Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley

This academic paper analyzes entrepreneurial fraud in Silicon Valley (2000–2023), introducing a theoretical framework called "façading" to describe how entrepreneurs construct, perform, and protect deceptive appearances that mask underperforming ventures; it identifies three façading types (surface, reinforced, deep) tied to expectation-reality gaps and recommends regulatory, due-diligence, and educational measures to deter and detect criminal deception.