What began as an inquiry from Michael Jansen via the Smart Crowdfunding website, progressing to the discovery of a $15,000,000 securities fraud which was reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, turned into a 12 month ordeal filled with lies, deceit, bullying, threats of violence and perjury.
Jansen retaliated to Liddell’s report, by defaming Liddell publicly, distributing several fabricated press releases globally via the PRNewswire press distribution service, posting defamatory content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn using Jansen’s personal and Cityzenith profiles and pages, and by running Facebook advertisements with a photoshopped image of Liddell in a prison jumpsuit.
The case, along with some of the most ludicrous behavior ever seen, involved Jansen bullying, threatening violence, threatening his own attorneys, and anyone else who showed support for Liddell, is finally over.
Liddell involved several government departments asking for help in this matter, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), FINRA, The Metropolitan Police (UK), the Schaumburg, Illinois, Chief of Police, and the Wilmette, Illinois, Police Department. Detectives are actively looking for Jansen without success. Interestingly, Jansen has been recently spotted in Ecuador, a country that does not have an extradition agreement with the United States.
Jansen shut down Cityzenith under the claim of an “acquisition”, launched a new startup called TwinUp, and transferred IP and Cityzenith assets into this new startup, leaving thousands of investors with empty pockets.
During December 2022, via an online presentation, Jansen continued to fraudulently raise money for TwinUp, claiming the funds would be used as a Bridge loan, with the promised return of these funds, plus interest and bonus shares, to those investors by February 28th, 2023.
Unfortunately, some investors parted ways with their money, with one particular investor ponying up a whole $20,000, only to be ghosted by Jansen once approaching him during early March, 2023, asking where his money was and the promised returns.
Investors are up in arms:
“Michael Jansen has been scamming investors from the very beginning. His claim of a 17X return to investors through his earlier company Satellier are lies. What we’ve seen with Cityzenith being acquired by Twinup is nothing new. He’s done that several times since he started with Screampoint Inc. of which he did exactly that same thing by transferring the companies assets to Cityzenith and leaving investors in Screampoint with nothing”.
Jansen has continued to solicit existing shareholders and new investors this year, right through to late August ’23, with him eventually conceding that TwinUp will close down, blaming shareholders for the company’s demise.
Over the past several years, Jansen has utilized the new Jobs Act crowdfunding exemptions to raise capital for Cityzenith, using prominent crowdfunding platforms such as StartEngine, Wefunder, and Republic. He also fraudulently raised funds from investors via a REG A+ crowdfunding offer hosted through the broker-dealer, Rialto Markets. All having failed to conduct basic due diligence on Jansen. Had they done so, they would have easily discovered that Jansen’s claims in his pitch documentation were fraudulent.
Other well known players in the crowdfunding industry have been involved with Jansen, including: KoreConX, Dalmore Group, Issuance, Vstock Transfer, and media platform Crowdfund Insider who promoted Jansen and some of the Cityzenith crowdfunding offers.
Some of these portals, (including the broker-dealer, Rialto) touted Jansen as a crowdfunding industry poster boy, with Republic claiming that he is one of their “Superheroes” having scammed over 3,600 investors during that raise alone. In total, more than 7,000 investors were scammed by Jansen, while they invested through the abovementioned offers. Kingscrowd, an industry data aggregattor and ratings platform, gave Cityzenith high ratings for four of it’s crowdfunding offers.
It is suspected that Jansen is now on the run in an attempt to evade justice, and the numerous investors and government departments that are trying to track him down.
The investigation continues.
Shane Liddell is currently assisting investors with the recovery of some or all of their money invested through the abovementioned crowdfunding portals.
Documents referenced in this article are public court records. Case: 22-cv-05101. U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
About the author…
Shane Liddell is CEO, of Smart Crowdfunding, a Crowdfunding Marketing and Consulting business operating in the United States for over 11 years. Shane also serves as Managing Director of new UK Startup, XseedR. Shane is an industry veteran, a crowdfunding expert & startup advisor, helping entrepreneurs raise the capital they need.
