As Gibran Huzaifah stared at the Excel spreadsheet on his laptop, he was looking into the void. eFishery, the Indonesian startup he’d built from a fish-feeding prototype to a 100-employee extension of himself, was just three months away from running out of cash.
Slowly, he started plugging fake numbers into the financial report. Within an hour, he had done what five years of hard work couldn’t — turn his business into a winner, at least on paper. He hit the send button to show his investors, certain he’d get caught.
Only he didn’t…. […]
Six years after that move to start a second set of accounts — a real one for his team and a second, inflated book for investors — eFishery was one of Asia’s brightest startups with a valuation of $1.4 billion and around 2,000 staff. As well as providing automated fish-feeders to boost productivity, it had also expanded into financing services.
By the time it collapsed, the scheme had metastasized into a multinational web of fake shell companies and padded accounts. The company claimed revenues of $752 million in the first nine months of 2024, while the true number was just $157 million, according to an internal investigation.
Source: CEO Explains How He Faked Results in $300 Million Meltdown