Richtech Robotics: A China Hustle Selling Rebranded Chinese Robots, Plus Insider Embezzlement, Fake Partnerships, Fake Deals, Fabricated WalMart Hype, Undisclosed Related Party Transactions, and Links to China Scam Stocks

Initial Disclosure: After extensive research, we have taken a short position in shares of Richtech Robotics Inc. (NASDAQ: RR). This report represents our opinion and is not financial advice. Do your own due diligence and don't take financial advice from strangers on the internet. Please read our full disclaimer at the bottom of this report.

We uncovered extensive evidence that Richtech Robotics is not what it claims to be, and insiders have engaged in fraudulent schemes to enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders. We spoke with many people connected to the company, including former employees, suppliers, distributors, partners, and customers. We also reviewed records from all over the world, including company filings, lawsuits, patents, trademarks, property records, import/export data, and much more.

Based on our research, we believe that Richtech is a China hustle that misleads investors and customers about its products, ownership, and operations. We believe that Richtech is riddled with fraud, is uninvestable, and will likely collapse as its schemes are exposed.

Richtech’s recent share price surge appears to be fueled by speculation of an enterprise contract with Walmart. Our investigation shows this narrative is misleading, and at best, Richtech has a limited pilot program involving a single store. Former insiders allege that this is a common tactic used by Richtech. They find a small customer associated with a large brand, entice that customer to sign a pilot project, and they then misrepresent the small pilot as a deal with a large enterprise customer with thousands of locations. It’s alleged that Richtech did this in the past with a McDonald’s franchisee and a hotel that licensed a large national brand.

“I witnessed several things that raise significant concerns for me, particularly about whether the company and its management were being truthful with investors. My worries were strong enough that, during the time of the IPO, I reached out the SEC to share my observations. Unfortunately, I never received a response from them.”

– former Richtech insider

• Bank records reveal that in December 2024, Richtech wired $400,000 in four installments to a company controlled by Henry Leong, who then immediately forwarded each payment to Skybound Innovations LLC, a company linked to Richtech’s CEO. This is strong evidence of insider embezzlement and money laundering. It also demonstrates the close relationship between Richtech and Leong, who is a central figure in many of Richtech’s fraudulent schemes and undisclosed related party transactions.

• Henry Leong is a key figure in Richtech’s fraudulent schemes. Leong was a shareholder, a purported distribution partner, a Ghost Kitchens insider, and an associate of Richtech’s first outside board member. He’s also currently being prosecuted for multiple felonies:

  • In June 2023, Leong’s wife, Thanh Chi Nguyen, bought 60% of Richtech’s pre-IPO private placement.

  • Richtech claimed that Leong was the CEO of MAC USA, which signed a partnership deal with Richtech one month after the IPO. There’s no record that Leong actually worked at MAC USA, and MAC employees said “We don’t sell robots. We’ve never sold robots”, and that they’ve “never even heard of Richtech”.

  • Leong claimed to have invested $500,000 in Ghost Kitchens around the time of Richtech’s IPO. Leong also stated that the investment was made to help Richtech get robots into Walmart stores in order to “promo”. We suspect that the investment was actually made by Richtech with Leong acting as a frontman.

  • Leong claimed that he gets paid for any Ghost Kitchens franchise opened in Illinois, this would include Richtech’s franchise in Rockford.

  • In a Ghost Kitchens presentation from April 2024, Leong is listed as the CEO of “GK Asia”, a purported Ghost Kitchens subsidiary.

  • Leong is currently being prosecuted for stealing millions of dollars from the US government by using stolen identities to file fraudulent tax returns.

  • Leong is currently out on bond, for multiple felonies, and is being represented by a public defender because he claims to be indigent.

  • Richtech’s first “independent” director, John Shigley is an associate of Leong. They worked together on the 2019 Forest City casino proposal in Rockford, Illinois.

  • Leong has been sued numerous times for fraud, breach of contract, bad debts, and he owes millions of dollars in adverse court judgements.

• Former employees allege that Richtech fabricated contracts with large enterprise customers. When asked about Richtech’s Hotel MSA, Restaurant MSA, and Gaming MSA they said that if those contracts were even real, they were NOT signed by enterprise customers as Richtech claimed.

“There’s no way they had those large MSA[s]. They would have brought that up during our meetings. Celebrating”

– former Richtech employee

• Richtech recently claimed to sign an MSA with “one of the largest retailers in the world”. Some have speculated that this customer is WalMart, but our research indicates that this is not true and that Richtech is likely misrepresenting the MSA:

  • We spoke with a senior Walmart official who told us that the company has one robotics relationship and it’s with a vendor valued at over $10B, which rules out Richtech and undercuts any claim of a strategic Walmart tie-up.

  • When we spoke with Henry Leong, he confirmed that their engagement with Walmart is limited to a floor-cleaning pilot. Another person intimately familiar with Ghost Kitchens and Richtech, told us the same thing: Richtech does not have a direct contract with Walmart.

