Protect yourself from fraud
When you publish your Gust profile, your Overview can be visited publicly at your company's profile URL. When you make your profile discoverable in Gust's directory of startups, your Overview is accessible to anyone browsing companies on Gust, and will be indexed by search engines. In both cases, your contact information, Executive Summary, Financials, Pitch Deck, and Documents are kept private and are only visible to investors you choose to share your full profile with - either by submitting an application to an Investor Group, sending a share request to individual investors, or by approving a "Request Access" request from an investor on Gust's platform.
Investors from Gust will never initiate contact with you from outside of the platform
Gust works with investor groups and does consultations with them before they can sign up for the platform. Once the group has been granted access to Gust, it's members can browse Gust's directory of publicly viewable Company Profiles and "Request Access" to see the full profile of companies that interest them.
Any legitimate investor that you have not applied to directly that's interested in your company will always "Request Access" from within the platform. A real Gust investor should never email you directly before connecting with you via an in-platform access request.
Unfortunately Gust is sometimes targeted by individuals acting in bad faith, impersonating investors. These individuals do not have Gust accounts and typically operate by Googling your company name to find your contact email address, and emailing you directly claiming to be an investor "from Gust.' Real investors do not contact companies in this way, and investors from Gust will always initiate a relationship by sending you a request for access to your profile.
The way the scam run by these bad actors works is after initiating contact, you will usually be asked to provide either sensitive information to confirm your identity (identity theft) or transfer money to an international account for a phony reason before the individual can "invest" (wire fraud). It is very important not to provide these individuals with ANY information about yourself or giving them any means of collecting money from you.
*To learn more about what is visible on your public profile please go here
Known aliases of fraudulent investors and bad actors
February 2023 - Marlax Capital AB
January 2023 - Wealth Capital Investments Ltd.
January 2021 - Wisawaunitedfunds dot com
June 2020 - simongabay@financier.com
June 2020 - baumier.antoine@mail.chApril 2020 - PT Asian Investment April 2020 - Thomas Hikks March 2020 - 'Jimmy Wong, Morgan Stanley' (Note: there does seem to be a legitimate Morgan Stanley employee named Jimmy Wong, but in this case someone has been imitating him to commit fraud against entrepreneurs.) March 2020 - Chatchai Kaewbootta, Srisawad Corp. PCL March 2020 - Kuhn Navaporn Santichai, Resource Link Consulting Group.
December 2019 - Vivian Lin
February 2019 - Abeam Consultings Limited
May 2018 - James Qaing
May 2018 - Stephen Motse - South Africa
January 2018 - Paul Martin - Former Prime Minister of Canada
September 2017 - Sergio Mikhailovich
September 2017- KINFAN (HK) Limited - kinfanhklimited.com
September 2017 - Wichai Thongtang(วิชัยทอง)
September 2017 - Aloke Lohia
September 2017 - Saleh Al Ghamdi
September 2017 - Boonchai Bencharongkul - dtacaccelerate@outlook.com
August 2017 - Allan Robinson robinson__allan@hotmail.com
May 2017 - Pete Bodharamik - Jasmine International
May 2017 - Sibusiso Shandu
May 2017 - MANAGEMENT & SOLUTIONS LIMITED, London, UK With Albert Jones
May 2017 - Donald Earl and Maaz Flp Holdings, Nevada
May 2017 - Tomas Martinez - tm62731@gmail.com
April 2017 - Chutinant Bhirombhakdi - Singha Estate Public Company Limited.
March 2017 - James Smithie
March 2017 - Talatex Limited is not an investor group that currently uses Gust. We have received complaints from founders who received suspicious emails referencing Gust, from people claiming to be from the company and wanting to invest.
March 2017 - " Paul Robertson" has contacted entrepreneurs and is believed to be a bad actor.
March 2017 - " Association for Project Management" Someone mimicking @apm.org.uk emails is contacting entrepreneurs on Gust and claiming they want to invest. There Association for Project Management does not use Gust and will never contact a Gust company about investment.
Feb 2017 - Someone posing as "Mr. William Heinecke of Minor International "
(Please note: The real Mr. Heinecke's office has been in touch with Gust and is working with Gust Support to combat this fraud.)
Persons or companies suspected of scraping Gust.com
Individuals that appear in the list below are suspected of scraping Gust for information about potential companies to use as leads for their business services. They are not affiliated with Gust.