To promote the alleged scheme, he “often described nonexistent income, inflated cash balances” and “inflated customer relationships,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, to convince investors to spend millions. As Beckman’s accomplice, Lau allegedly manipulated documents, including documents allegedly stolen from the venture capital firm that employed her while allegedly concealing her work for GameOn.
The scheme also reportedly included falsifying audits and bank statements, as well as using “the names of at least seven real people (including fake emails and signatures) without their permission to distribute false financial and business information and documents and of GameOn with the intent to defraud GameOn and its investors,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Perhaps at the furthest extreme, Lau allegedly falsified account statements, once even falsifying a balance of more than $13 million when that account only had $25 in it. The FBI found that GameOn’s revenue never exceeded $1 million in any year, while Beckman allegedly inflated sales to investors, even claiming that sales in one quarter in 2023 reached $72 million.
Beckman and Lau allegedly went to great lengths to conceal the scheme while diverting investor funds to their personal accounts. While GameOn employees allegedly sometimes went without paychecks, Beckman and Lau allegedly stole funds to buy expensive real estate in San Francisco and pay for their wedding in 2023. If convicted, they may be forced to lose a house. $4.2 million, a Tesla Model
It took about five years for cracks to begin to appear in Beckman’s plan. Beginning in 2023, Beckman began facing increasing “questions about specific clients and the specific income of those clients,” according to the indictment. In February 2024, Beckman finally “acknowledged to at least one GameOn consultant” that an audit report flagged “did not contain accurate financial information,” but allegedly “attempted to shift the blame for the inaccuracies to others.”