He Thought He Invested in SpaceX. Then His Shares Vanished.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Journal.

Episode: He Thought He Invested in SpaceX. Then His Shares Vanished.

Date: August 13, 2026
Hosted by: Jessica Mendoza
Reporters: Corey Driebush
Featured Guest: Ram Ruperti

---

Overview

This episode of The Journal. investigates how a data engineer, Ram Ruperti, believed he had struck gold by investing in SpaceX before its blockbuster IPO—only to later discover his shares had vanished. The story exposes the shadowy world of special purpose vehicles (SPVs), the layers of risk in pre-IPO investing, and raises big questions about Wall Street’s hottest private market deals.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Allure and Risk of Pre-IPO Deals

• Ram Ruperti’s Opportunity (00:05–01:04)

  • Ram, a data engineer, was tipped off by a friend about a chance to “buy into companies before they go public”—namely SpaceX.
  • Ruperti had invested in SPVs previously with modest and stable returns, so he trusted the process.

• How SPVs Work (01:32–06:29)

  • SPV stands for Special Purpose Vehicle: It's not direct stock ownership but rather a stake in a fund that holds shares of the underlying company.

  • “It’s like a trust exercise. You have to trust that they have the shares and will deliver them to you when they say they will.” — Corey Driebush [06:29]

  • SPVs create access for individual investors to “buzzy” companies before IPOs, but come with extra layers of abstraction, reliance on intermediaries, and are lightly regulated.

The Mechanics and Warnings of Multiple SPV Layers

• SPVs All the Way Down (07:24–09:54)
  • Ruperti invested $17,000 in an SPV called Late Stage Management.
  • Late Stage was not directly invested in SpaceX—it had bought exposure from another SPV, and that SPV was itself bundled and held by an offshore firm.
  • “Right, so it was like SPVs all the way down?” — Jessica Mendoza [09:27]
    “Yes.” — Corey Driebush

The IPO and the Hard Truth

• When the Party Didn’t Start (11:20–12:51)

  • In June, SpaceX debuts the biggest IPO in history, valued at $1.77 trillion.
  • Ram expects his stake (2,500 shares) to be worth over $300,000.
  • “I was thinking this is going to be, you know…it was a kind of fortune, right? You know, basically.” — Ram Ruperti [11:41]
  • He celebrates with his wife and receives congratulatory texts from friends.

• Discovery of the Missing Shares (12:51–14:39)

  • Ram can’t access his Late Stage account; when the portal is restored, he learns his SpaceX shares were sold back on December 31, 2024—well before the IPO.
  • Suddenly, his $300K windfall shrinks to just $45,450—deposited without his knowledge.
  • “He couldn’t access the portal and he got nervous when the portal came back online. His Late Stage account said for the first time that his SpaceX holdings were sold on December 31, 2024.” — Corey Driebush [12:51]
  • He never received any notice of the sale, and his tax documents indicated he still owned the shares.

Frustrations, Legal Action, and Broader Fallout

• Getting the Runaround (13:53–14:39)

  • Late Stage’s response is vague; an administrator promises a review but offers no answers.
  • The platform claims the account payout is all Ruperti is owed.

• Legal and Regulatory Questions (15:22–17:18)

  • Investors like Ruperti are told SPVs nearly always promise to hold stock until a “liquidity event” (like an IPO), making pre-IPO sales shocking.

  • Late Stage doesn’t respond to requests; its office is abandoned.

  • “If you are investing in something, you need to make sure that you own what you think you own. And it's hard to do, but the closer one is to the actual shares, the better it seems.” — Corey Driebush [16:10]

  • Ruperti hasn’t cashed out, believing he’s owed more; some investors have hired lawyers.

  • “I did not expect these things can happen in the US… I was amazed by the audacity of these people.” — Ram Ruperti [16:50]

  • At least four other investors share complaints about Late Stage’s SPVs.

The Lax Regulation of SPVs

• Why It's Such a Risky Market (17:18–18:05)

  • SPVs are “pretty lightly regulated… not subject to the same oversight as mutual funds. They sort of operate in a much more gray area.” — Corey Driebush [17:18]
  • They don’t require audited financials, investor lists, or SEC approval to raise money, making them fertile ground for problems and dispute.

