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Lokesh Choudhary · · 12 min readMore cracks appear in Vizzio CEO’s claims
Collin Furtado, Terence Lee, and Candice Lee also reported on this story.
“After today, it will be a relief for me. I have no more secrets to hide,” said Jon Lee, founder and CEO of Vizzio Technologies, in an interview with Tech in Asia on January 12. He had admitted to us in that meeting that he lied about having a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.
Since then, we have continued to uncover inconsistencies in his claims and those made by the company.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
For starters, in the same interview, he denied that he sent a forged Ph.D. certificate to one of his investors. But in a follow-up meeting with us on January 22, he said, “I sent it to them. Sorry. Yes, it is my fault.”
Besides this, Tech in Asia spotted several videos on Vizzio’s channels featuring work plagiarized from other sources. We also found disparities in Lee’s claims about the number of patents linked to him.
Meanwhile, some companies listed on Vizzio’s website as clients have denied that they are customers. We also found that Lee gave us an inflated revenue figure for Elipva, where he had been the CTO in 2000.
Regarding the videos, Lee either blamed ex-employees or said he bought the assets that were supposedly lifted. On Vizzio’s customers, he admitted that he included companies that Vizzio had done paid and unpaid proof-of-concept work for on the list on its website. He also denied exaggerating Elipva’s revenue.
After we brought our findings to Lee and Vizzio, the company announced on January 26 that it had appointed an interim chief executive – a sign that Lee has stepped down as CEO.
Patents pending
In an interview with a Chinese media outlet that was posted online in 2020 and has since been removed, Lee claimed to have filed over 400 patents.
However, Vizzio mentioned having 512 patents “filed and awarded to date for a two-year-old startup” in its now-deleted page on GitBook – a collaborative platform for sharing knowledge. The page was last modified in 2021, as per its metadata.
But in one of Lee’s LinkedIn posts from a year ago, he mentioned that over 612 patents were submitted. The company, however, had this edited and told us that “it was a typo.”
Plagiarized videos
Dwindling list of customers
Inconsistent claims in China
Real tech despite false claims?
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After Vizzio founder’s fake Ph.D., Tech in Asia unearths more inconsistencies involving patent claims, plagiarized videos, and customer lists.
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