  • Richtech has a history of misrepresenting MSAs. In the past, they pilot contracts with small companies that are associated with large brands, and then claimed these deals were with large enterprise customers with thousands of locations.

  • We spoke with the managers of the Walmart stores where Richtech has One Kitchen franchises and they confirmed that they are NOT using Richtech robots.

  • Walmart is a savvy buyer, why would they buy rebranded robots from Richtech when they can bud directly from Sparkoz, the company that actually makes the robots.

  • Leong told us that he invested in Ghost Kitchens in order to get Richtech robots into Walmart stores in order to “promo”. He also said that they have a “pilot program” with WalMart and not a formal contract.

"…we took the company Richtech Robotics public and needed to put our robots inside WalMart, you know, promo, and if you can align some of your products with WalMart, MGM, or Home Depot, it enhances the stock value quite a bit, so that’s my original thought, investing in Ghost Kitchens, so get in WalMart and then Richtech Robotics, coffee robotics and [unclear] robotics as well my cleaning product inside the restaurant, inside of the WalMart."

– Henry Leong

• Richtech misrepresents itself as an American company that designs and manufactures robots for sale in the US. In reality, Richtech buys off-the-shelf robots from China and rebrands them as Richtech products. They’ve rebranded robots made by numerous companies, including Autoxing, Sparkoz, Keenon, OrionStar, Reeman, Ufactory, Pudu, SoftBank Robotics, Yunji, Wimsha and more.

• We contacted the companies who actually make the robots Richtech currently sells, and they offered to sell to us directly, in the United States, at prices far below what Richtech charges. They confirmed that Richtech rebrands their robots and that they also sell directly to US customers. In fact, many companies source the same robots from China and sell them in the US under the original brand names.

• Richtech has engaged in suspicious transactions worth millions of dollars while making no disclosures to explain what the money was for or to whom it was paid. In 4Q 2024, Richtech paid $5.47M in cash and $2.2M in shares for unexplained intangible assets. This is reminiscent of other China frauds which used similar transactions to siphon money out of the company.

• In January 2024, Richtech signed a deal with Ghost Kitchens to “launch 240 ADAM robotic beverage systems”, which matches the 240 locations Ghost Kitchens hoped to open in 2024. According to our research, they actually opened less than a dozen locations, none of which have ADAM robots. In fact, a One Kitchen recently opened in Reno, Nevada without robots. We found only one location not owned by Richtech that had an ADAM robot, in Dawsonville, Georgia, and a manager at that location told us “they sent him back to Vegas to see if they could make him work better.”

“It could pour coffee or a soda. Nothing fancy”

“There were errors. Cups wouldn’t dispense correctly, so the coffee would pour on the counter and sometime sodas would overflow due to too much ice being dispensed”

– Manager at Dawsonville Ghost Kitchen

• In October 2024, 10 months after the first sham Ghost Kitchens deal, Richtech announced a second deal, this time a binding LOI, where Richtech would pay to open One Kitchen franchises which would then use their robots. In this new deal, Richtech bears all the financial risk, including upfront capital investment, and franchise fees payable to Ghost Kitchens. This is a good deal for Ghost Kitchens, which is struggling financially. However, a year has passed and Richtech has opened only two locations, and even those have struggled to keep the robots working. A former technical employee at Richtech said “Personally, when I worked there I ran into lots of issues with ADAM and had to be constantly diagnosing for issues”.

• Richtech partner, BotBar NYC, purchased 4 ADAM robots and ended up suing the company for $600,000 because the ADAMs were “defective and could not operate as promised”. BotBar NYC also alleges that executives engaged in a fraudulent scheme “to conceal from the investing public the significant shortcomings of Richtech’s purported advanced technologies”, and they “sought to fraudulently conceal the defects and various operational shortcomings from potential investors…”. They also allege that in exchange for buying Richtecch robots, Richtech promised funding, and to help cover potential financial losses

• BotBar NYC abandoned their ADAM robots after months spent trying to get them working. Most of their locations shut down, and the remaining location replaced ADAM with an almost identical robot from Panbotica, a Richtech competitor from China.

• Some of Richtech’s own businesses stopped using their ADAM robots because of persistent problems. The manager of a Richtech One Kitchen franchise told us their ADAM robot wasn’t working and “they sent him back to Vegas to see if they could make him work better”. A recent technical employee at Richtech said “Personally, when I worked there I ran into lots of issues with ADAM and had to be constantly diagnosing for issues”.

• Richtech is directly tied to a person under investigation by the SEC, for involvement in a syndicate that manipulated US-listed Chinese companies, and systematically defrauded investors. Peiyong Han, who was listed as a large shareholder in Richtech’s pre-IPO filings, is accused of owning a syndicate entity and receiving millions of dollars from syndicate members. The investigation was disclosed in a court filings by the SEC in response to a lawsuit Han filed to block the SEC from accessing his financial records.

