Technology

Fraudster who peddled fake pre-IPO Airbnb stock falsely claimed to represent Egypt’s Mansour family

Published

2 years ago

February 27, 2024

admin

The Airbnb logo is displayed on the Nasdaq digital billboard in Times Square in New York on December 10, 2020.

Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty Images

When prosecutors announced the plea deal late last week of Shamoon Rafiq, who ran a $10 million scheme that duped investors into buying into pre-IPO tech companies like Airbnb, they said the defendant was masquerading as a representative of a prominent family office.

The family office is not named in the complaint, but details from court filings and online records match those of Man Capital, the family office of the Mansour family. Man Capital was started in 2010 by billionaire Mohamed Mansour, one of three brothers behind Egypt’s second largest company, and his son, Loutfy Mansour.

Rafiq had no connection to Man Capital or parent company Mansour Group. The conglomerate was founded in 1952 as a cotton exporter and has since grown to become one of the world’s biggest General Motors dealers and a major Caterpillar distributor.

A spokesman for Man Capital declined to comment to CNBC, as did the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting Rafiq.

Rafiq, 50, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. He faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison.

The U.S. attorney’s office said Rafiq, who was previously convicted in 2001 of a similar crime, ran a “brazen scheme” from Singapore in 2020, defrauding U.S. investors at a time when tech IPOs were hitting the market at record levels and peak valuations.

In the summer of that year, Rafiq allegedly created created fake domain names and email addresses masquerading as a senior executive at the family office.

Mohamed Mansour, president of Mansour Group, poses for a photograph following a Bloomberg Television interview in London, U.K., on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.

Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Prosecutors say Rafiq pretended to be a close associate of the CEO of the family office, who was described as Victim-1, and impersonated another family office executive, identified as Victim-2.

CNBC was able to identify Man Capital as the unnamed family office through a series of details in the prosecutor’s complaint, including partial domain names and website details that exactly matched Man’s online presence.

Loutfy Mansour’s title and tenure also match the title and tenure of the unidentified Victim-1 in the complaint. The Mansour family publicly launched its family office in 2020, and disclosed its stakes in Airbnb and other technology companies.

Rafiq began methodically pitching boutique investment banks and institutional investors in 2020, a year that featured blockbuster IPOs from tech companies including Snowflake, Unity Software and DoorDash, in addition to Airbnb. Rafiq was claiming he had access to shares of pre-IPO companies, a potentially lucrative opportunity given how much stocks could pop when they hit the public market.

In July 2020, an unnamed boutique investment bank in New York was introduced to Rafiq through another business associate of a partner at the bank. Rafiq purported to be a close friend of the family office’s CEO, and was offering to sell $9 million worth of Airbnb Series C shares. The shares didn’t exist.

Airbnb had announced plans to go public in 2019, but the Covid pandemic delayed its debut. Shortly after Rafiq first spoke with the investment bank, in August 2020, reports surfaced of Airbnb’s plan to confidentially file for an IPO. Four days after those reports, the unnamed investment bank agreed to buy the fictitious shares and wired $9 million to an escrow account.

Airbnb ultimately held its IPO in December and saw its stock rocket 112% in its opening day.

Prosecutors first announced charges of securities fraud, wire fraud and identity theft against Rafiq in 2021. He’d committed almost the same crime two decades earlier, when he was convicted for trying to sell pre-IPO shares of Google.

Inner City Press, a news outlet that covers the Southern District of New York, first reported that Rafiq had been detained in January, following his extradition from Singapore.

“Shamoon Rafiq exploited investors’ fear of missing out on the potential gains to be earned from investing in companies before they go public, and solicited millions of dollars from investors through brazen lies and deception,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement at the time of the 2021 charge.

The bank froze the $9 million in escrow funds and contacted the unnamed family office through a “trusted intermediary,” according to prosecutors. The family office’s legal counsel reported the scheme to law enforcement shortly after it was informed, according to the complaint.

WATCH: Reddit going public will ‘force their hand’ to learn to be profitable

Reddit going public will 'force their hand' to learn to be profitable, says tastylive's Tom Sosnoff

Technology

China suspends some critical mineral export curbs to the U.S. as trade truce takes hold

Published

3 hours ago

November 10, 2025

admin

China suspends some critical mineral export curbs to the U.S. as trade truce takes hold

Crystals of gallium are seen in a laboratory at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology in Saxony, Germany on 13 September 2023.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

China has rolled back a number of restrictions on its export of critical minerals and rare earth materials to the United States, in a sign that a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies is holding.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it would suspend some export controls on critical minerals used in military hardware, semiconductors and other high-tech industries for a year.

The suspended restrictions, first imposed on Oct. 9, include limits on the export of certain rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies.

The export relaxations follow talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.

Beijing also reversed retaliatory curbs on exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other so-called super-hard materials such as synthetic diamonds and boron nitrides. Those measures, introduced in December 2024, were widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s expanded semiconductor export restrictions on China.

China classifies such materials as “dual-use items,” meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Beyond military applications, these critical minerals are used across the semiconductor industry and other high-tech sectors — sectors at the heart of U.S.-China trade tensions.

Beijing has also suspended the stricter end-user and end-use verification checks for exports of dual-use graphite to the U.S., which were imposed in December 2024 alongside the broader export ban.

China dominates global production of most critical minerals and rare earth elements and has increasingly used its export policies as leverage in trade disputes.

As part of the latest China-U.S. trade deal, the U.S. has agreed to several concessions, including lowering tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points, and suspending Trump’s heightened “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports until Nov. 10, 2026.

The U.S. will also postpone a rule announced Sept. 29 that would have blacklisted majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on its entity list.

Technology

CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

Published

6 hours ago

November 10, 2025

admin

CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on November 07, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

November is historically the best month for the S&P 500, which gains an average of 1.8% during the period, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.

A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.

“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, Tan Su Shan told CNBC.

Goldman Sachs’ CEO David Solomon also thinks choppy waters might be ahead.

“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.

After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.

— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. index were mixed Friday stateside. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up more than 0.1%, but the Nasdaq Composite closed 0.21% lower. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.55%. U.S. futures rose Sunday evening stateside.

China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.

U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.

Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.

[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.

And finally…

Fluxfactory | E+ | Getty Images

A global wealth boom is fueling a rise in family office imposters

Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.

An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.

— Lee Ying Shan