New York, NY — A once-hyped fintech startup that raised $40 million on the promise of breakthrough artificial intelligence was secretly powered by human labor, federal prosecutors revealed this week.
Albert Saniger, 35, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an e-commerce company based in New York, has been indicted in the Southern District of New York on charges of defrauding investors and making false statements about the company’s AI technology. Saniger, originally from Barcelona, Spain, founded Nate in 2018 and positioned the platform as a game-changing AI-driven shopping tool.
The Nate app claimed to automate the online checkout process with a single tap using proprietary deep learning models. Saniger promoted the app as capable of completing thousands of purchases per day within seconds, thanks to AI. These claims helped him raise tens of millions from investors excited by the growing AI boom.
But according to prosecutors, the app’s transactions were not powered by AI at all. Instead, Nate allegedly relied on human workers in overseas call centers, primarily in the Philippines and later in Romania, to manually process each transaction. Court documents reveal Saniger went to great lengths to conceal this reality, even instructing employees to keep the manual labor a secret.
When a deadly tropical storm hit the Philippines in October 2021, disrupting operations, Nate quietly shifted its processing team to Romania to avoid service delays — especially for investor accounts, which were prioritized to maintain the illusion of seamless automation.
“Saniger allegedly abused the integrity associated with his former position as CEO to perpetuate a scheme filled with smoke and mirrors,” the U.S. Department of Justice stated.
By 2023, Nate collapsed, leaving investors with near-total losses, according to the indictment. The case highlights growing concerns in the tech world about companies exaggerating or fabricating AI capabilities to secure funding.
While AI is widely perceived as an automated, human-free technology, this incident reveals a more complex and controversial reality. Nate is not the only company to do so. A 2023 Washington Post investigation uncovered similar practices at Scale AI, where workers in so-called “digital sweatshops” in the Philippines were used to train and refine AI models for major tech companies including Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
As U.S. private investment in AI hit $109.1 billion in 2024, concerns about ethics, transparency, and labor exploitation in the AI economy continue to grow.
CBS News has reached out to both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Albert Saniger for comment.