• For years Richtech touted “major enterprise contracts” and “large enterprise customers”, but none of these have resulted in material sales. In correspondence with the SEC, Richtech even admitted that “the MSAs currently represent less than 3% of the Company’s revenue and are not expected to represent a significant portion of future revenues”. Former employees allege that the company fabricated deals, and made deals with small businesses but misrepresented them to shareholders as large enterprise customers. For example, do a pilot at a single McDonald’s franchise and then claim to have a deal with a major restaurant brand with thousands of locations.

• In September 2024, Richtech announced a partnership with Park 34 Liquor Store, to distribute 500 Scorpion robots over five years, followed by a minimum of 500 units per year after that. Park 34 owns and operates ONE liquor store, 1936 Wine & Spirits in New York City. Its employees confirmed to us that they have one store, they don’t have a distribution business, and they don’t sell robots. We posed as a restaurateur and reached out to Park 34’s owner to inquire about purchasing robots, but he didn’t respond to multiple calls or messages left at the store. Strange behavior for a company that Richtech claimed would distribute hundreds of robots.

• Most of Richtech’s distribution partners no longer work with the company. Almost every distributor we spoke with said they dropped the products, citing reasons including “the robots were unreliable”, “customer’s didn’t want them”, and “they were too expensive”.

• Richtech’s largest supplier is Sunwing Industries Limited, a Chinese company that makes artificial plants and grass, and has nothing to do with robotics. This is backed up by Sunwing’s website, disclosures to the Chinese government, and import/export data. There are many possible reasons why Richtech would use Sunwing as a middleman, none of which are good. It could be used to evade tariffs, to hide the true source of the robots, or to steal money from the corporation.

• Less than a year before the IPO, Richtech issued 22M shares for “future services rendered”. The new shares were valued at $0.06, while 11 months later the company IPO’d at $5 per share. These shady deals netted their beneficiaries an astounding 80x return in less than a year.

• Leading up to the IPO, Richtech again issued shares for “services rendered”, and disclosed that 12.8M shares went to various offshore shell companies controlled by Chinese nationals. Richtech never disclosed what services were rendered, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out the true beneficiaries. These types of transactions have been common with scammy Chinese companies that IPO in the US and subsequently collapse, wiping out investors.

• In 2024, a shareholder with 13% voting power sold 2.2M shares and didn’t disclose the sale until 3 months later, even though the SEC requires disclosure within 2 business days. The shareholder in question was a BVI shell company which was issued 6.1M super-voting shares (10 votes per share) for unexplained “services rendered”.

• Richtech has dozens of competitors that sell similar or even identical robots, which they buy from the same factories as Richtech. However, in SEC filings Richtech discloses a select few competitors. Richtech also fails to list the companies that actually make the robots and also sell directly to US customers, notably Autoxing, Sparkoz, and OrionStar.

• 10 months after the original non-binding deal, Richtech announced a new and much worse deal with Ghost Kitchens. The company tried to spin it, claiming it “Expands Agreement”. This time Richtech signed a binding LOI to pay to open 20 franchises. So, instead of selling hundreds of robots, Richtech is now paying to open franchises, in order to deploy their own robots at their own expense.

• It’s been 11 months since Richtech announced it would pay to open 20 franchises, so far the company has opened two, one in Rockford, Illinois, and another in Peachtree, Georgia. A recent Richtech employee told us that the ADAM robots at these locations were prone to malfunction and required a technician to work on them “pretty much every day”.

“Personally, when I worked there I ran into lots of issues with ADAM and had to be constantly diagnosing for issues”

“…a common error that I encountered was the arms not grabbing the cups correctly often causing spills. Drinks were constantly over pouring or under pouring and those values for the amount of liquid that needed to be dispensed pretty much needed to be adjusted every single day.”

– former Richtech technician

• In June 2025, Richtech announced a partnership with Chinese state-owned companies to develop “domain-specific large AI models” and “Autonomous robotic decision-making systems”. As a US company, Richtech is restricted from investing in certain technologies in China, including advanced AI and autonomous robotics. Based on Richtech’s announcement, we believe the company could be in violation of US law.

• Richtech has engaged in questionable transactions with companies connected to a member of its advisory board. Richtech’s third largest vendor in FY 2022 was IceKredit, a Chinese credit company whose founder and CEO, Lingyun Gu, is on Richtech’s advisory board. IceKredit has nothing to do with robotics, but for some reason Richtech paid them $205k. Adding to the mystery, Lingyun Gu is also the sole shareholder of Normanton Tech, a Singapore shell company to which Richtech issued 466,000 shares for “future services rendered”. Richtech never disclosed what services were rendered, who owned Normanton, or that it was a related party.

• Richtech’s auditor, Bush & Associates CPA LLC, is riddled with red flags:

  • In November 2024, censured and fined $50k by the PCAOB

  • Despite being a tiny firm with just one engagement partner, the firm audited 39 public companies in 2024.

