Saygus Founder Finally Sentenced to Jail for Fraud, But He Also Did More Fraud

Long-time readers of the site know about a company named Saygus, as its story led us through a period of crowd-funded phones that were scams on another level. Saygus happened to be one of those we shared several updates on, because the phone first arrived at CES in front of a bunch of press who were weirdly into the idea of it, even if it was plainly obvious that everyone should have been skeptical. We certainly were.

We haven’t talked about Saygus in almost 3 years because not much has happened since its founder, Chad Sayers, was being charged with fraud by the Department of Justice after convincing hundreds of people to invest millions in Saygus, only to then use the money to run a “Ponzi-like” scheme and spend the money on personal items, like a BMW. The charges brought us to what we thought was the end of the Saygus story and of Chad Sayers.

As it turns out, he had more crimes to commit! On top of that, his Saygus trial only now completed.

Today, the Department of Justice finished up with Sayers in court on those charges we talked about from 3 years ago. He was sentenced to 29 months imprisonment, with 12 months of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $10,250,834.53 in restitution. That’s the Saygus-related news here, which is wild to think we’re only now wrapping up his fraud case from 2021.

However, we missed the fact that Sayers was sentenced to 41 months in prison earlier this year because he wanted to do the crime thing while he was awaiting the trial we just talked about to finish up. Let me explain.

While on pretrial release for the Saygus fraud charges, Sayers was ordered to “not be employed in any fiduciary capacity and not seek any investments or conduct any fundraisers.” But our boy, Chad, couldn’t help himself. In 2022, Sayers sent an email to someone in the Philippines who he was hoping would help him connect with business owners and investors. Why? Well, because Sayers had a company called SMART’R that he wanted to pitch at them.

This SMART’R company was apparently setup with fabricated financial projections, a fabricated team of executives, and fabricated accolades, as well as lies about partnerships with Google, Qualcomm, Redstone, Sony, and Toshiba that might help him raise money. He also concealed his 2021 indictment when talking with these investors for the new company. This was not a smart move by Chad as he awaited trial.

As it turns out, his SMART’R situation gained him two counts of wire fraud and one count of contempt for his conduct while out on pre-trial release. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison for this whole ordeal.

So, with today’s sentencing from the 2021 Saygus deal, Sayers “was sentenced to 29 months’ imprisonment, 15 of which were ordered to run consecutively to his existing sentence of 41 months’ imprisonment, which was imposed in a separate wire fraud case, for a total of 56 months.”

This should be the end of the Saygus story, once and for all. Right? We’ll see.

Cheers Ben!