• Implications for the IPO Market (18:05–19:25)

  • The episode underscores a two-tiered investment system: ultra-wealthy investors get special access to private deals, while regular people are lured in through SPVs—often without understanding the risks.
  • “Many people started ignoring the risks or the red flags of maybe this is very far removed. Maybe this won’t look like what I think it’s going to look like.” — Corey Driebush [18:05]
  • With more big IPOs ahead, concerns about SPVs are growing.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Trust Required in SPVs:
  "It's like a trust exercise. You're being told, you know, when this company goes public, we promise we will deliver these shares. You have to trust that."
  — Corey Driebush [06:29]

• On the Emotional Rollercoaster of Investors:
  "I was thinking this is going to be, you know, it was a kind of fortune, right?... Oh, yes, we did go out for dinner that day."
  — Ram Ruperti [11:41] [11:52]

• On Regulation Gaps:
  "SPVs are pretty lightly regulated. They're not subject to the same oversight as mutual funds say…They sort of operate in a much more gray area."
  — Corey Driebush [17:18]

• On Investor Lessons:
  "If you are investing in something, you need to make sure that you own what you think you own…The closer one is to the actual shares, the better it seems."
  — Corey Driebush [16:10]

• On the Broader Message:
  "There's sort of become almost a 2 stock market system. The stock market for the rich is the private markets. And SPVs grew from that. This feeling that if you're not the super wealthy, maybe you can gain access…And you were so desperate to be a part of that club...that many people started ignoring the risks."
  — Corey Driebush [18:05]

---

Key Moments and Timestamps

• [00:05] Ram Ruperti’s initial excitement about pre-IPO SpaceX investment
• [01:32] Explanation of SPVs and why investors turn to them
• [06:29] “Trust exercise” nature of SPV investing
• [09:27] Revelation of multiple SPV layers between Ruperti and actual SpaceX shares
• [11:20] SpaceX IPO, Ruperti’s anticipation of a payday
• [12:51] Discovery that shares were sold long before the IPO
• [14:15] Attempts to get answers from Late Stage Management
• [16:10] Legal perspective on how close you need to be to actual shares
• [17:18] Breakdown of how and why SPVs are so lightly regulated
• [18:05] Broader meaning: two-tiered markets and ignored risks

---

Summary & Takeaways

• SPVs can offer access to splashy investments but come with significant risks. The farther an investor is from direct stock ownership, the greater the exposure to miscommunication, mismanagement, or even potential fraud.
• Lack of regulation makes it difficult for investors to know what they truly own, or to get clear answers when things go wrong.
• As pre-IPO investing continues to attract everyday investors seeking windfalls, caution—and rigorous due diligence—are critical.
• This episode is a cautionary tale, underscoring the need to scrutinize any investment’s underlying structure, and to remember: if you aren’t close to the actual asset, you may find what you thought you owned vanishing when you need it most.

---

End of Summary.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

Back in 2020, a data engineer named Ram Ruperti was feeling lucky. He had gotten a chance to buy into one of the hottest tech companies in the world.

[Corey Driebush]

He was speaking to friends and one of them mentioned to him, hey, I have some opportunities to buy into companies before they go public. And top on his list was the opportunity maybe to buy shares of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Our colleague Corey Driebush spoke with Rupiretti about it.

[Ram Ruperti]

My friends knew that, you know, I invested in SpaceX for a long time, right wherever I go. They used to tease me, now you are a millionaire, you have this many stocks and all that stuff.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So, you know, because Ruperti got in As a pre IPO investor, it meant that whenever SpaceX went public, he was set to potentially make a lot of money.

[Corey Driebush]

When he bought into the shares in late 2020 and early 2021, the valuation of SpaceX was around $58 billion. So as that valuation grew, his plans grew as well. He one of his children is going to be a senior this fall in high school. So in his head, this will pay for that college education.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the way Ruperti was invested in SpaceX was pretty complicated. It was through something called a special purpose vehicle, or spv.

