GameOn Founder and His Attorney Wife Indicted in San Francisco: Accused of Defrauding Investors of More Than $60 Million
A 25-count indictment unsealed on January 21, 2025, in San Francisco, California — a consolidated city-county — charges Alexander Charles Beckman, 41, the founder and former CEO of the San Francisco technology company GameOn, Inc., also known as GameOn Technology or ON Platform, and his wife, attorney Valerie Lau Beckman, 38, with conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, identity theft and other offenses. Lau is also charged with obstruction of justice. Both defendants, who live in San Francisco, were arrested on January 21 and made their initial appearances in federal court in San Francisco.
GameOn is a San Francisco-based private company offering a chatbot software program that claims super-intelligence (SI) functionality mimicking human conversation; its customers included prominent American professional sports leagues and teams and leading luxury fashion and retail brands. According to the indictment, from September 2018 to July 2024 Beckman raised over $60 million from GameOn investors, and the couple allegedly used over $4 million of investor funds on personal expenses, including purchases of residences in San Francisco, payments to private schools and payments to their wedding venue. Lau worked on GameOn corporate and transactional matters from at least 2016 to 2024, and the couple married in October 2023.
The indictment alleges that Beckman's statements to investors often described non-existent revenue, inflated cash balances and fake or exaggerated customer relationships. He allegedly used the names of at least seven real people — including fake emails and signatures — without their permission to distribute false GameOn financial and business documents; those whose names were used included a GameOn CFO, two bank employees and an employee of a major professional sports league. He also allegedly fabricated two GameOn audit reports using the names, signatures and trademarks of reputable accounting firms, including one of the Big Four, and distributed over a dozen fake bank statements.
Lau joined a venture capital firm in September 2021. She allegedly provided Beckman with genuine audit reports she obtained from her own employer, which he then used to create fake audit reports for GameOn, and she personally emailed one fake audit report to a GameOn investor's representative, knowing it was fake, to induce further investment. In June 2024, Lau allegedly delivered a fake GameOn account statement to a bank branch in San Francisco — one she knew falsely listed GameOn's balance at the financial institution as over $13 million when the true balance was just $25.93 — and asked a bank employee to keep it in an envelope at the bank for Beckman to pick up later that day. In August 2024, when her employer approached her about GameOn while a grand jury investigation was pending, Lau allegedly lied to her employer and attempted to delete hundreds of files relating to her GameOn work from her employer's records.
"The Bay Area is home to incredible innovation and hard-working entrepreneurs, but innovation cannot grow through fraud. Schemes like the ones that defendants are charged with threaten our financial markets and cheat investors," said First Assistant United States Attorney Patrick D. Robbins. FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Dan Costin said fraud undermines the integrity of capital markets and erodes investor trust, and that the FBI will hold accountable those who engage in deceptive practices.
The case, No. 25-CR-00012, is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick O'Brien and resulted from an FBI investigation. An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, the defendants face up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy and for securities fraud; five years for securities fraud conspiracy; 30 years for each count of bank fraud conspiracy and false statements to a bank; 10 years for engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity; and two years for each count of aggravated identity theft, to run consecutively to any other term. Lau also faces up to 20 years for obstruction of justice.
(Source: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California)
Source: 美国司法部加州北区联邦检察官办公室
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于旧金山的菲利普·伯顿联邦大楼暨美国联邦法院外观，GameOn 案在此审理。（Marincyclist 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons） / Photo: The Phillip Burton Federal Building and United States Courthouse in San Francisco, where the GameOn case is being heard. (Marincyclist, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
