Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) Has a Deeper Relationship with Kubient Fraudster Paul Roberts Than Reported

Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg has been evasive on the Kubient accusations in recent calls and releases. It turns out, David Steinberg has had a deep relationship with Kubient CEO Paul Roberts for years. Why is David Steinberg's VC firm Caivis' website still down?

Background

1) On September 16, 2024, the Department of Justice announced charges against former Kubient CEO Paul Roberts and his guilty plea in connection with an accounting fraud scheme. This "Fraudulent Revenue" was allegedly over 94% of Kubient's reported revenue for 2020 at the time of IPO, and approximately 45% of Kubient's reported revenue for all of 2020.

2) Per the DOJ counts, at the core of this accounting fraud scheme is a set of three contracts between Kubient and an unnamed "Company-1" in the digital advertising space.

3) Per Zeta Global's last 10-K from February 28, 2024, Zeta Global and members of its executive team have received subpoenas from the SEC in connection with an investigation into Kubient.

Now, Zeta Global claims they had an immaterial relationship with Kubient. While it may be true that this relationship was fairly insignificant in terms of Zeta Global's total revenue, it's clear that Zeta Global was a customer of Kubient.

The Caivis Connection: Why all the Cloak-and-Dagger?

Currently, the website for the venture capital firm Caivis which is run by Zeta Global Co-Founders David Steinberg and John Sculley has its content removed and taken down in the past few weeks.

As of December 4, 2024 the site still has all of its content removed.

As I noted last week, this Caivis site has been down lately, even as CEO David Steinberg has appeared on CNBC, introduced as the founder of this Caivis VC investment firm. Further, as I noted, everyone involved at Caivis is on the Board of Zeta Global, which can be seen when looking through the history of the Caivis website on the Wayback Machine.

The whole Caivis Board is just the Zeta Global co-founders and Board members.

So what does Caivis (which is just Zeta Global leadership) not want people to see? Why is their site taken down?

Using the Wayback Machine, we can see that as recently as this year, 2024, one of the investments made by Caivis on their site is this "CenterPoint Media" company.

Who was getting money from Caivis (Zeta Global's leadership) in the early 2010's to run various companies that do business with Zeta Global? Who was running CenterPoint Media, getting bankrolled by Zeta Global leadership?

That's easy, Paul Roberts was running CenterPoint Media - the same Paul Roberts who has now plead guilty to running a fraudulent accounting scheme.

You can see below an interview from CenterPoint Media CEO and Founder Paul Roberts from 2017 when he was running CenterPoint Media, bankrolled by Zeta Global co-founders David Steinberg and John Sculley

Or you can look at his X account, which includes a link to CenterPoint Media.

It's clearly the same guy, the same Paul Roberts from Kubient.

Conclusion

If Zeta Global is running a clean operation, why is there so much cloak-and-dagger going on with taking websites down?

Why is the Caivis website not operational and what is the true nature of the involvement of Zeta Global co-founders David Steinberg and John Sculley with fraudster Paul Roberts?

I believe Zeta Global management has continuously lied to investors about the nature of their revenue, the nature of how they and partner organization run "consent farms" to harvest opt-ins from citizens, and the nature of their longstanding relationship with fraudster Paul Roberts which goes back to before Kubient was even started.

I maintain that Zeta Global is a Strong Sell long-term and that there are much better growth opportunities in the data and analytics space.

After all, if they've flipped Paul Roberts with a guilty plea, the DOJ and SEC are likely after bigger fish.

Other Materials:

1. On October 11, I discussed how Zeta Global uses low-quality political blogs and election prediction market PredictIt for comments section data collection through the Disqus product and why Zeta Global’s ‘Zeta 2025 Plan’ aligns Zeta equity value to coincide with the 2024 US election cycle.
2. On October 15, I discussed how Zeta Global leaked the data of ~15,000 Zeta customers and prospects by failing to secure customer data and leaving it exposed on the open, public internet. We went over how we can use Zeta’s leaked data to proxy which customers are among Zeta’s largest.
3. On October 18, Barclays downgraded ZETA, moving the stock rating from Overweight to Equal weight with a price target of $28.00.
4. On October 21, I discussed how Zeta Global runs a comically ridiculous business called “Aptroid” and has filled Aptroid’s website with fraudulent marketing claims. We also went over how there is almost nothing at all to Zeta Global’s “AI” story and how Zeta is using Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) for a white label in addition to reselling Snowflake, thus “double dipping” on customers.
5. On October 25, I covered how Zeta Global has been manipulating revenue guidance through creative wordsmithing in order to dupe investors into believing certain election revenue is not cyclical, thus giving a rosier picture of sustainable revenue growth.
6. On November 22, I dove into some of the false claims Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg and CFO Chris Greiner have made in the past two weeks on their cover-your-a** tour after ZETA has tanked.
7. On November 25, I dove into how Zeta Global uses robocalling/SMS spam, consent farming, and fake job opportunities and sweepstakes to harvest consumer data used to build their identity graph. Zeta Global is merely a lead list generator - a far cry from their claims of being an "AI" play.
8. On November 29, I wrote about how Zeta Global CEO David Steinberg is actively lying on CNBC about the nature of "consent farms" within the Zeta Global network, including a case of a Caivis investment in pharmacy discount benefit cards used to harvest prescription data tied to email addresses and other identifiers from US citizens.

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This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. Lauren Balik does not represent the interests of any fund or of any investor other than herself. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This content speaks only as of the date published. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.