Edward Bukstel
Between June 2024 and August 2024 I received emails from a person stating they were an employee at Robin AI. These emails included all types of allegations about the leadership and operations at Robin AI.
In May 2024 I wrote an article about Harvey AI titled “There’s Something about Harvey?” A lot of discussion followed the publication of the Harvey “takedown” including my appearance on Zach Abramowitz’s Legally Disrupted Podcast and quotes in a Law.com article by Isha Marathe
There were nearly 20k views across all platforms, and for some reason I started receiving a lot of messages from other folks in legal AI and beyond, talking about dysfunctional companies and practices. It was kind of interesting at first, I guess, the Harvey Ai article turned me into some kind of Drudge Report, when all I was doing was asking a few questions.
I went back to look at the timeline of Robin AI messages that I received and was a little surprised to realize that the first contact that I received with the company was with there former head of Public Relations, Ryan Heath on June 9, 2024. Ryan wanted to talk with me about my recent article about Harvey AI?
Ryan Heath believed something “didn’t smell right” about Harvey AI and he wanted to compare notes about some of the questions that I raised. Only a couple of days later, I received the first message from a person named “James Smith” who identified as an employee of Robin AI.
The June 11, 2024 email from “James Smith” made some pretty salacious allegations against the company and its executives, and I decided to reach out to Ryan Heath who I just connected with, on LinkedIn, (2) days prior. In intended on asking Ryan about the allegations against the company he just joined.
I really didn’t know much about Robin AI at the time, and my personal experience helping put a couple of lawyers in jail gave me pause about jumping to any conclusions about Robin AI. I fought against criminal attorneys who were sentenced to jail for up to 66 months, but in the process all types of false and vile comments and allegations were made against me. The saga even involved a Federal Judge and lawyers from Philadelphia going to a Wagner Festival in Seattle, which looked a little peculiar at the time. So, I really wanted to double check the allegations against Robin AI made in an email by “James Smith.”
In 2008, entrepreneur Edward Bukstel launched VitaminSpice, a novel food concept combining spices and nutritional supplements. But as the financial crisis upended global markets, Bukstel turned to the securities world to help raise capital. This decision would entangle him in a decade-and-a-half of legal warfare centered around a lawyer named Jehu Hand. Hired in 2009 as securities counsel, Hand would soon be revealed as the architect of a vast and malicious fraud scheme. Bukstel began noticing irregularities, including suspicious trading patterns and forged stock transfer documents. When he fired Hand in 2010, a barrage of retaliatory lawsuits followed from shell entities tied to Hand and his international network, including figures with links to Ukraine, Russia, and even USAID.
I have been told by multiple people and folks in the entertainment industry and even legal tech legend Cyrus Johnson , that I need to publish a book or get a documentary made about the experience, but I’d rather just build some cool products for legal marketing.
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