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Hucksters.net

Hucksters.net
Exposing spam, fraud, corruption, censorship, and propaganda

Journey Venture Partners

The following (verified) people have been significantly associated with this entity, either as a participant, contributor, promoter, or beneficiary, according to our OSINT research:

  • Vijay Kumar Bhagal (Fraudster)
  • Nihar Patel (Fraudster, Imposter)
  • “Andrew” Ryan Rafols (Conman, Fraudster, Spammer)
  • Reviews:

    Anthony hired Vijay on Upwork to do his SEO spamming for him... he's now posted on Hucksters using fake names like "Pietro Comito" demanding that I email him about some secret information he has lol Vijay is also spamming Pinterest (they deleted it), Reddit, and other web forums desperately trying to post junk links everywhere to improve Garibay Ventures reputation, which of course is impossible, since Anthony is spammer and imposter who is now permanently exposed you shouldn't have gotten in bed with the conman Ryan Rafols, Anthony Vijay, bad idea getting involved too, don't throw your reputation away for these scam artists for just $8/hour Update: Vijay is now submitting fraudulent takedown notices to Google India for pages on Hucksters.net on behalf of Newchip and Garibay... bad decision mate Read More

    How did Nihar go from freelance blog post writer in 2018 to "Chief Investment Officer" in 2019 for Astralabs ala Newchip? "Journey Venture Partners" which Nihar founded, claims to be a venture capital firm just like Newchip has in the past, and just like Garibay Ventures does... but none of these scam artists has any cash to their names! It's all just leading back to Ryan Rafols, who falsely claims to have founded and sold 4x companies (the real number is zero) avoid Newchip and Astralabs and Journey Ventures, do not pay for their courses, and do not respond to their illegal email spam! Read More

    Nope thats another lie. My name legally is Andrew Ryan feel free look it up in court records. Ryan “Andrew” Rafols was the name I was born with but I dropped my fathers last name years legally in a name change https://www.linkedin.com/posts/newchip_my-full-name-is-ryan-andrew-rafols-and-for-activity-6744646112491257856-0zkD?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=ios_app Read More

    “What types of comments (reviews) do you allow or disallow? We only allow comments to be posted under your real name… if we determine a comment was posted using a fake name or aliases it will be deleted.” Jesse Nickles own rules from: https://hucksters.net/faq Except** when Jesse post fake comments himself under “anonymous” to push up his own fake slander campaign and high five himself. Thats your style of writing and grammar Jesse! At least edit it to seem like its somebody else Jesse. Thats all that has to be said really about his credibility in these lie/slander campaigns and blog post. And we need an official government audit? We do public audits every year… as YOU know as its available on the SEC’s website you linked on this page. Jess takes anything and tries to twist it into lies. He’d likely cite my own birth certificate entry in a post about being an illegal alien… Read More

    To the owner of Hucksters.net: THANK YOU. You are 100% on target exposing Newchip and its leading con artist Ryan Rafols. It's hilarious how he changed his name to “Andrew Ryan” and even got himself a new hairdo. We think it's because most of the Austin startup and business community already know of Ryan's awful reputation. As a result, he can't raise a dime from any legit investor. The silly disguise won't fool anyone smart enough to make one phone call. Everything compiled and published here on this website is accurate as far as we former Newchip employees know. Newchip continues to mass spam for lead generation and their turnover rate among employees remains appalling. Everything about the toxic culture has stayed the same, if it hasn't gotten worse. A few extra details worth highlighting: Ryan is not an accredited investor and will never be one. Many of us former Newchip employees believe we couldn’t get the company registered as an investment broker because of Ryan’s shady past. In fact, if there is an official government audit into Newchip’s finances, the whole house of cards will collapse and Ryan will most likely go to jail. We strongly encourage the SEC, FTC, and all other government authorities to investigate and put an end Ryan's fraud to once and for all. To Ryan Rafols, "Andrew Ryan," or whatever you're name is now and you happen to read this: You are a FRAUD. Everyone who's worked and interacted with you know you a fraud. Though you'll never admit it, we think you know it too. Read More

    I wrote up a thorough write-up here exposing Jesse, and instead of following "transparency" and free speech principles by posting it as he says everyone can post, it was not approved to post, and instead, Jesse decided to doxx where my little sister and parents' house is and my ex-girlfriend from high school's address. This is the kind of person he is. Read More

