Technology
Vaporware
Every satisfying tech fraud started with a pitch that sounded too good to be true, and a room full of people who wanted to believe it.
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Episodes
The archive
17 episodes, newest first.
- Joonko: The AI That Was Forged PaperIlit Raz built Joonko as an AI-powered diversity-hiring startup that supposedly matched 100,000 candidates with Fortune 500 clients, then raised roughly $27 million on forged bank statements and invented customers. Derek and Grant reconstruct how the SEC first flagged the scheme in 2024, how Raz's fabricated purchase orders and phony testimonials unraveled, and how her September 2026 guilty plea in Manhattan federal court left her facing up to 20 years in prison. Along the way, they trace the SEC's broader 2024-2026 AI-washing enforcement arc and a May 2026 FTC case built on a fake ad-targeting tool, arguing the genre isn't cooling off, it's just generating more paperwork. The episode closes by tying Joonko into the show's running argument about Silicon Valley's AI credulity problem, and teases where that pattern shows up next.
- mIQroTech: The 30 Under 30 That Built NothingIn 2022, Forbes anointed Meade Lewis a 30 Under 30 energy-tech wunderkind. This month he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, agreeing to forfeit $7.1 million and facing up to 20 years. Derek and Grant reconstruct how a credentialed founder raised over $7 million on claims mIQroTech's own numbers couldn't back up, tracing the story from the Forbes profile that vouched for him through a civil suit, a contempt jailing, a federal indictment, and finally the guilty plea headed to an October 13 hearing in Tampa. Along the way they dig into what investors were actually shown, what the company could actually produce, and how a magazine list became a due-diligence shortcut nobody double-checked. It's a fresh case, not old news, and it's the latest entry in a pattern the hosts keep tracing across hardware and deep-tech pitches that never quite ship.
- Linqto: The $450M Markup MachineFor years, Linqto sold itself as the great equalizer of pre-IPO investing, promising ordinary people a seat at the table with SpaceX, Ripple, and Anthropic. This episode traces how founder William Sarris allegedly turned that promise into a $450 million markup machine, using fake sold-out listings, a manually tuned 'automated' pricing engine, and a maze of investor-capped SPVs to squeeze extra margin out of every trade. We dig into the September 2026 federal indictment, the ex-CEO who already flipped, and a compensation package prosecutors say paid Sarris to keep the numbers inflated. Then we follow the money into Linqto's bankruptcy, where thousands of customers are still waiting to find out what their pre-IPO dreams are actually worth. Next time: what happens when the hype machine and the middleman are the same company.
- Zondacrypto: Poland's Vanishing BitcoinPoland's largest crypto exchange lost 99.7% of its Bitcoin reserves, and nobody can find the man who allegedly holds the only key. Derek and Grant reconstruct the collapse of Zondacrypto, born as BitBay in 2014, rebranded in 2021, and gutted by 2026 to the tune of roughly $97 million in losses. The episode traces founder Sylwester Suszek's 2022 disappearance, the on-chain forensics that caught a hot wallet quietly draining to almost nothing, and how a small Polish exchange scandal escalated into Prime Minister Tusk publicly fighting his own president over a vetoed crypto law. It's an FTX-shaped story that somehow never crossed American front pages. Next time: another company that convinced everyone the money was still there, right up until it wasn't.
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- Evergrande: The $300B Ponzi SkyscraperHui Ka Yan built more housing than most countries and then got sentenced to life in prison for lying about it. This episode traces the rise of Evergrande's founder from rags-to-riches property tycoon to the center of a fraud so large regulators say his companies fabricated hundreds of billions of yuan in sales just to keep the money coming. Derek and Grant walk through how the numbers were faked, why the company's own auditor got fined a record sum for looking away, and how a $300 billion pile of debt finally forced a Hong Kong court to order liquidation before Chinese courts handed down the sentence. Along the way they ask the question that hangs over every mega-fraud: at what size does a lie stop looking like a lie and start looking like the economy? Next time, the hosts start digging into the tech-adjacent frauds that never made it onto American front pages.
- Few and Far: The $10M DJ FundDerek and Grant take apart the August 2026 federal indictment of Few and Far founder Taj Tarsha, who allegedly turned a Pantera-led NFT marketplace round into a Miami condo, an online casino balance, and a DJ hobby. The real story is the audit that caught it in 2023 and the years the company kept running anyway.
- CaaStle: Sentencing Day for a $283M LieChristine Hunsicker faces Judge Oetken in Manhattan federal court today, and Derek and Grant return to the CaaStle file to weigh the forged audits against the number the judge actually hands down.
- CaaStle: Googling How to Fake an AuditDerek and Grant reconstruct how CaaStle founder Christine Hunsicker forged audits, invented shareholders, and took nearly $300 million from venture investors, days before her federal sentencing.
- SpaceX: The $28.5 Trillion Promise CracksDerek and Grant revisit SpaceX's record-breaking IPO one month later, checking the S-1's audacious $28.5 trillion market claim against a stock that's now trading below its offer price.
- Polymarket: The $140 Million Fake WinDerek and Grant reconstruct how a prediction market built its entire brand on blockchain transparency while allegedly staging fake winning bets on counterfeit lookalike sites, and follow the story from a viral Coffeezilla takedown to a congressional insider-trading probe threatening the company's valuation.
Talent
Talents in this show
Each one has a profile of their own.
About
What the show is
Vaporware tells the stories of technology's most spectacular cons, from 19th-century telegraph swindles to billion-dollar startup collapses. Each episode reconstructs how the fraud worked, who fell for it, and what warning signs everyone missed. Built for skeptics, founders, investors, and anyone who's ever wondered how Elizabeth Holmes convinced a room of billionaires that her box worked. Two hosts pick apart one con per episode, following the money and the psychology behind the biggest lies the tech industry ever told.
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