Startup CEO accused of spending investor cash on ‘call girls' after financial regulators barred him from Wall Street

Independent

25-03-2025

The founder of a New York-based aerospace startup developing high-tech rocket thrusters that have garnered glowing press coverage and at least one contract with the U.S. Space Force is accused of plundering investor funds to underwrite pricey jaunts to Europe, jewelry for his wife, child support payments, and, according to the company's largest investor, 'airline tickets for international call girls to join him for clandestine weekends in Miami.'
Onetime stockbroker Christopher Craddock established RocketStar in 2014 after financial regulators barred him from working on Wall Street over a raft of alleged violations. Craddock held the firm out as 'an entity that intended to reinvent space exploration,' states a $6 million lawsuit filed by former CEO Michael Mojtahedi and obtained by The Independent.
'I was trying to find a way to enter the rocket market to ultimately mine asteroids, and I figured out the biggest problem wasn't the tech or the rockets, but getting to space,' Craddock told Popular Mechanics in an interview.
But, according to Mojtahedi's complaint, RocketStar 'is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme… [that] has been predicated on Craddock's ability to con new people each time the company has run out of money.'
'Craddock recklessly and lavishly misappropriated for his lifestyle almost every cent RocketStar received from investors, running the company into the ground by August 2024,' the complaint says. 'At that point, Craddock's 'keeping up with the Joneses' lifestyle caught up with him, investor funds dried up completely, and his house of cards collapsed.'
When Craddock was eventually found out, he fired RocketStar's entire board of directors and 'essentially barricaded himself' in the firm's Chrysler Building offices, the complaint states. Mojtahedi poured more than $1 million of his own money into RocketStar, only to see it flagrantly misused by Craddock, according to the complaint.
In an email on Friday, Craddock declined to comment on Mojtahedi's allegations and referred The Independent to Michael Ledley, RocketStar's attorney.
'The company denies the allegations and looks forward to vindicating itself in court,' Ledley said in a subsequent phone interview.
Jeffrey M. Eilender, who is representing Mojtahedi, told The Independent, 'Mr. Craddock promotes RocketStar as a pioneering force in aerospace technology and has solicited millions of dollars in investments from individuals such as our client, who viewed investing in RocketStar as an exciting opportunity.'
He said 'it was important to file this lawsuit not only to seek justice for our client, and the other investors who have lost millions of dollars combined, but to hopefully prevent new victims.'
A little over a decade ago, Craddock leveraged the physics degree he earned at Stony Brook University and 'reinvented himself as a space mogul,' Mojtahedi's complaint explains. In the years that followed, he joined a swanky Manhattan social club where he solicited funds from wealthy members, many of whom 'shared a lifelong fascination with space travel' and saw Craddock's venture as something of a thrill, according to the complaint.
One of those people was Mojtahedi, whom Craddock first approached in early 2023 to help bring RocketStar's nuclear fusion-enhanced plasma thruster engine technology to market, according to the complaint. However, it contends, the lies began almost immediately. For one, Craddock told Mojtahedi that the company had so far raised 'millions' in funding, the complaint goes on.
What Mojtahedi didn't know at the time was that Craddock, who claimed to be using the funds on product development and the pending acquisition of a Florida company that provides spacecraft propulsion and communications services to military clients, was instead blowing it on everything but — something Mojtahedi learned through bank records he eventually pried loose in a previous court action, according to the court documents.
In one instance, Craddock used investor money to fly 'a woman named Francesca' from Rome, Italy to Miami, the complaint states.
'While it is unclear from Francesca's public profile what, exactly, her profession is, her public social media account… features provocative pictures like the one below,' it says.
Craddock also gave a RocketStar AmEx to the head of the Florida company he said he wanted to acquire, according to the complaint. It says the Florida exec used the card, with Craddock's approval, to fly 'a woman named Radmila' from Milan, Italy, to New York City on 'multiple occasions.' The complaint says she was flown from Orlando, Florida to London, England on RocketStar's dime, too.
'The business purpose of these trips and the nature of goods and services these women provided to RocketStar is unknown, although it is unclear how they earned such fantastic paid vacations using… investors' monies,' the complaint states.
In 2023, according to Mojtahedi's resignation letter, which is attached as an exhibit to the complaint, RocketStar paid for an 'executive trip' to Venice, Italy. It says the charged expenses were all 'private and personal in nature,' such as a Friday night dinner for two at Hostaria Osottoosopra, which is described as a 'cozy and romantic' spot.
'The same goes for another cozy and romantic dinner on a Sunday night at Ristorante Marco Polo which is right across the canal from Piazza San Marco,' the exhibit says. 'According to one of the staff, the only business conducted in this restaurant at dinner time is the business of 'amore.''
Last year, RocketStar paid for another 'executive trip' to the Lombardy region of Italy, the exhibit alleges.
'There were numerous expenses that were of personal and private nature,' the exhibit states. 'For example, spending the Saturday night of 1/7/24 in one of the romantic suites in Villa Onofria in Brescia, Italy, right at the banks of Lake Garda [must have been] magical.'
Craddock also racked up huge bills on his RocketStar AmEx, and paid them off using investor funds, according to the complaint. Among other places, the complaint says Mojtahedi reviewed records showing Craddock used the card at Best Buy, FAO Schwarz, Midtown Comics, Medina Jewelry, and L'Occitane, the luxury cosmetics chain.
For his part, the Florida exec allegedly charged tens of thousands of dollars to his own RocketStar AmEx, including a large bill from Melbourne Family Dental, 'to cover his family's dental expenses,' according to the complaint, which says Craddock also paid the exec's monthly child support payments using RocketStar's corporate funds.
In the end, the acquisition Craddock had been pursuing 'turned out to be a farce,' the complaint states, calling it 'a scheme Craddock concocted, along with two of [the target company's] officers… to scam investors out of more cash.'
By June 28, 2024, RocketStar's bank account showed a balance of negative - $4,105.87, according to the complaint. The next day, Craddock told all RocketStar employees that they were being furloughed, the complaint states.
Craddock was removed from his position as CEO in August 2024 by the board of directors, amid an ongoing internal investigation into his alleged financial improprieties, and replaced, on an interim basis, by Mojtahedi, according to the complaint.
A source with knowledge of the situation told The Independent that RocketStar is taking legal action against the Florida company, which they said was responsible for the takeover falling through. The source said RocketStar was going through a turbulent period when Mojtahedi became disenchanted, and that many startups face similar issues involving bad advice and less-than-perfect documentation.
On December 24, 2024, after 'uncovering Craddock's fraud and complete disregard for corporate formalities,' Mojtahedi stepped down as RocketStar's interim CEO.
'I urge the board of RocketStar to employ this information to fulfill their fiduciary duty and hire a forensic accountant to get to the bottom of everything,' Mojtahedi wrote in his resignation letter.
As Mojtahedi says in his lawsuit, which was filed March 19 in New York State Supreme Court, had he known about even some of these issues, 'he would not have invested another dollar in RocketStar.'
Craddock is once again the CEO of RocketStar, according to the company's website. He now has roughly three weeks to file a formal response to Mojtahedi's allegations.