Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
A young Turkish woman once paraded in Turkey and US tech circles as a promising entrepreneur has been unmasked by US prosecutors as having built her rise on a web of fraud, forged documents and fabricated success stories, according to a sweeping superseding indictment unsealed in New York that details how she allegedly deceived investors and US immigration authorities to bankroll and legalize a life in America.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say Gökçe Güven, a Turkish national and founder of the New York–based startup Kalder Inc., orchestrated a months-long scheme to inflate revenue, fabricate business traction and forge letters from senior executives in order to extract roughly $7 million from venture capital investors and secure a coveted O-1A “extraordinary ability” visa to remain in the United States indefinitely.
The 10-page superseding indictment, filed on January 29, 2026, charges Güven with securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud and aggravated identity theft, and seeks forfeiture of funds held in Kalder’s Mercury bank accounts.
Until this exposé by US prosecutors, Güven had been appearing on Turkish networks and podcasts, presenting herself s a standout student-founder who had “achieved many successes” and was held up as an inspirational figure for young entrepreneurs — especially women. In a June 2025 interview with CNBC-E, a Turkish affiliate network, she described herself as someone who combined engineering, business and product design and portrayed Kalder as a financial-technology platform that could turn brand loyalty points into a new kind of currency.
Text of the superseding indictment filed in New York against a Turkish woman on January 29, 2026:
In the same interview she confirmed that she had raised $11 million. US prosecutors, however, allege in the indictment that Güven raised about $7 million in a seed round while misleading investors about Kalder’s revenue, customer base and partnerships.
In another Turkish-language interview, she said she was born in İzmir to a family originally from Adana, spent her childhood in Adana and later moved to Istanbul for high school, describing an upbringing shaped by sports, writing and early exposure to problem-solving.
She later attended the elite Robert College in Istanbul, where she says she was introduced to coding and “social entrepreneurship” and launched her first small initiative, a youth project known as “Kızlar Sahada Akademi,” focused on organizing football camps for girls. In these accounts Güven presents her formative years in Turkey as the period in which she began to see entrepreneurship as a way to combine technology with social impact, a narrative she has repeatedly cited when explaining her decision to pursue higher education and a startup career in the United States.
In a podcast in January 2023, she introduced herself as someone who has “specialized for four to five years” in crypto and blockchain technology, framing this as her core expertise.
Güven’s public narrative emphasized a student-to-founder arc in the United States and a fast-rising profile in the tech ecosystem. Prosecutors say she used similar claims of business success not only to persuade investors but also to obtain an O-1A “extraordinary ability” visa, allegedly backed by forged executive letters submitted to immigration authorities.
According to the charging document, Güven founded Kalder in 2022 and pitched it as a “fintech-marketing platform” that would allow brands to embed real-time, card-linked rewards and cash-back programs into their websites, claiming this would boost engagement and spending. She cultivated a high-profile public image, speaking on tech panels, attending networking events and touting rapid growth to potential investors and partners.
Prosecutors note that her profile was amplified after she was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list for Marketing and Advertising in late 2024, recognition that investigators say was secured while she was already misrepresenting Kalder’s business to the magazine and to the market.
Behind the curated image, prosecutors allege, Kalder was barely generating revenue and had few, if any, paying customers. Beginning in April 2024 Güven launched a seed round targeting dozens of venture capitalists, including investors based in Manhattan. By late 2024 she had raised approximately $7 million from more than a dozen investors in exchange for equity, pushing Kalder’s implied valuation to about $35 million and valuing Güven’s majority stake at roughly $18 million. The indictment says those investments were induced by false statements, misleading claims and fabricated documents about Kalder’s revenues and brand partnerships.
Prosecutors describe a two-books system designed to conceal Kalder’s true finances. One internal set of accounts, prepared by the company’s outside accounting firm, showed minimal revenue; a second, falsified set was allegedly created and transmitted to investors with inflated figures.
In one example a financial statement sent to prospective investors claimed Kalder earned about $86,000 in April 2024; the company’s actual revenue that month was under $10,000. Another update circulated in September 2024 asserted nearly $100,000 in August revenue; internal records showed approximately $15,000. Over the full year 2023, Kalder’s actual revenue totaled around $50,000, and for 2024 roughly $140,000, figures prosecutors say bear no resemblance to the growth curves Güven marketed.