  • In 2024, the firm added more SEC clients than any other auditor. Clients were picked up from BF Borgers, which was shut down by the SEC in 2024, and from Marcum whose reputation is in tatters.

  • The firm’s audit clients are mostly nano-cap companies, OTC penny stocks, and SPACs.

• Richtech’s is fully controlled by its founders, who are Chinese nationals and hold super-voting shares, which get 10 votes per share compared to 1 vote for the publicly traded shares. This means that the founders can do whatever they want, and investors have no say in how the company is run. This is especially concerning given the company’s lack of transparency and history of deception.

• In 2024, Richtech’s three independent directors failed to file timely Form 4s with the SEC. This is a serious violation of SEC rules and makes us question if anyone at the company is watching out for investors.

• Richtech has no quarterly earnings calls, no annual earnings calls, and no investor webinars. At the same time, Richtech fails to disclose basic information about suspicious transactions, including highly discounted share issuances for “services rendered”, and multimillion dollar purchases of unexplained intangible assets. Richtech seems to only be interested in publishing deceptive press releases to pump the stock and distract from the glaring issues within the company.

• When Richtech filed to go public, an insider reached out to the SEC to share their concerns about the Richtech’s management and their misrepresentations to investors:

“It’s just the way they do business. Unethical at times, I would say. Overpromise and under-deliver, not disclosing all information… I think there’s a lot of misrepresentation too.”

– former Richtech insider

Background

Richtech Robotics (NASDAQ: RR) is a robotics company that claims to design and manufacture autonomous delivery robots for use in restaurants, hotels, and other commercial settings. The company was originally founded as Richtech Creative Displays in 2017 and became Richtech Robotics in 2022.

Richtech’s business has consistently followed the same playbook: import products from China, rebrand them under the Richtech name, and resell them in the U.S. at a markup.

The company began with digital signage and displays. Later, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it pivoted to health-safety devices, including a temperature-screening kiosk and the AirShield UV Gate, an ultraviolet disinfection system, again, both imported from China and rebranded.

In the post-pandemic period, Richtech shifted once more, this time to robotics. But the model hasn’t changed: the robots are sourced from Chinese manufacturers, relabeled with Richtech branding, and marketed to American customers as proprietary innovations.

IPO Rug Pull - Classic China Hustle

In late 2022 Richtech started the process to become publicly listed and started issuing millions of shares to various BVI shell companies controlled by Chinese nationals. The company claims these shares were issued for “services rendered”, and we believe they were payments to facilitate the IPO and incentivize foreign entities to help the company go public.

This is a common tactic used by scammy China stocks listed on US exchanges. The share price will often rally post-IPO on the back of paid promotion and stock manipulation, before collapsing as the fraudsters liquidate their shares and cash in their ill-gotten gains. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happened to Richtech, with the shares rallying to $12 right after the IPO, before collapsing 90% to under $1.

Speculative Rally: Shares up 400% While Revenue Is Flat and Losses Grow 300%

In the past 12 months shares have rallied 400% on speculative hype driven by fabricated deals and misleading press releases:

source: Tradeing View

At the same time, revenue remains flat while operating losses increased 3x:

source: Richtech 10-Q for June 30, 2025

Constant Dilution Plus New Registration to Sell up to $1B More

In Richtech’s short time as a public company, shares outstanding has increased a whopping 250%, from 62.2M to 153.15M.

In an ominous sign of what’s to come, on September 24th, Richtech filed to sell up to $1,000,000,000 in additional shares:

source: Dilution Tracker

Shell Company Tied to CEO and CFO Embezzled Money With the Help of a Related Party and Accused Felon Out on Bond

We found evidence that Richtech insiders embezzled money from the company with the help of Henry Leong. Leong is being prosecuted for filing fraudulent tax returns using stolen identities, and he’s currently out on bond. He has also been sued in numerous business disputes where he’s been accused of fraud and theft. As a result of these cases, he owes millions of dollars in court judgments and creditors have been seizing his assets.

Leong is also a Richtech shareholder. SEC filings show that this wife, Thanh Chi Nguyen, purchased 100,000 shares in Richtech’s pre-IPO private placement, which was 60% of the total offering.

source Richtech Prospectus; 2023-1120

In 2024, Leong lost a lawsuit and was ordered to pay $6.4M to a former customer he defrauded. To recover the judgement, the plaintiffs got Leong’s bank records, some of which were filed as exhibits in court. These bank records show that in December 2024, Richtech wired four installments of $100,000 to Satoshi Holdings, a shell company controlled by Leong. The day after each wire was received Satoshi Holdings wired a matching amount to Skybound Innovations LLC.

The final $100,000 installment doesn’t have a matching outbound wire to Skybound, because Satoshi Holdings’ bank account was seized by creditors the day after the wire was received.

