The founder and CEO of a now-bankrupt education tech startup was arrested Tuesday for lying to investors and embezzling company money for personal purchases.
U.S. prosecutors indicted Joanna Smith-Griffin of Raleigh for securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, alleging she bilked investors out of millions of dollars through her startup AllHere Education, which promised to improve K-12 student engagement through an artificial intelligence platform.
Smith-Griffin, 33, formed AllHere in 2016 while studying at Harvard University. In 2021, she was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list for education, and more recently, her company entered a contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District to provide an AI chatbot to students in the nation’s second-largest school district.
The United States Attorney’s Office says Smith-Griffin misrepresented AllHere’s financials as early as November 2020 during its Series A funding round. According to the indictment, she told investors her Boston-based company had generated $3.7 million in 2020 and carried $2.5 million in cash reserves. In reality, AllHere made only $11,000 that year and had around $500,000 on hand.