The Internet is reeling from the explosive revelation that an Indian techie has been exposed of being employed at multiple startups simultaneously. Earlier this week, a US-based founder accused Soham Parekh of deceiving a good number of companies and continuing to dupe them despite being called out for it.

With even Indian-origin tech influencers spotlighting how he is not the first one to pull of something like this and “There are 1000s of Soham Parekhs we don’t know about,” the issue has just blown out of control. The irony goes deeper than anything possibly perceived as Parekh has allegedly continued to bag numerous professional opportunities despite complaints tied to unemployment raising a storm in this economy.

As the case has undeniably sent shivers down the corporate spectrum this week, it must have got you wondering about who exactly he is.

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Who is Soham Parekh?

According to San Francisco-based Playground AI founder Suhail Doshi, Soham Parekh is someone who preys on Y Combinator companies. Taking to his X page, the senior exec issued a ‘Public Service Announcement (PSA)’ targeting the Indian techie.

“PSA: there’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He’s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware,” he wrote. Doshi affirmed that he had actually fired the person in his very first week at the time, while also urging him to “stop lying / scamming people.” However, a year later, he still hasn’t stopped duping officials.

Sharing what appears to be Parekh’s lengthy resume / CV, Doshi argued that probably 90% of the claims made in it are fake, with most links having gone missing. “I want to also say that I tried to talk sense into this guy, explain the impact and give him a chance to turn a new leaf because sometimes that’s what a person needs. But it clearly didn’t work,” the Indian-origin founder in America added.

As per the summary of Soham’s professional graph provided by the AI exec, the techie seems to have completed his MS in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022 and BE in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai in 2020.

His professional experience chart lists out remote credits like Senior Software Engineer (contract) at DynamoAI (from January 2024 onwards), Senior Fullstack Engineer at Union.ai (Jan 2023- Jan 2024), Senior Fullstack Engineer at Synthesia (Dec 2021- Dec 2022), Founding Software Engineer at Alan AI (Jan 2021 – Dec 2021), Open Source Fellow at Github (May 2020 – August 2020) and more.

Soham Parekh lied about his location?

Although no official pictures of Parekh could be pin-pointed, some American employers affected in the process posted online screenshots of virtual meetings with him in focus on social media. As someone pointed that how shocked they were to see that YC startups were hiring remote people who lived abroad, Doshi levelled another hefty accusation against Parekh. “He lies about his location. We thought we were hiring someone in the US. Even sent a laptop to a US address. Got it back! Allegedly it was sent to his ‘sister,'” the founder wrote.

Repeated job switches addressed

As also reflected in his purported resume, Parekh has swiftly switched jobs. A techie founder outed a cohesive compilation of his interview. When they asked him why he couldn’t keep a job, he is believed to have said that at Alan AI “he was the only person on the team.” Other reasons were “mentioned ‘running down runway’ and lack of revenue.” Beyond that, he didn’t provide them with any specific dates or details about what happened.

His reason for leaving Synthesia was quoted as timezone issues with Denmark. He further mentioned “wanting to start his own thing in ERP space” despite calling the his alleged old company as “one of the coolest places.”

As for his supposed time spent at Antimetal, Parekh told the interviewee that he was there for a “couple of years.” Here, too, he again cited time zone issues and wanting to start his own thing as to why he parted ways with the company. “Later said it was ‘turning into a finops company’ and he ‘wasn’t sure if that’s something I wanted to be part of,'” the exec added.

Soham Parekh speaks out amid fraud allegations

Having termed the whole development “soham-gate” after receiving several messages about people firing the man, Suhail Doshi went on to share that Parekh reached out to him in the wake of all that was unfolding. Per the former Mixpanel CEO, the primary concern for the Indian techie in question remains: “Asking this as genuine advice since I do really love what I do, have I completely sabotaged my career? What can I do to improve my situation? I am also happy to come clean.”

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Other US employers affected in the process

Igor Zalutski, the founder of Digger ‘CI/CD orchestrator for Terraform,’ shared that their team nearly hired him as well and he was supposed to start on Monday. “I found it hard to believe initially; he seemed so sharp and no-bs during the interviews. But then 3 people he worked for before said the same thing – that he ‘worked multiple jobs in parallel’ and ‘lied about his visa status’ and ‘had it running for years’,” he commented under Doshi’s post.

He called the situation “very unfortunate,” praising Soham as an engineer. He added, “You need to be top tier on both tech and comms to pull such a thing off. If he directed all this energy towards maximising his comp in an honest way he’d be already much better off. Perhaps it has to do with something other than greed – a bit like some people can’t stop stealing just for the thrills of it.”

Justin Harvey, co-founder of AIVideo.com and SpatialCinematics.com, chimed in, saying that he too was “THIS close to hiring him.” Detailing how his interview attempt went, he said, “the craziest part is he actually crushed” it.

Marcus Lowe, the founder of create.xyz, claimed that they even hired the man, but promptly relieved him of his duties. “The crazy thing is that we’re fully in person in SF,” he continued. “He was in our office for 1 day before a series of lies about why he couldn’t come in as he was for sure working at other companies simultaneously. Absolutely unhinged behavior.”

Roy, CEO at Cluely, went in full-caps, exclaiming how he “INTERVIEWED THIS GUY YESTERDAY.”

Software company Lindy’s founder Flo Crivello alleged that their team “hired this guy a week ago,” but ultimately fired him this week. “He did so incredibly well in interviews, must have a lot of training. Careful out there,” they warned other employers. Crivello even went on to vent further by making memes inspired by the situation.

Keeping all that aside, he cautioned, “the real lesson from Soham is we as an industry ought to do way more public shaming. I personally know 4 people(!) who got scammed by him. We’d have gone for another month if it wasn’t for @Suhail So: I will now post publicly when I’m screwed over by someone in a way that’s objectively unethical Every time — it’s a community service.”