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.
- The $55 Billion Hallucination: AI's Fraud GenreDerek and Grant zoom out from the Nate App playbook to ask whether AI capability fraud has become an industrialized genre, tracing Cluely's ARR confession, SEC AI-washing enforcement, and the economics that make the lie irresistible.
- Charles Cole: The $3 Billion That Never ExistedA North Carolina man named Charles Cole walked away with 239 million shares of Napster's parent company by faking a Malaysian bank, forging statements, and promising $3.36 billion he never had. Derek and Grant reconstruct the full con, from first pitch to federal charges.
- SpaceX: The S-1 That Claims 22% of All MoneyThe most anticipated IPO in history just went public with a prospectus claiming a $28.5 trillion addressable market. Derek and Grant read the receipts on why critics are calling it the oldest pitch in Silicon Valley dressed up in rocket fuel.
- Aspiration: The Green Grift That Cost $248 MillionJoseph Sanberg built a celebrity-backed green bank on trees, good intentions, and $248 million worth of lies. Derek and Grant reconstruct how the ESG moral shield kept skeptics quiet while Sanberg paid his own fake customers and forged audit letters to stay afloat.
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- Nate App: The AI That Was Just PeopleFrom a chess-playing cabinet in 1770 Vienna to a shopping app powered by call centers in Manila, Derek and Grant trace 250 years of humans hiding inside machines sold as autonomous tech, ending with the DOJ charges that finally named the con.
- Terra/Luna: The Coin That Was Mathematically SafeIn May 2022, $40 billion in crypto evaporated in 72 hours when Do Kwon's algorithmic stablecoin collapsed. Derek and Grant reconstruct the pitch, the hidden trading deals, the 72-hour death spiral, and the sentencing that finally put a number on one of the biggest frauds in financial history.
- Nate: The AI That Was Just PeopleAlbert Saniger raised $42 million promising a revolutionary AI shopping app. The automation rate was effectively zero percent. This is the story of how he kept hundreds of human workers hidden in the Philippines and Romania, and why it took the DOJ until 2025 to make it a criminal case.
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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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