DOJ charges fund founder as AI CEO admits investor fraud

Ilit Raz, founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Joonko Diversity, Inc., pled guilty to securities fraud on September 11, 2026. Prosecutors say she lied to investors about her artificial intelligence company’s customers and revenue to pull in approximately $27 million. The Southern District of New York announcement describes Joonko’s product as an AI-based service designed to help employers find and hire diverse job candidates.

The same day, prosecutors in the same district charged Vuk Vukovic, founder of Oraclum Capital LLC and Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Orca Bason Fund, L.P., with misrepresenting the fund’s returns since at least 2024. According to the DOJ charging announcement, Vukovic sent investors false monthly account statements inflating the fund’s actual performance and handed a potential investor falsified brokerage account statements.

Both cases turn on the same mechanism: financial records that allegedly didn’t reflect reality. Raz’s misrepresentations were about who Joonko’s customers were and what the company earned. Vukovic’s were about returns — numbers used to bring money in and keep it there.

On the Joonko side, prosecutors say Raz told investors the client list included a credit card company, a sports apparel brand, an online travel company and a luxury fashion brand. In 2023 she emailed an investor a forged bank statement showing an average balance above $5 million, when the actual figure was millions lower. On April 8, 2023, she emailed fictitious purchase orders carrying forged signatures to an investor.

The money came in two rounds: approximately $10 million in a 2021 Series A and approximately $17 million in a 2022 Series B, for a combined total of approximately $27 million. The Series B was roughly 63% of that total; the Series A, about 37%.

“Ilit Raz lied to investors about key aspects of her startup company, Joonko Diversity, Inc., and fabricated documents to support those lies, to obtain $27 million in investments,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said in the Southern District of New York announcement. FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. added that Raz’s guilty plea demonstrated that “defrauding investors and misrepresenting essential facts about a company will not be tolerated.”

Raz, 40, is an Israeli citizen and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for securities fraud. The supplied records don’t include a sentencing date or a total investor loss figure, so that $27 million reflects what prosecutors say she raised, not a stated loss.

Vukovic, 38, of New York, New York, faces a maximum of 20 years on each count of securities fraud and wire fraud. He appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer E. Willis on September 10, 2026. McDonald said Vukovic “attracted investors to his fund and lulled them into keeping their money invested by reporting high rates of return that were not real.”

There’s a documented comparison in the record. On May 9, 2018, Anilesh Ahuja, founder of Premium Point Investments LP, was charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud after allegedly overstating the firm’s performance by more than $200 million; VOA News reported that case. The pattern is consistent: investor-facing performance figures allegedly manipulated to obtain or hold onto capital.

What these cases aren’t is a crypto story. The records name no token, protocol, or crypto-related entity of any kind. The parties exposed to the alleged false disclosures are investors in Joonko and Orca Bason Fund, and the two proceedings — one a guilty plea, one a charge — are moving through separate criminal tracks as of September 11, 2026.