[Corey Driebush]

He wasn't buying the actual shares of the company. He was buying a share or an interest in a fund, and the fund supposedly held shares of the company.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So he was a little bit removed.

[Corey Driebush]

He was a little bit removed. And as we continue, we'll understand how far removed he ended up being.

[Jessica Mendoza]

SPVs can be a lucrative way to get access to private markets, but they can also be risky and they're mostly unregulated. When SpaceX went public earlier this year, lots of investors made bank. But Ruperti found out that his shares were missing from his account.

[Corey Driebush]

His dream of a windfall quickly turned into a bit of a logistical nightmare.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, August 13th. Coming up on the show, the SpaceX shares that vanished before investors could cash in.

[Harvey AI Sponsor]

This episode of the Journal is brought to you by. Harvey, an AI platform designed for legal and professional services. Built and tested by lawyers, Harvey is trusted by more than 60% of the AmLaw100. The platform dramatically reduces time spent on research, drafting and document review without sacrificing quality, all while meeting the highest industry standards for security and compliance. Harvey AI tailored for law. Visit Harvey AI to learn more and request a demo.

[Jessica Mendoza]

For about 25 years, SpaceX operated as a private company.

[Corey Driebush]

So private companies, they need a lot of money, especially private companies with as great of ambitions as SpaceX has, they need money to fund that. So throughout their growth as private companies, they sell shares to raise capital.

[Jessica Mendoza]

SpaceX invited an elite group of people to invest in the company by buying those shares.

[Corey Driebush]

So investors, venture capital funds, think family offices or other friends, as we've written about, friends of Musk himself were early backers in SpaceX. So every time SpaceX was doing a share sale, they were offered oftentimes first, the shares to purchase. Okay, But a rule that regulators have that the securities and Exchange Commission has is that you can only have up to 2,000 investors who are listed on what is called like your capitalization for a private company before you have to start putting out more financial disclosures. Otherwise you essentially are almost forced to become a public company.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So over time, SpaceX would go back to the same pool of investors who then found themselves with a lot of shares. And many of those investors realized they wanted to do something with them.

[Corey Driebush]

And maybe think about a venture capital firm who has bought in for many, many years. They don't need to buy another hundred million dollars worth of shares, but they don't want to miss out on that opportunity either. So they started to turn around and say, you know what? We will buy, give us $50 million worth of shares. Say, I'm just giving a hypothetical. We will create a fund,

[Jessica Mendoza]

a fund or special purpose vehicle where investors can put their private company shares, in this case SpaceX, and sell exposure, also called interest, to someone who isn't one of the company's millionaire investors.

[Corey Driebush]

It will sell interest to other investors who otherwise have no way of accessing SpaceX, aren't friends with Musk, don't have a connection, and they figured, oh, we're doing a service. Also, we're going to attach a nice little fee on there. So we're going to make money in the process too.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And ultimately what SPVs do is create an opportunity for more people to invest in buzzy companies before they go public. But SPVs aren't actually selling shares of a company. They're selling exposure to or interest in the company's shares.

[Corey Driebush]

As a lawyer described to me, it's like a trust exercise. You're being told, you know, when this company goes public, we promise we will deliver these shares. You have to trust that. You have to trust that they have the shares and that they will deliver them to you when they say they will.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And people can make money from SPVs. Even Rahm Ruberetti he'd invested in other companies through SPVs in the past, and in those cases things went smoothly.

[Corey Driebush]

Fees were taken out as to be expected, and he said he didn't actually make that much money, but he didn't lose money. And he felt that it displayed some trust that, okay, this works, this is what happens. And if it's a high flying stock, they have the chance to have made a lot of money.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But that's not what happened with Ruperti's investment in SpaceX.

[Corey Driebush]

This was an example of how things can go wrong.

[Jessica Mendoza]

To get exposure to SpaceX, Ruperti invested over $17,000 in an SPV run by a firm called Late Management. Okay, so tell me about Late Stage Management, this investment firm that Ruperti put money in. What do we know about it?

