Umang Shah
Appearances
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
There were multiple times where I would use my personal credit card to finance business things. It really wasn't a big thing. I mean, but sometimes those expenses could have been up to $50,000. They were running media and we needed to pay for some advertising. The expenses themselves weren't concerning. It was, you know, okay, the fact that I'm putting $50,000 on my personal credit card.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
He says, hey, we're at this pivotal point. We're building this platform. Our credit cards are getting blocked because of technical reasons. We need some new credit cards. Are you able to help? And we put together a structure where he was going to pay me back a certain fee in exchange for allowing him to use my credit card.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
um and and so just just for context the business that he was running at the time was all about kind of rent to own so once once this this deal started where he was you know he was using my credit card um the expenses actually started racking up really fast um and so you know again it would reach a certain point when maybe i put a couple hundred thousand dollars on my credit card he would
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
pay some of it back, and then, you know, we'd find a way to get the card authorized to use again, and then he'd rack some more on. Again, he was building out these, like, really complicated payment structures. Okay, I'm going to pay you this amount, this, at this point, this amount for this point. He was going to cover any fees. But then that starts to change, too. money just started drying up.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
And so I started to stress, because when I tell people this, it's hard for people to understand. But we had put about a million dollars on my credit card at this point. It started to get really stressful and concerning. And I was calling Josh like, hey, you got to pay me back. My wife was pregnant at the time. We were expecting my first child.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
All of the stress on top of, you know, this financial stress on top of that other stress on top of COVID. He would try to appease me by sending me documentation of, you know, these accounts that have $50 million in there, but they're tied up and he just can't get the money out right now.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
He would even send me letters from different bank officials claiming that wires were sent or there was an error with the wire and that they were going to work on it. And Kami says she thought the money was there too.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real?
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
They were just like, holy cow, everything was so extravagant. There were, you know, these performers and this huge venue and just, it was very extravagant.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
I had just left a full-time job and the last thing I wanted was a full-time job, yet he was good enough to convince me to take on a full-time job. But Josh is quite good at selling. Umang did notice how extravagant everything was. We would go out on sales calls. We'd often either fly first class or we would take a private jet. Josh insisted on kind of compensating
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
people very much more with salaries and less with equity, which is kind of the opposite of most startups. And so most of the people were paid a kind of a reasonable market rate.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
I consider myself to be a fairly logical person. maybe even smart person. And I could not always understand how the math worked out. Like, how did, you know, how did we get paid? How did we do all that?
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
But over time, the weirdness added up. I remember for certain investor pitches or sales pitches, I would lay out an interesting way to present the information and the facts to show growth numbers, right? Hey, look, we saw growth month over month at this rate, which is great for a startup. You're tracking on a higher frequency. He would often kind of encourage us to exaggerate that even more.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
And so maybe inflate a number, maybe, you know, like position it like outside of the facts. And so, you know, I think that was my first sign of, wait a minute, I don't know if I love that. I don't think I really feel great about that. But in the end, the checks were clearing. During my time there, I always got paid eventually.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
You know, my salary always eventually got paid and my expenses always got paid. And so there was never a question about that.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
Josh just kind of verbally presented himself as successful entrepreneur who took the proceeds from previous successful exit and rolled it into this business. He talked about having invested at that point, I think it was $9 million into the business. And so he would refer to his past successes and kind of his lifestyle as proof of his success.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
We ran into some complications. We just didn't think there was a pathway where Flocky was going to be successful. Not in the way that we had built it. And so ultimately the decision was made that we're going to package that up and sell the company. for assets or whatever. Ultimately, I told Josh, look, I'm going to step away. This has been great. I'm going to back out.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 2
I'm going to let you guys run the new business. Umang stepped away and Josh finished dealing with a sale. They found a buyer. It was kind of the actual sale happened after I left.