That is exactly what I was thinking.

Elizabeth Holmes.

I think even if you are a private company, lying is still a type of fraud. And private companies still have shareholders. Just because they are not public companies doesn't mean they can just lie to their shareholders, although perhaps it is more difficult to prove?

The only area that I can think of where you can get away with lying about an industry or asset is when it comes to crypto. You can make sky high predictions and because they aren't labeled as securities there is no victim. Because they use the word decentralized there is no one responsible.