Incoming wires to Satoshi Holdings Co:

source: Bulk MRO Industrial Supply, Inc. et al v. Nguyen et al, Docket No. 1:24-cv-12473 (N.D. Ill. Dec 04, 2024)

Outgoing wires from Satoshi Holdings Co:

Since the funds were being moved in $100,000 chunks, it’s impossible to know how much would have been laundered had the account not been seized.

The ultimate recipient of the funds, Skybound Innovations, is a Nevada company, formed in 2023 and originally managed by Wayne Huang, Richtech’s founder and CEO:

source: Nevada Secretary of State Business Search

Also, the address used by the registered agent and managers is a residential property that Wayne Huang bought in February 2020:

source: Clark County Assessor Website

Richtech’s CEO also used this address for a company he owns with Michael Huang, his brother and Richtech’s CFO:

source: Nevada Secretary of State Business Search

These transactions are indicative of money laundering, and we were unable to find any legitimate business purpose for them.

We also found that Leong has used Satoshi Holdings in the past to launder dirty money. More details on that below.

Richtech Fabricated Partnerships with the Help of Accused Felon Henry Leong

On top of the embezzlement and money laundering, Henry Leong and Richtech executives defrauded investors by orchestrating sham partnerships and fabricated contracts.

Fake MAC USA Partnership With Leong Posing as MAC’s CEO

On Nov 21, 2023, before any partnerships were announced, Leong and executives from MAC USA joined Richtech to ring the Nasdaq opening bell:

source: macmarketing.vn; archived September 22, 2025

On December 28, one month after the bell ringing ceremony, Richtech announced a “Strategic Partnership with MAC USA, Revolutionizing Service Industry Dynamics”:

source: richtechrobotics.com

Our research indicates that the partnership was a complete sham:

• A salesperson at MAC USA, said they had “never even heard of Richtech”.
• Another employee said “We don’t sell robots. We’ve never sold robots.”
• MAC USA sells POS systems and only POS systems.
• Besides the deal announcements, MAC’s website has no mention of Richtech or robots.
• We couldn’t find a single mention of Richtech or robots on MAC’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube pages.
• We tracked down dozens of Richtech customers and didn’t find a single one that bought from MAC USA.

“We don’t sell robots. We’ve never sold robots.” – MAC USA employee A

“We do not provide robots.” – MAC USA employee B

Stranger yet, Richtech claimed that Henry Leong was MAC’s CEO, but we found no record of him ever working there.

source: Instagram @richtechrobotics, Feb 16, 2024; Twitter @RichtechRobotics, Feb 16, 2024

MAC’s website lists its leadership team, and Leong isn’t included. Archived versions of MAC’s website, going back to Jan 2022, also don’t include Leong as part of the leadership team.

Google also shows no links between MAC and Henry Leong, besides a few promotional posts from Richtech.

Evidence suggests that Leong has never worked at MAC USA, let alone as CEO. Instead, we think Richtech likely paid MAC for the partnership in order to generate press and pump their stock. As we’ll see below, this isn’t the only time Leong acted as a front-man in a fake Richtech partnership.

Leong Involved in Sham Ghost Kitchens Announcements and Mysterious $500,000 Investment

A month after Richtech announced the fake MAC USA partnership, the company announced a non-binding LOI with Ghost Kitchens, a struggling restaurant franchisor. The announcement claimed that Richtech would deploy 240 of its ADAM robots to Ghost Kitchens franchises across the US.

Imagine our surprise when we found a Ghost Kitchens presentation listing Henry Leong as the CEO of Ghost Kitchens Asia:

source: One Kitchen Franchise Presentation; April 25, 2024

Ghost Kitchens’ website displays their executive team members, but Leong isn’t shown. He’s mentioned nowhere on the site.

Leong told us directly that he invested $500,000 in Ghost Kitchens, and that he invested in the company around the time of Richtech’s IPO. An employee at Ghost Kitchens also confirmed that the company was connected with Richtech “through a mutual investor who was involved with both companies”:

“He’s a shareholder of Richtech. He’s a shareholder of Ghost Kitchens.”

“He was front and center when they went public… He brings a lot of money from some of his investor group back in China. He was happy to make that connection.”

– Source at Ghost Kitchens

Leong claims to be broke and even has a public defender for his ongoing criminal case. So, where did he get the $500,000 to invest in Ghost Kitchens? We suspect that it was Richtech’s money with Leong acting as a front.

Leong told us that the whole reason he invested in Ghost Kitchens, was to get Richtech robots into Walmart stores in order to “promo”. He also said that they have a “pilot program” with WalMart and not a formal contract.

"…we took the company Richtech Robotics public and needed to put our robots inside WalMart, you know, promo, and if you can align some of your products with WalMart, MGM, or Home Depot, it enhances the stock value quite a bit, so that’s my original thought, investing in Ghost Kitchens, so get in WalMart and then Richtech Robotics, coffee robotics and [unclear] robotics as well my cleaning product inside the restaurant, inside of the WalMart."

