> "Josh Adler - the son of Kerry Adler, a wealthy Canadian businessman - presided over a culture of instability, resulting in high turnover of staff and errors due to "cutting corners" and hiring and firing inexperienced contractors"
> "he "bragged" about living at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Abu Dhabi, boasted about renting a villa in Bali, and showed off a newly purchased Porsche 911 and multiple speeding fines"
Ironically, many of his victims appear to be average people who have invested their personal savings (one actually remortgaging her house) in a website/app idea.
fakedang · 18m ago
> Eventually, she requested a refund through her bank and complained to the UK's Financial Ombudsman Service. A senior investigator there has provisionally recommended that the bank return $39,000 (£30,000) to Amy, according to documents seen by the BBC. She is still waiting for her bank to agree to the recommendation.
Glad that this is possible in the UK. There are a ton of folks in Dubai itself who have fallen to similar scams, but they have had no reprieve from their banks (most of which are actually all too happy to facilitate those scams).
maccard · 9m ago
I whole heartedly disagree. This guy is clearly a crook, I feel horrible for the woman but this is basic B2B contracts. Banks shouldn’t be the arbiter of B2B contract terms.
luckylion · 10m ago
How does that work? Her bank is responsible for the delivery of services she agrees on with third parties in other countries?
colesantiago · 51m ago
The best thing about tech is that technology becomes a commodity very quickly.
Now you don't need to pay huge sums of money to these consultant grifters any more as now AI tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, Bolt, Lovable and Replit can build these apps and websites for you almost for free.
I nearly signed off a six figure deal for someone to make an app for us and we instead went down the AI tools route after some evaluation and prototyping and we saved a lot of money on this to get it built.
This was very sad to read and I wish these people found these tools at all or even sooner rather than plowing their money into scammers.
eastbound · 16m ago
But tech has always been un-navigable.
Yes, many things can do rapid prototyping, especially for CRUD apps. And yes, professional programmers can go very fast with the right tech. Unfortunately in most cases, programmers use what they know, because discovering the tool that already does 99% of what you’re customer needs is already a lot of work.
So people who are out of the loop clearly won’t know about Bolt or Claude.
fakedang · 19m ago
Sorry, but these tools are far from usable for the average run-of-the-mill guy. They are specifically tailored for developers and people who can code. The people who were scammed were literally average folks, a working mum, a tarot-card reader, a truck driver....
If a scammer wants to, they can flee from all repercussions without building anything, even if all the AI tools were available to them. While Josh Adler is just one person, there are multiple such people in Dubai who've done the same to thousands of victims. Dubai is notorious for attracting those types.
> "he "bragged" about living at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Abu Dhabi, boasted about renting a villa in Bali, and showed off a newly purchased Porsche 911 and multiple speeding fines"
Ironically, many of his victims appear to be average people who have invested their personal savings (one actually remortgaging her house) in a website/app idea.
Glad that this is possible in the UK. There are a ton of folks in Dubai itself who have fallen to similar scams, but they have had no reprieve from their banks (most of which are actually all too happy to facilitate those scams).
Now you don't need to pay huge sums of money to these consultant grifters any more as now AI tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, Bolt, Lovable and Replit can build these apps and websites for you almost for free.
I nearly signed off a six figure deal for someone to make an app for us and we instead went down the AI tools route after some evaluation and prototyping and we saved a lot of money on this to get it built.
This was very sad to read and I wish these people found these tools at all or even sooner rather than plowing their money into scammers.
Yes, many things can do rapid prototyping, especially for CRUD apps. And yes, professional programmers can go very fast with the right tech. Unfortunately in most cases, programmers use what they know, because discovering the tool that already does 99% of what you’re customer needs is already a lot of work.
So people who are out of the loop clearly won’t know about Bolt or Claude.
If a scammer wants to, they can flee from all repercussions without building anything, even if all the AI tools were available to them. While Josh Adler is just one person, there are multiple such people in Dubai who've done the same to thousands of victims. Dubai is notorious for attracting those types.