[Corey Driebush]

So Late Stage was based in New Jersey. It was founded in 2015 and it marketed itself to individual investors as a way to access the buzziest hot tech companies before they went public. It advertised that it only made money once a company's shares went public public. And so investors like Ruperti believed that their shares wouldn't be sold until after their IPOs.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And for the most part, everything seemed pretty legit to Ruperti. There was an online portal where he could look at his investments. Late Stage also sent him tax forms every year. But it turns out that Late Stage wasn't directly invested in SpaceX. It was actually invested in in another SPV.

[Corey Driebush]

So instead there were multiple layers between it and the actual SpaceX shares. If you remember when I told you that early investors have access to this SpaceX stock, they buy them, they put them in the funds and then they sell the interest. While sometimes somebody who buys that interest decides, we want to create our own fund and sell interest in that asset, pv. So that's a second layer removed. Sometimes there can be third layers or fourth layers as well. So the farther you get away from the actual SpaceX stock, the more complicated things get.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Right, so it was like SPVs all the way down?

[Corey Driebush]

Yes. From what we can understand and from what our reporting shows, a private offshore investment firm based in the Bahamas called Capital Truth acquired a portion of an SPV that owned pre IPOs SpaceX shares. It then appears to have repackaged the interests, sold them to Late Stage,

[Jessica Mendoza]

And that exposure was what Ruperti had purchased for years. He didn't realize how far removed he was.

[Corey Driebush]

And did you know that these were SPVs? Like, did they talk about that with you?

[Ram Ruperti]

Yeah, I was not really sure about that. It was spv.

[Corey Driebush]

You were not really sure I was not sure.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The reality was that Ruperti was layers away from owning SpaceX stock. That became clear to him when SpaceX went public and his shares were nowhere to be found. That's next.

[Optum/Uber Eats Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Optum. Healthcare doesn't always work great. If you ever waited on a refill or couldn't schedule an appointment, you get it. That's what Optum is changing. They're using data and technology to integrate patient care, pharmacy and everything else. So healthcare is connected, not complicated. That means cheaper prescriptions that are easier to get and care that looks at the whole person how you need it. Optum is making healthcare work as one for everyone. Learn [e-mail].

[Jessica Mendoza]

In June, SpaceX launched its IPO in one of the biggest public offerings in

[Corey Driebush]

history, setting the stage for what could become the largest stock market listing on record.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The company was valued at $1.77 trillion, and lots of people were excited about the possibility of making big money, including ram.

[Ram Ruperti]

Ruperti I was thinking this is going to be, you know, it was a kind of fortune, right? You know, basically.

[Corey Driebush]

Did you celebrate? Did you have like a fancy dinner with your wife?

[Ram Ruperti]

Oh, yes, we did go out for dinner that day.

[Corey Driebush]

Understandably. When he started hearing the potential valuations or how much SpaceX could be worth at its IPO, he got excited. Lots of zeros there. Lots of zeros. Trillion dollars. Who could imagine? He said the day of the ipo, many of his friends knew he had purchased shares in this SPV and were texting him, congratulating him. His neighbors were joking. When are you gonna throw a big party to celebrate? So there was a lot of excitement.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Ruperti estimated that he had 2,500 shares in SpaceX and that after the IPO, those shares would be worth more than $300,000. Shortly after SpaceX went public, Ruperti went online to look at his Late Stage account. But the portal was down.

[Corey Driebush]

He couldn't access the portal and he got nervous when the portal came back online. His Late Stage account said for the first time that his SpaceX holdings were sold on December 31, 2024.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That meant the shares of SpaceX he had exposure to had been sold a year and a half earlier, long before the ipo. This was news to ripperretti. He says he tried to get a hold of Late Stage.

[Corey Driebush]

He called Late Stage's mainline dozens of times, but he said no one answered. So on June 23, he wrote to Late Stage's email operations email address asking for clarification Noting that this update raised a lot of questions, he also added an administrator at a New Jersey accounting firm that handled Late Stages tax forms to the email chain. He just wanted another person to maybe be able to respond to him.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The tax administrator responded, telling Ruperti that they were conducting a comprehensive review. She said they would have information for him in a few months. He also got a message from Late Stage's main email address that told him that the tax administrator couldn't tell him anything about the online portal and that the portal was under maintenance.