– Henry Leong

Adding to the evidence, we know that Leong was at the Richtech Nasdaq bell ringing ceremony on Nov 21, 2023, two months before the sham announcement about a non-binding LOI between Richtech and Ghost Kitchens.

source: Instagram; @richtechrobotics, Dec 11, 2023

Strangely, Ghost Kitchens senior management also attended the ceremony, again two months before the sham LOI announcement:

Leong also attended the grand opening of Richtech’s One Kitchen franchise in Rockford, IL in August 2024:

Leong also told us that he gets a “franchise override” for all Ghost Kitchens franchises opened in Illinois. The “franchise override” appears to mean that Leong receives gets a percentage or a commission from any franchises opened in Illinois. This is significant because Richtech opened a franchise in Rockford, IL.

“I end up getting the whole state of Illinois for franchisor, so basically anyone who franchises in the state, I get an override, if you will.” – Henry Leong

Leong Currently Being Prosecuted for Identity Theft and Tax Fraud

In April 2024, Leong was arrested by the FBI and charged with multiple felonies. Leong is accused of stealing millions of dollars from the US government, by using stolen identities to file fraudulent tax returns. The case is ongoing with Leong currently out on bond. He was forced to surrender his passport and wear a GPS monitor.

source: United States v. Leong, 1:24-mj-01625, (S.D.N.Y.); Complaint pg 2

Most relevant to us, court filings show that Leong used Satoshi Holdings to receive tax fraud proceeds. This is the same shell company used to launder money out of Richtech.

source: United States v. Leong, 1:24-mj-01625, (S.D.N.Y.); Complaint pg 4-5

After receiving the stolen funds, Satoshi Holdings wired payments to another company the very next day. Again, this is exactly the same pattern we saw when the Richtech funds were laundered.

source: United States v. Leong, 1:24-mj-01625, (S.D.N.Y.); Complaint pg 6

Court documents show that Leong was actively orchestrating his tax fraud on December 28, the same day that Richtech and MAC USA announced their sham partnership, with Leong posing as MAC’s CEO:

Leong Sued Numerous Times for Fraud, and Unpaid Debts, and he Owes Millions in Outstanding Court Judgements

Leong has also been sued numerous times for fraud, breach of contract, unpaid debts, and other business disputes. He was also sued multiple times for taking millions of dollars for PPE during the COVID pandemic, and never delivering the products. One of these cases resulted in a $6.4M judgement against Leong, which is still outstanding.

Below is a snapshot of civil cases filed against Leong just in Cook County, Illinois. There are more in other state jurisdictions (TX, MA, PA) as well as federal courts:

source: Cook County Cout Clerk, Case Search

If there was any remaining doubt about Leong’s character, it’s alleged that Leong was arrested in 2005 for maintaining a house of prostitution.

And, according to the Chicago police, Leong’s “house of prostitution” was believed to be secretly recording sex acts and showing it on the internet:

source: Chicago Tribune

source: Illinois Div. of Financial Institutions, Monthly Reports, July 2009

ADAM Robot: Riddled with Bugs and Rejected by Customers, Including Richtech’s Own Franchises

Richtech’s flagship robot is the ADAM, a tabletop robot with two arms that serves beverages. It’s targeted at restaurants, where it’s deployed exclusively to front-of-house serving beverages and only beverages, despite the company claiming for years that it would be useful in back-of-house operations.

Richtech claims ADAM is a fully functional product when in fact it’s a barely usable proof-of-concept that frequently malfunctions and is impractical to use. Multiple customers who bought ADAM have sued Richtech, claiming that the robot is unusable and that Richtech defrauded them.

Even Richtech Owned Businesses Stopped Using Their Robots

Recent Richtech employees allege that ADAM robots constantly malfunction need to be fixed almost daily. A recent technical employee said “Personally, when I worked there I ran into lots of issues with ADAM and had to be constantly diagnosing for issues”.

To pilot the ADAM robot, Richtech paid to open OneKitchen franchises. So far, they’ve opened two locations inside Walmart stores in Illinois and Georgia. Employees at both locations report that the ADAM robots were frequently malfunctioning and are no longer in use. A manager at one location confirmed that the robot was sent back to Las Vegas in hopes that it could be made more reliable.

“They sent him back to Vegas to see if they could make him work better.”

– Manager of a Richtech One Kitchen

TODO: Add quote from other OneKitchen / Ghost Kitchens locations

We asked the WalMart store manager at onee of the OneKitchen location, if they were still using the ADAM robot, they said “no they got rid of it. It was having too many issues”.

BotBar NYC Bought 4 ADAM Robots And Sued Richtech Because They Didn’t Work

Richtech partner, BotBar NYC, purchased 4 ADAM robots and ended up suing the company for $600,000 because ADAM was “defective and could not operate as promised”.

source: BOTBAR NYC INC. v. RICHTECH ROBOTICS INC., NY Kings County Supreme Court, index 517888/2025

BotBar NYC abandoned their ADAM robots after months spent trying to get them working. Most of their locations shut down, and the one remaining location replaced ADAM with an almost identical robot from Panbotica, a Richtech competitor from China.

source: left Yelp, right Yelp

This highlights the fact that none of Richtech’s products are unique. While Richtech buys ADAM from manufacturers in China, Panbotica makes their own robot using the same robotic arms and controllers.

