The claim
The pre-IPO pitch is not a scam by construction, and it is worth stating that plainly before anything else.
Private companies really do stay private longer than they used to. Ordinary investors really are locked out of the part of the growth curve that used to happen on public markets. A platform that pools retail money to buy secondary shares in late-stage private companies is a real financial product answering a real complaint, and there is no structural reason it cannot be run honestly.
The claim under examination is narrower. It is the pricing claim: that a customer buying private shares through the platform was buying at something that could reasonably be called a market price.
That claim is load-bearing in a way most passive-income claims are not. On a public exchange you can check. The pitch here depends on the absence of that check, because the whole premise is access to securities that, in DOJ’s words, “did not have readily identifiable prices.” When nobody can look up the price, the price is whatever the platform says it is, and the customer’s only protection is the platform’s honesty.
The evidence
Every figure below is an allegation from the government’s 2 September release unless explicitly marked otherwise. The release itself ends with the sentence that governs this whole section: “The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”
Alleged, and untried. DOJ says Sarris “abused his informational advantage over his customers: he manufactured false scarcity to drive up prices, he manipulated Linqto’s pricing model to maximize revenue while telling customers that they were buying at ‘market’ prices, and he pushed markups far beyond what his own lawyers repeatedly warned him was lawful.”
Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley put the scale of the markups on the record: the defendants “allegedly lied about what the ‘market’ price was, fabricated scarcity to inflate prices, and imposed staggering markups that in some cases exceeded 200%.”
The release also alleges a motive and a specific act. On motive: Sarris “had a sizeable stake in Linqto and was hunting for a way to cash out,” and “the markup scheme made it appear that Linqto was a successful and growing company, which was crucial to SARRIS’s ability to sell his equity position.” On the act: when the company’s finances came under pressure in January 2025, “to help meet the company’s revenue targets, SARRIS sold shares allocated to customers’ holdings, without telling his customers.”
| Alleged figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Drawn in by the markup scheme | over $450,000,000 |
| Customers | more than 13,000 |
| Markups, in some cases | exceeded 200% |
| Period of the alleged scheme | 2020 through 2025 |
| Counts charged against Sarris | 6 |
Established. Linqto collapsed into bankruptcy by mid-2025, which the release states as fact rather than allegation. And Endoso pleaded guilty on 27 August 2026 to four counts: one count of securities fraud, one count of broker-dealer fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and broker-dealer fraud, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to conduct unregistered investment company transactions.
Exhibit — counts, and what each one's status actually is
The two count-sets overlap almost entirely. Both men face the same securities fraud, broker-dealer fraud and both conspiracy counts. Sarris is charged with one additional securities fraud count and one wire fraud count that do not appear in Endoso’s plea.
That overlap is the whole point. The same conduct, described in the same paragraphs of the same document, is proven as to one man and merely alleged as to the other.
Exhibit — what the release establishes against what it alleges
What the evidence supports and does not
It supports this: the government has charged a specific person with a specific pricing scheme, has put a scale on it, and has already obtained a guilty plea from his second-in-command on overlapping counts. A cooperating co-defendant who has pleaded guilty is a materially stronger position for a prosecutor than an indictment alone. That is a fact about the case’s posture, not about its merits.
It does not support saying Sarris did any of it. Not one of the six counts has been tried. He has not answered the indictment in any way reported here, no court has ruled, and DOJ says in its own release that he is presumed innocent. “The indictment alleges markups exceeding 200%” and “Linqto charged markups exceeding 200%” are different sentences, and only the first one is available.
It does not support a loss figure. Over $450 million is what DOJ alleges the scheme drew in, which is a gross intake figure, not customer losses and not a restitution number. Customers who bought shares still hold whatever those shares are worth, and the bankruptcy will determine much of what that means. No restitution figure exists yet, because there is no judgment yet.
It does not support treating Endoso’s plea as proof of Sarris’s guilt. A guilty plea establishes the pleading defendant’s own conduct on the counts pleaded. It is evidence a prosecutor will use, and it is not an adjudication of anybody else.
And it does not tell you how the pricing worked. The release describes manipulation of a pricing model in general terms. The mechanism sits in the indictment and in whatever record a trial produces, and this file has not read the indictment itself.
Cause of death
The specific mechanism alleged here is worth naming precisely, because it generalises well past this one platform.
Linqto’s product was access to prices that could not be checked. That is not incidental to the pitch, it is the pitch. The reason a retail investor cannot already buy these shares is the same reason they cannot verify what they cost. Every protection an exchange provides against being overcharged comes from other people being able to see the same price at the same time.
Take that away and one sentence carries the entire relationship: we are selling you this at market. DOJ alleges that sentence was false, by margins that in some cases exceeded 200%, for five years, across more than 13,000 customers.
That is what to notice on the next pre-IPO pitch, and on the next tokenised-private-equity pitch after that. Not whether the companies in the portfolio are real, because they usually are. Whether there is any way at all for you to find out what you paid over the going rate, from someone who is not the person selling to you.
What would change this verdict
A jury verdict, an acquittal, or a guilty plea from Sarris would move this from OPEN to something definite. Any of the three would settle facts that are currently accusations.
The indictment itself would sharpen the mechanism. It is the document that describes how the pricing model was allegedly manipulated, and this autopsy is written from the press release, not from the charging instrument.
Endoso’s sentencing, and anything in his allocution, would establish more about the scheme’s operation as a matter of record rather than allegation.
And the bankruptcy docket would answer the question customers actually care about, which is not the $450 million intake figure but what a claim in that estate is ultimately worth. That number does not exist yet either, and this file will not guess at it.
Stamped OPEN. Not because the allegations look weak, but because untried is untried, and the day this file starts writing indictments as findings is the day it stops being worth reading.