SEC Sues Fund Operators Over Fake OpenAI, SpaceX Pre-IPO Deals

The Securities and Exchange Commission says Owen Meyer, 35, spent more than $18,000 of investor money at a strip club in April 2023, in a session that spilled into the small hours and ran up receipts listing drinks, "entertainment room rental fees," and the name of his cocktail server. He paid the club $4,400 at 4:44 a.m. and another $3,650 at 5:30 a.m., according to the complaint reported by Fortune. In fund memo lines, the SEC says, the payments were booked as "movie tickets," "opera," and "theatre performance."

Meyer and his firm, Meyer Global Management, allegedly raised at least $18.5 million from nearly 100 investors and misappropriated at least $1.27 million. The SEC says he set up 16 separate funds pitched as pre-IPO stakes in companies including SpaceX and OpenAI, collected roughly $168,000 in fees from an OpenAI fund that never acquired any shares, misappropriated about $570,000 from SpaceX funds, and put $100,000 into a personal exotic-car investment. About $13.1 million was returned to investors after liquidation.

A separate case names Christopher Dinelli, 34, a former naval officer, and Jacob Frankel, 32, who ran Beyond Alpha Ventures. The SEC and federal prosecutors say the pair defrauded 35 investors of more than $8.7 million, pitching a trading fund with "153%" net returns and pre-IPO stakes in SpaceX, xAI, the crypto exchange Kraken, and the AI software firm SandboxAQ. The trading fund lost money in 13 of 14 months. Less than half the nearly $6 million raised for pre-IPO deals actually went into them.

One detail from the complaint: Dinelli allegedly hand-delivered a fake account statement to a Navy veteran couple showing their $750,000 investment had grown to $4.1 million. The two defendants are accused of recruiting fellow veterans and medical staff from a Veterans Affairs clinic in Pensacola, Florida. The SEC says Dinelli misappropriated more than $1 million, including a $250,000 investment in a documentary film, and Frankel misappropriated more than $340,000 and lost $2.8 million in margin trading, including $1.9 million on a single options trade.

Frankel was convicted in March 2026 of grand larceny and identity theft; the SEC says he hid that conviction from regulators. He has denied the new allegations, calling them "completely false." None of the AI or space companies named in the marketing materials — OpenAI, SpaceX, xAI, Kraken or SandboxAQ — is accused of wrongdoing. The two cases land in a stretch where AI funding alerts have dominated our tracker, 427 of them in the last 90 days, with pre-IPO brand-name exposure as a recurring sales hook.