of fraud, claiming that his marketed AI-driven e-commerce application predominantly utilized human labor in the Philippines instead.
Albert Saniger, based in Barcelona, Spain, who was the founder and CEO of Nate, faces one count of securities fraud and wire fraud, as announced by the Justice Department in a statement on April 9, while the Securities and Exchange Commission initiated a related civil case.
Legal documents reveal that Saniger established Nate in approximately 2018 and introduced an app of the same name in July 2020, promoting it as an AI-enabled universal shopping cart that allowed users to finalize online transactions—such as entering shipping information and sizes—without any human assistance.
However, the Justice Department claimed that, in actuality, “Saniger employed hundreds of contractors, or ‘purchasing assistants,’ at a call center in the Philippines to manually process purchases made through the Nate app.”
Image Credit: US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York
Saniger allegedly raised over $40 million from investors
Matthew Podolsky, Acting US Attorney for New York, accused Saniger of misleading investors by “taking advantage of the allure and promise of AI technology to craft a deceptive narrative about a nonexistent innovation.”
Under the pretense of promoting the AI-powered app, Saniger purportedly solicited over $40 million from venture capitalists and instructed employees to conceal the actual means behind Nate’s functionality.
“Such deceit not only harms unsuspecting investors but also diverts funding from legitimate startups, breeds skepticism around actual advancements, and ultimately hinders the progress of AI innovation,” Podolsky stated.
The company procured AI technology from another provider and had a group of data scientists work on it, but officials claimed that the app failed to reliably execute e-commerce transactions, with its true automation rate being virtually zero.
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During the peak holiday season in 2021, it is alleged that Saniger instructed Nate’s engineering team to create bots to automate certain transactions in conjunction with the human workforce.
Nate ceased operations in January 2023, and Saniger laid off all employees after media reports began to raise concerns about the app’s functionality, as detailed in the SEC’s court documents.
The charges of securities and wire fraud each carry a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The SEC lawsuit seeks to prevent Saniger from serving in any similar company in the future and to recover funds for investors.
Inquiries were sent to Nate for comments. Information regarding Saniger’s legal representation was not immediately available.
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