She raised $27 million for Joonko. Now Ilit Raz faces up to 20 years in prison
The Joonko founder pleaded guilty to securities fraud after prosecutors said she misrepresented the startup’s customers and revenue and fabricated bank statements and purchase orders to secure investments from investors.
Ilit Raz, the Israeli founder of Joonko, has pleaded guilty to securities fraud, admitting her role in a scheme to mislead investors about some of the most basic facts about the startup she founded, including who its customers were and how much revenue it generated.
The guilty plea marks the latest and most consequential turn in the collapse of Joonko, once presented as an artificial intelligence company that could help employers recruit candidates from diverse backgrounds. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Raz used false claims and fabricated documents to persuade investors to put approximately $27 million into the company.
Raz, 40, pleaded guilty to securities fraud, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Any sentence will ultimately be determined by the court.
The case brings a criminal conclusion to a scandal that began to unravel in 2023, when an investor questioned Joonko’s performance and asked the company for financial information. The investigation that followed exposed a business whose reported customers and financial performance, according to prosecutors, were substantially different from what Raz had represented to investors.
The central allegations concern representations Raz made during Joonko’s fundraising.
According to prosecutors, Raz falsely told prospective and existing investors that Joonko had a much larger customer base than it actually did and claimed that some of the world’s largest companies were among its customers.
Those companies included a credit card company, a sports apparel brand, an online travel company and a luxury fashion brand. Prosecutors said none of those companies had actually been Joonko customers.
Raz also allegedly made false statements about the company’s actual revenue and its anticipated future revenue.
Those representations came as Joonko was raising substantial sums from investors. In June 2021, several investors, including venture capital firms, invested approximately $10 million in a Series A round. A year later, in June 2022, investors put another approximately $17 million into a Series B.
Together, the two rounds accounted for the $27 million that prosecutors say Raz obtained through the scheme.
The allegations became particularly stark when one investor began asking for evidence of Joonko’s financial position.
In 2023, Investor-1 became suspicious about the company’s performance and requested information including bank statements.
On April 3, Raz allegedly responded by emailing a purported Joonko bank statement showing an average account balance of more than $5 million. Prosecutors say the statement was forged and that the company’s actual bank records showed an account balance millions of dollars lower.
Less than a week later, on April 8, Raz allegedly sent the investor a collection of purported customer purchase orders.
According to prosecutors, many of those documents were fictitious. They allegedly contained forged signatures and were executed on behalf of companies that had no business relationship with Joonko.
As previously reported by CTech, Raz had presented Joonko as a rapidly growing company with more than 100 corporate clients and a million-dollar revenue run rate. By the summer of 2023, an investor confronted her over inconsistencies in the company’s performance. Raz ultimately admitted to fabricating data, according to the earlier proceedings.
She was ousted, employees resigned and Joonko shut down its operations. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024 after raising nearly $30 million between 2019 and 2022.
The criminal case was not the only legal consequence. In June 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Raz with defrauding investors of at least $21 million. The SEC case alleged inflated revenue figures, fake customer testimonials, forged bank statements and claims about a large database of job seekers that did not exist.
The bankruptcy process produced its own legal battle. In June 2025, a Delaware bankruptcy judge approved a $500,000 settlement between Joonko and Raz. Under the agreement, the company agreed to pay Raz $500,000 in exchange for resolving outstanding disputes, including a $1.77 million claim she had made for legal fees. Raz also agreed to abandon claims against the company’s directors and officers insurance policies.
The company agreed to drop its lawsuit against her and provide her with non-privileged documents and emails.
That settlement, however, did not resolve the federal civil and criminal proceedings against Raz. The criminal case has now advanced with her guilty plea.