    I'm actually not pissed. Jesse Nickles is a nobody and I don't say that lightly, he just doesn't exist relevance wise, nor is he relevant to the progress of humanity even though this site is built on a mission to change the world one hate post at a time, the fact that he spends all of his time and hard-earned money he scams from people to attack me and Barack Obama and Hillary and Jimmy Fallon and everyone else on his Top 100 list online is just sad. He creates "brand profiles" with SEO on them so he can post all of his comments but not where the company can respond, I have to respond on my personal conman profile he made, it's his fiefdom of hate but let's find something positive in it shall we? We just don't think being called doushebags, con-men, bitches, or any of the other terms Jesse likes to throw around are professionally appropriate for someone who has never even interacted with us and just got an email from someone once and we won't go for low blows. Positive wise, it's a blessing for these companies and a reminder to every growing company that they need to invest in SEO. We've always just trusted in organic SEO, but his campaigns have shown us how important it is to manage your brand presence online so a troll with upworkers in India doesn't affect your company negatively (the loudest people are often heard the most even though they don't reflect the will of the masses). So I'm dedicating a whole part of our program curriculum to him under troll management to our startups (not even kidding this is important education and I would even bring him in to teach it if I had a muzzle big enough). To his message, as usual in his MO to lie and try to manipulate (trust me we're all for free speech but fake speech and fake reviews lose all credibility), Jesse says above "the guys at Ycombinator" to try to make it feel "like the actual leadership at Ycombinator" vs. just a random web developer and a game developer that posted years ago on HackerNews asking a question - that's just his MO and if it weren't I'd respect this site more, to be honest, now he'll probably go and edit it after this to change otherwise but leaving mine the same. You see, HackerNews is a forum owned by Ycbombinator, and the above developers were asking about us as we were new back then years ago and they said they didn't agree with the model of tuition and thought tuition is a scam - and yes many tuition programs are even, in my opinion, are not good returns on investment because they are incubators, NOT accelerators (incubators help you with the idea, accelerators help you grow your company and get funding once you HAVE traction - big difference), not scams but definitely not always the best ROI. And given we had just launched and nobody knew who we were (as is common for newer accelerators then like us compared to the likes of Tech Stars or Ycombinator), we don't fault those developers either, nor will we go online and slander and attack them because they disagree with us - the antithesis of free speech is trying to bully people for their speech or harm them for it - that is their free speech and their opinion years ago - I don't know if it's changed nor do I care, we've grown to 80+ countries and helped so many entrepreneurs it matters not what some random person on the internet thinks. And to be honest, posts like the above make up 90% of the handful of anonymous postings online by people who don't agree with the tuition model vs. actual companies we've worked with- it's not for everyone- that is a fact, and that is part of why we built a guarantee into our programs. Not every startup can get into our accelerator nor do they have the traction either to do so, but if you went to Wharton and can call your friends for $1M or work at Facebook or have already built a successful startup you also don't need an accelerator even if you have the traction - no need to apply if you have access to the capital you don't need us. There's always someone successful that got funding from their parents that will say accelerator isn't necessary as well (whether its Bezos or unicorn founders or Trump), but the 99.9% of people that don't have deep pockets, their alumni network, or parents to call, a tuition-based program built on a SaaS type model is a good investment. See, we take refundable tuition up-front in a SaaS-type model (we call it accelerator as a service) of upfront or optional monthly payments plus an option to invest in your company at the terms we all agree upon BEFORE you join. It's unique and our vision has always been to level the playing field for the 99.9% of startups that don't get into Ycombinator and other top accelerators (just to note about 1/10~ of our startups actually are in YC + Newchip and about 2/10~ are in another major accelerator) and yes over 1M startups launch yearly and 99% of those fail largely because they are locked out of the top tier networks of investors, mentors, and startup hub access. To be clear, we end up refunding about maybe 10% of companies that we bust our ass to help that just don't make it for whatever reason (usually it's a market shift change or the deal falls through at the end and we often help that founder in their next startup too). Our model is to invest in the best companies and our warrant options to invest cover us long-term loss-wise - yes that is right we don't profit from this, it's a money-losing model by design. No Mazaratis over here (there are a few actual conmen on his list btw, and MANY missing). You just cannot offer everything we offer including hundreds of thousands in software credits and mentorship and investors for a few hundred bucks per month. Next, Jesse points to an anonymous Reddit post that he is a major contributor to (as he is all of them now), to say "LOOK HERE, OTHER PEOPLE!!!. Second to people that don't agree, there is always going to be a founder here or there we kick out that isn't happy with our accelerators or a founder that went out of biz because of a poor decision on their part that is upset that we couldn't help them raise a round when they blew all their money on XYZ instead of revenue and our investors didn't want to invest (we kick out maybe 5%~ of every cohort so 25 of 250). However, having worked with thousands of startups, the handful of people that write negatively (vs. 100x more that do love us) fit one of the two buckets above, and comparatively, that's a very low percent of actual companies that we work with. I just kicked out an election software company that on the front end seemed to be top-notch and made it past admissions. However, we discovered after diligence they were deep state Trump company ie "overturn the election" crowd, not to mention that the founder was upset at a female staff member's female-splaining to him and said "back in the day they'd take her behind the shed and handle her"- they were as you imagine swiftly handled themselves and refunded even, but the narrative online is we're SCAM SCAM SCAM on the review side. This is not a common behavior but 5% of "bad" founders is actually a godsend compared to what we're told other accelerators deal with. You see, the world is full of crazies and nobody is crazier than someone who thinks they can change the world and make it better or solve a major problem. To risk it all, literally, everything you have and your family oftentimes is always on the border of crazy and stupid, so there are going to be some bad eggs. Everyone sees them, not just us. We just kick them out aggressively (and we're upfront about it from day one)- don't be an asshole, disrespectful, racist, sexist, etc (honestly too don't seem like they'd be hard rules to follow). It's even more apparent when you work internationally and the cultures are definitely at odds sometimes. I'm not going to call out specific countries but some founders from some countries have issues meeting with female investors for example, and you wouldn't think it given how progressive the world has become till you see it. Why do we still work internationally then? We're building the next generation of startup CEO's, not everyone had the privilege of growing up in America or Palo Alto for that matter and when we can coach, we coach, when we can't we kick out- its that simple, its not fun but we put in the effort even when it means tough conversations with people who don't agree. Lastly, on the timing side, Jesse has had it out for Anthony for at least a year as far as I know and we can't tell the difference between his anonymous fake post vs. any other anonymous post as they tend to copy the same formula - what I can say is that when we identify an actual individual we always manage to contact them through whatever system and resolve whatever issue they have if it's legitimate. Otherwise, if it's just someone we kicked out we could sue them or build a site to trash them, but why sue someone or try to hurt them just because? We put our effort into our companies and let the rest sort itself out the world handles assholes, they usually end up on Upwork running one-man consultant shops selling some service that they outsource to India for $10 an hour and charge $200 an hour for. That's capitalism too, not hating, that's just what happens to people who burn every bridge in their lives typically. In terms of diligence, we're all for people doing diligence into any program they join before signing on and we recommend anyone looking into applying for our programs to check out our startups and online but also be cognizant of your traction(how much revenue you've made) and professional funding requirements (ie how much you've raised from investors already) so that you don't waste time applying and being denied (the third bucket of upset reviews of people not being admitted and angry because they didn't get accepted). Check out our portfolio of startups here and on youtube and Facebook and linked: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8819086 and online or meet some of our mentors on Linkedin (we have hundreds on there). We don't deny that we work with Anthony and he has brought us into some amazing startups, how he finds startups is his prerogative, and I'm still annoyed that his email brought Jesse into my life but it has taught me a lesson. Anthony is an Angel Investor and has invested in several of our startups. I don't have an exact count nor will I post them as I don't want them to be harassed either as we've gotten to that point. We are all 100% transparent that we don't invest in every deal nor does Anthony or any of our investors, VCs, or Ambassadors guarantee investment in every deal. We work with over 1,000 startups per year and our 3,000+ investors and VC network make up the bulk of our investments, we're small fries and we co-invest and Anthony personally invests in a number but not every single one too - thats how investing works, not every fund is a billion-dollar fund but we makeup for that in a large investor community globally. And we do guarantee our programs that meet our requirements and that complete the accelerator receive a number of intros to investors based on their stage and a term sheet, or their tuition is free and we're proud to be the only company in the ENTIRE industry that offers that model; while it is new, it is not a scam nor would thousands of investors and major corporate enterprises would work with us if it was. Read More