[Corey Driebush]

And then three days later, the operations email sent a note saying the portal would be back up and working later that day. And when he logged on, his account showed he no longer held any SpaceX shares, but that his prior investment had resulted in $45,450 in his account, which he could claim

[Jessica Mendoza]

more than $45,000 isn't nothing. But remember, Ruperti believed he was going to get $300,000 because he thought his shares would be sold after SpaceX's IPO, not a year and a half before.

[Corey Driebush]

So they said he should have received an email at that time in September 2024. So Ruperti said he searched his spam, his junk email folder is trash. And he said he never received any communication from Late Stage about a sale in his stock and he hadn't received any proceeds. And his tax documents, which were reviewed by the journal from 2024 and 2025, said he still held the positions.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So can an SPV do that? Sell a share before the company goes public?

[Corey Driebush]

It all comes down to what their offering documents say, and most say provide a promise that it is. The plan is to hold on to the shares until a liquidity event, the company is acquired, or it goes public. So it is rarely an expectation that it would be sold ahead of time.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Late Stage didn't respond to repeated requests for comment. The Journal attempted to deliver questions to Late Stage's listed address, but a property manager at the building said the company moved out three years ago. So I guess, like, what ultimately happened to Ruperti?

[Corey Driebush]

I think that really, and this was described to me by a lawyer, that ultimately, if you are investing in something, you need to make sure that you own what you think you own. And it's hard to do, but the closer one is to the actual shares, the better it seems. That's what some legal experts have told me. It's hard to say what exactly happened with Ruperti, and that is now something that is being investigated.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Ruperti says he hasn't cashed out. What's in his late stage account because he believes he's owed more. Some investors have hired lawyers to fight for what they say they're owed.

[Ram Ruperti]

I'm from India originally, but I did not expect these things can happen in the US But I was amazed by the audacity of these people. You know, they could pull off something like this.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The Journal spoke to four other investors who shared similar complaints about late stage SPVs. Some, including Ruperti, have raised the issue with the SEC as to how all this could happen. Well, SPVs aren't really regulated that much.

[Corey Driebush]

SPVs are pretty lightly regulated. They're not subject to the same oversight as mutual funds say they aren't required to publicly report who their investors are or what their holdings are. And they aren't required to file audited financials or detailed income statements. And they don't even need SEC approval before they can raise money. So they sort of operate in a much more gray area, I would say.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And so like, what does their existence sort of tell us about the state of the IPO market or the ways that people want to or are able to invest their money?

[Corey Driebush]

I think it speaks to this, this excitement about risk. It seems that traders and investors want ways to have the potential to earn a lot of money faster. And also this recognition that pre IPO investing has enriched so many people, those lucky investors, they're millionaires, if not billionaires, from those investments. And there's sort of become almost a 2 stock market system. The stock market for the rich is the private markets. And SPVs grew from that. This feeling that if you're not the super wealthy, maybe you can gain access to SpaceX or OpenAI or Anthropic through these SPV funds. And you were so desperate to be a part of that club of pre IPO investors that many people started ignoring the risks or the red flags of maybe this is very far removed. Maybe this won't be. This won't look like what I think it's going to look like.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So in a season that is looking at a lot of big IPOs, I mean, could SPVs spell trouble or greater risk for people?

[Corey Driebush]

I think it remains to be seen. Going off of reader feedback from my story that published it seems there's a lot of concerns about SPVs that are currently out there. So I think we're going to be writing a lot more about SPVs in the coming months.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Thursday, August 13 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

[Optum/Uber Eats Sponsor]

You know those tiny back to school

[Corey Driebush]

emergencies that somehow become your problem? That's why I love Uber Eats. You can order school supplies, snacks and lunchbox essentials for $5 or less. So when your kid casually drops I don't like peanut butter anymore or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow, Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for Back to School today from your favorite brands like Aldi and staples on UberEats. Order now ends 97 $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies.

[Optum/Uber Eats Sponsor]

See App for details.