BotBar NYC also alleges that executives engaged in a fraudulent scheme “to conceal from the investing public the significant shortcomings of Richtech’s purported advanced technologies”, and they “sought to fraudulently conceal the defects and various operational shortcomings from potential investors…”.

source: BOTBAR NYC INC. v. RICHTECH ROBOTICS INC., NY Kings County Supreme Court, index 517888/2025

Lastly, they allege that in exchange for using Richtech’s robots, Richtech promised funding, and to help cover any potential financial losses.

TODO: imgae of allegation that Richtech promised financial support in exchange for partnering

Ethan Capital Sued Richtech for Unusable ADAM Robot

Ethan Capital owns the Courtyard Marriott in Monterey Park, CA. They purchased an ADAM robot for $180,000 and had it set up to serve drinks in the hotel lobby. Ethan filed suit against Richtech and the distributor who sold them the robot.

Ethan alleges that ADAM “had all kinds of glitches”, “could not make coffee or boba as ordered”, and that ADAM is “unstable and cannot be used for normal business use.”:

source: ETHAN CAPITAL LLC vs. CHINESE RESTAURANT FOUNDATION, ET AL., Docket No. 23AHCV02350 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct 10, 2023)

source: ETHAN CAPITAL LLC vs. CHINESE RESTAURANT FOUNDATION, ET AL., Docket No. 23AHCV02350 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct 10, 2023)

ADAM is Almost Identical to Older OrionStar Robot

RichTech’s flagship robot, the ADAM, is almost identical to a humanoid robot barista made by the Chinese company OrionStar. However, OrionStar released their robot in 2020, two years ahead of the Richtech ADAM, which wasn’t launched until 2022.

The two robots are strikingly similar in appearance, but the similarities go beyond just looks. Both products use robotic arms and controllers from UFactory, which is majority owned by the parent company of OrionStar.

Richtech partners and former employees confirmed that the ADAM and Scorpion robots use UFactory arms. Further, Richtech disclosed that its second-largest supplier was “UFACTORY TECHNOLOGY”:

source: Richtech 10-K/A, filed 2025-03-04

Cheetah Mobile owns a stake in UFactory and recently increased its ownership to 75.8%:

source: Cheetah Mobile Inc.; 8-K 2025-07-28

Cheetah Mobile also owns 72.9% of OrionStar and has had a stake going back to at least 2017:

source: Cheetah Mobile Inc; 20-F; filed 2025-04-15

A former technical employee who regularly worked on the ADAM robots confirmed that “the arms are identical” and added that the front cameras also looks similar:

“…the arms are identical and the camera at the front looks similar to the one on Adam.”

– former Richtech employee who worked on ADAM robots

This raises the question: Is ADAM actually a repackaged OrionStar robot?

Adding to the suspicion, Richtech sells other OrionStar robots rebranded with Richtech stickers:

ADAM is Not Unique and The Market is Crowded with Competitors

There are also videos of the OrionStar robot making drinks as early as 2020.

OrionStars robot was released at least 2 years before Richtech’s ADAM robot, which wasn’t launched until 2022. The two are very similar, and we suspect that ADAM is actually a rebranded OrionStar robot.

source: Richtech S-1; Feb 23, 2023

Besides the direct competitors using the same hardware, there are dozens of companies selling competing beverage robots. A quick search on AliExpress shows that there are a lot of competing barista robots on the market:

source: AliExpress.com; search “commercial coffee robot vending machine”

There are a multitude of other barista robots on the market, but you get the point.

Richtech Sells Rebranded Chinese Robots While Claiming to be an American Company Designing and Manufacturing its Own Robots

Richtech pretends to be an American company that designs and manufactures robots. In reality, the company buys off-the-shelf robots from China, slaps a Richtech sticker on them, and misrepresents them as their own products.

source: richtechrobotics.com; archived June 18, 2025

A former Richtech insider alleges that ADAM was a white-label Chinese robot:

“I know the ADAM was manufactured by another company, [not] sure which one. Richtech just white labels them.”

– former Richtech insider

Adding insult to injury, Richtech is now wrapping itself in the American flag, pretending to be a patriotic American company:

Nowhere in Richtech’s filings do they disclose that they are actually a distributor of robots made by other companies. Instead, they repeatedly tout that they design and manufacture their own robots:

source: Richtech 10-K/A; filed 2025-03-04

Richtech then claims to use contract manufacturers, to make the robots to Richtech’s specifications:

source: Richtech 10-K/A; filed 2025-03-04

This is a gross misrepresentation. There’s irrefutable evidence showing that almost all of Richtech’s robots are off-the-shelf Chinese robots rebranded with Richtech stickers. And employees claim that even the ADAM and Scorpion are made in China with little to now work done in the US.

