Slync founder and former CEO Chris Kirchner was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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Chris Kirchner, the former CEO of Slync, a technology startup that raised millions of dollars from investors including Goldman Sachs and was once valued at more than $240 million but spent the money on private jets and luxury cars, was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The sentence is one of the toughest for a tech founder charged with fraud in recent years. Last year, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison, culminating a dramatic rise and fall for the young founder who raised more than $80 million for Slync, aiming to become a leading supplier of software to the logistics industry. Kirchner, who was represented by a court-appointed lawyer, received the maximum sentence and was ordered to pay $65 million in restitution, according to sentencing documents.
Kirchner will hold a press conference in July 2022. Forbes The investigation documented that Kirchner inflated sales figures to the board of directors and fired executives who tried to raise the alarm about the deception. Kirchner also spent heavily on personal expenses, buying a $16 million private jet and luxury cars. Even after the company ran out of cash, Kirchner continued to fly around the world to glamorous sporting events without paying his employees.
A few months later, Kirchner was arrested by FBI agents at his Dallas-area mansion and indicted on multiple fraud charges by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, including allegations that he fraudulently offered and sold more than $67 million in securities and misappropriated more than $28 million of that amount for his own personal gain. Kirchner was found guilty by jury verdict in January.
Mr. Slink’s board of directors is Forbes The company ultimately shut down last year despite receiving an additional $24 million in investment from Goldman Sachs, according to the report.
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