To further the alleged scheme, he “often described nonexistent revenues, inflated cash balances” and “otherwise exaggerated customer relationships,” the U.S. attorney's office said, to convince investors to spend millions. As Beckman's accomplice, he allegedly Lau allegedly manipulated documents, including documents allegedly stolen from the venture capital firm that employed her, while allegedly hiding her work from Gameon.
The scheme also apparently involved forging audits and bank statements, as well as using “the names of at least seven real people – including fake emails and signatures – without their consent to create false and fraudulent Gameon financial and business information and documents to distribute with the intent to defraud Gameon and its investors,” the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
At perhaps the furthest extreme, spoofed account transfers, including once faking a balance of over $13 million when that account only had $25. The FBI found that GameOn's revenues never exceeded $1 million in any year, while Beckman allegedly inflated revenues to investors, including claiming that revenues were up to $72 million in a quarter by 2023.
Beckman and Lau reportedly went to great lengths to conceal the scheme while diverting investor funds from their personal accounts. While Gameon employees reportedly went without pay at times, Beckman and Lau allegedly stole funds to purchase expensive San Francisco real estate and pay for their 2023 wedding. If convicted, they could be forced to buy a $4.2 million home, a Tesla Model X, and other real estate and real estate with their alleged ill-gotten gains, the indictment said.
It took about five years for the cracks in Beckman's scheme to appear. Beginning in 2023, Beckman began to be increasingly confronted with “questions about specific customers and specific revenues from those customers,” according to the complaint. By February 2024, Beckman finally “acknowledged to at least one Gameon consultant” that a flagged audit report “did not contain accurate financial information,” but he reportedly tried to “blame others for the inaccuracies.”