“Their system are from China but some of the parts are put on here, mainly non-electronics. And they’re prototypes that [are] built for events.”

– former Richtech engineer

AutoXing confirmed to us that Richtech resells their robots, and when we posed as a US customer, they offered to sell to us directly:

Richtech’s Titan is a rebranded AutoXing Industrial Robot:

Richtech’s Medbot is a rebranded AutoXing Hotel Robot:

The AutoXing Hotel Robot isn’t designed for high-security applications, like delivering medications. It’s a low-cost delivery robot for hotels and Richtech could be exposed to regulatory and legal risks by marketing it for delivering medications.

Richtech’s Matradee L is a rebranded OrionStar LuckiBot

Richtech’s cleaning robots are actually Sparkoz robots with a Richtech sticker slapped on:

Richtech DUST-E S	Richtech DUST-E MX

These robots are identical to the TN10 and TN70 robots, designed and manufactured by Sparkoz:

source: Sparkoz.com

Lots of companies sell these Sparkoz robots, but Richtech is the only reseller we found that rebrands them as their own.

US customers can buy these robots directly from Sparkoz, or from a variety of US distributors, including:

• Elite Metal Tools
• sliQue Robotics
• Sproutmation
• ToDo Robotics
• Rutech
• Kamo

With so much competition selling the exact same robots, Richtech has no differentiation or pricing power.

Richtech Claimed Their Robot Platform Was A Competitive Advantage, But it Wasn’t Even Their Technology

In SEC filings, Richtech claimed to have a Universal Smart Mobile Platform (USMP), which gave it “a competitive edge over other companies” because it would serve as a foundation for designing new robots.

source: Richtech 10-K/A FYE 2023-09-30

The USMP is actually a generic robot chassis, made by Reeman and sold to anyone who will pay.

source: reemanrobot.com; archived 2025-01-30

Unsurprisingly, Richtech never disclosed that the USMP was a white-label product, instead the company pretended it was proprietary technology that “gives us a competitive edge over other companies”.

Without explanation, Richtech stopped mentioning the USMP after the 2023 10-K/A filing, and we couldn’t find a single Richtech robot that actually used the platform.

Stephen Markscheid, Lead Independent Director Has Ties to Numerous China Hustles

Richtech’s lead independent director is Stephen Markscheid, who has made a career out of helping Chinese companies go public in the US, only to collapse and destroy shareholder value.

Most of the companies were plagued by allegations of fraud, multiple were delisted from US exchanges, and some simply stopped filing financials and went dark. At ChinaCast, where Markscheid was chair of the audit committee, the SEC sued insiders for embezzling $41 million and insider trading.

Ties to Chinese Criminal Syndicate Targeted by SEC Investigation

One of Richtech’s large pre-IPO shareholders is under investigation by the SEC for their involvement in a Chinese criminal syndicate that manipulated the share price of US-listed Chinese companies.

SEC filings show that in September 2023, Peiyong Han owned 676,940 shares:

source: Richtech S-1/A, filed 2023-09-20

In a court filing from September 2025, the SEC detailed Han’s extensive ties to the criminal syndicate, including syndicate members sending him millions of dollars, Han receiving money from syndicate companies, and Han having an ownership stakes in a syndicate company:

source: Peiyong v. United States Securities & Exchange Commission, Docket No. 1:25-mc-00350 (S.D.N.Y. Aug 16, 2025)

Shareholder Names Mysteriously Changed Right Before the IPO

Just prior to the IPO in November 2023, most of the shareholder names listed in SEC filings mysteriously changed, including Peiyong Han:

source: Richtech S-1/A, filed 2023-09-20; source: Richtech S-1/A, filed 2023-11-01

The share counts all remained the same, they were just registered under different names. This is highly unusual, and we couldn’t find any explanation for the changes in SEC filings or press releases.

Richtech Issued 22M Shares at $0.06 Per Share For “Services Rendered”, Netting Recipients 80x Return in Under a Year

Less than a year before the IPO, Richtech issued 22M shares at $0.06 per share in exchange for “services rendered”. The recipients were offshore shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, except one which was regstered in Singapore.

source: Richtech S-1, filed 2023-08-03

Richtech never disclosed what services were rendered or who actually owned most of the shell companies. These types of shady transactions have been common with scammy Chinese companies that IPO in the US and subsequently collapse.

11 months after the shares were issued, Richtech IPO’d at $5 per share netting these “lucky” shareholders an astounding 80x return in under a year.

Richtech Used a Convertible Note to Issue 9.2M Shares at $0.15 Per Share, Netting Recipients 33x Return in Under a Year

Around the same time Richtech issued 22M shares for “services rendered”, the company also issued a convertible note that converted into shares at $0.15 per share:

source: Richtech DRS/A filed 2023-06-14

• Richtech Robotics Inc
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