    Several weeks ago, in October 2021, I exposed Anthony Garibay and his fake "Garibay Ventures" brand for illegally spamming the shit out of thousands of companies and startups around the world with email lists he purchases. Anthony later impersonated Ryan Rafols to threaten me, and Ryan personally contacted me via email claiming that it wasn't him, that Anthony had impersonated him and that Anthony was breaking the "rules" for their affiliate marketing program... Fast forward 4 months, and Anthony is still spamming the fuck out of people on behalf of Newchip (he was never banned from their marketing program despite Ryan's comments), and he has filed several desperate takedown requests with Google to hide these pages from search results. Ryan is a liar who pays harassers like Anthony to ilegally spam massive numbers of people on behalf of Newchip Accelerator Update August 2022: After months of Ryan commenting on Hucksters and Reddit, and Anthony Garibay submitting tons of fraudulent takedown complaints to Google trying to hide their scam that we exposed, Ryan is now also submitting takedown requests to Google: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/28558356 Read More

    *The vast majority of people listed in this database are just “normal” business people, therefore no negative connotation is insinuated nor should misdeeds be assumed based on existing in our business directory. Our underlying goal is exposing misdeeds and fraud, but to accomplish this we often must first identity “honest” business people. This is because of things like similar names, impersonation, copyright infringement, and other reasons. Thus, the vast majority of people in our database are not being accused of anything shady. For this reason, profiles are now “noindexed” by default until comments exist on any given profile, since many of them are unnotable.

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