The indictment further alleges that Güven padded Kalder’s customer base in pitch decks, claiming 26 brands were “using Kalder” and 53 were in “live freemium” mode, when in reality some had only short-term pilot programs at steep discounts and others had no agreement at all.
Prosecutors say she also falsely told investors that Kalder’s annual recurring revenue had reached $1.2 million by March 2024 and continued to grow month over month, a claim flatly contradicted by internal records showing largely stagnant income.
Investigators say the same pattern of deception was repurposed to manipulate US immigration authorities. Güven had been living in the United States on a student visa since 2018. As that status neared expiration in 2025, she caused Kalder to sponsor her for an O-1A visa, reserved for individuals of “extraordinary ability” in business, science, education or athletics.
The application allegedly recycled the same inflated revenue figures and exaggerated claims of market traction used on investors, asserting, among other things, that Kalder had already generated $1.5 million in revenue.
To bolster her claim of extraordinary ability, prosecutors say Güven fabricated letters of support purportedly written by senior executives at technology and financial services firms. She allegedly created a separate email account in another person’s name, generated DocuSign signatures in the names of the executives and digitally affixed them to glowing endorsements praising her “exceptional caliber of talent” and asserting that her work was in the US national interest.
The first visa application was denied, but prosecutors say Güven reapplied with many of the same false claims and forged letters and ultimately secured an O-1A visa in the fall of 2025.
The charges carry serious criminal exposure. The securities and wire fraud counts accuse Güven of using interstate communications and the facilities of national securities exchanges to defraud investors; the visa fraud count alleges she knowingly submitted false statements under oath to immigration authorities; and the aggravated identity theft charge stems from the alleged use of other people’s identities to forge endorsements.
The indictment seeks forfeiture of proceeds traceable to the alleged crimes, including funds in Kalder’s Mercury checking and treasury accounts, and authorizes prosecutors to pursue substitute assets if the original proceeds cannot be located.
The case underscores how Silicon Valley–style hype and curated success narratives can mask fragile or fictitious business fundamentals, and how US immigration pathways for elite talent can be abused when claims of “extraordinary ability” go unscrutinized.
Federal prosecutors say the scheme ran from at least early 2024 through November 2025, spanning both the fundraising push and the visa effort, and relied on a consistent playbook: inflate numbers, invent traction and manufacture third-party validation to secure money and legal status.
In a separate filing prosecutors accused Güven and her company of using privilege claims and discovery tactics to delay the production of records sought by subpoena. The government argued there is ‘no daylight’ between Güven and Kalder, saying she is the CEO, majority owner and sole board member — ‘the defendant is Kalder,’ prosecutors wrote.
The text of the original indictment filed against Gökçe Güven on November 21, 2025:
Prosecutors reviewed more than 750,000 documents and 1.5 terabytes of data including Slack communications, bank records and materials, many of them in the Turkish language, seized from the defendant’s devices and internet accounts.
In a separate international step, prosecutors disclosed that they had sent an MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) request to Brazil seeking records from two soccer clubs that the defendant allegedly cited as paying monthly revenue to Kalder, claims investigators say were false.
According to court filings, the US government opened a criminal investigation into Güven in August 2025. According to the then-defense counsel, the investigation was triggered by a complaint from a former employee amid a pre-litigation compensation dispute. She was arrested as she returned to New York from Turkey on November 27, 2025, on a complaint charging wire fraud and securities fraud.
Two days later, on November 29, she was presented before US Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo and released on bail. A federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York returned an initial indictment on December 18, 2025, charging her with wire fraud, and she was arraigned on December 22, entering a plea of not guilty.
At the first pretrial conference on January 6, 2026, prosecutors told the court that their investigation was ongoing and that they expected to seek a superseding indictment by the end of January, which took place on January 26.
While the defense counsel pressed for a trial date in late February or early March, prosecutors urged the court to move the trial to mid-June 2026, citing the volume of evidence collected against her, which requires more time and resources including translation from Turkish to English as well.
If convicted on all counts, Güven faces potential prison time, financial penalties and forfeiture and the unravelling of a carefully staged ascent that once presented her as a breakout founder.
The superseding indictment leaves little doubt about prosecutors’ view of the case: The persona of a rising Turkish tech star, they allege, was built on falsified books, forged signatures and a narrative engineered to deceive.
