The co-founder of a now-bankrupt advertising software firm posted phony, bullish statements about the company with a pseudonymous social media account to drive up its share price, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. Paul Pereira, who served as chief executive officer of Alfi from 2018 to 2022, used an account on Stocktwits to mislead investors about the company’s financials, according to a lawsuit from the regulator filed in federal court in Miami. He also used the account, which he created in May 2021 with the name “uptix12,” to disparage users who criticized Alfi, the SEC alleged. A darling of the meme stock boom, the Miami Beach, Florida-based Alfi had planned to use facial recognition to target individualized ads to people as they walked through an airport or use a ride share. But the technology drew pushback from US officials, and major advertising revenue failed to materialize. In one instance, uptix12 claimed that Alfi had $100 million in revenue lined up for 2021, and $500 million for the next year, the SEC said. At the time of that post, Alfi had, at most, $4.3 million of revenue in inventory, according to the SEC.
