Federal officials in Minnesota have charged the onetime head of a software development company with defrauding investors and financial institutions out of more than $10 million.
Aditya Raj Sharma, 50, was indicted this week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on four counts of wire fraud and two counts of bank fraud in connection with a financial scam that ran from 2017 to 2019. The company, Crosscode Inc., filed for bankruptcy in 2020.
Sharma appeared in court Thursday, posted a personal recognizance bond and is due back in court on Feb. 23. His attorney on Friday declined to comment about the allegations.
According to court records:
Sharma was the founder in 2015 of Crosscode, a one-person, cloud-based software development company headquartered first in Maple Grove and later in Foster City, Calif.
From 2017 through at least 2019, Sharma falsely inflated financial records to induce private investors and financial entities to extend capital in order to avoid or delay financial hardship for his business, which was mired in debt with no incoming revenue or cash on hand.
Sharma fraudulently applied for hundreds of thousands in funding from multiple lenders and finance companies.
In total, he persuaded at least one financial institution to provide a $950,000 line of credit and further induced at least 150 investors, including Minnesotans, to provide roughly $9.25 million to Crosscode.