Ashes of Creation Investor Alleges Founder Orchestrated $140 Million Fraud

Earlier this month, the developer behind the crowdfunded fantasy MMORPG Ashes of Creation, Intrepid Studios, suddenly collapsed, leaving backers and fans baffled less than two months after the game’s launch on Steam Early Access.

As it turns out, though, the project had been teetering on the brink of collapse for a very long time. YouTuber NefasQS, AKA Casper, has managed to interview one of the game’s main investors, Jason Caramanis, who has come forward to reveal what he alleges is a massive, years-long fraud perpetrated by Steven Sharif, founder and creative director of Intrepid Studios. Caramanis is a 57-year-old multi-level marketing (MLM) entrepreneur who made his fortune primarily through Jeunesse Global, a Florida-based anti-aging skincare and supplements MLM company, where he achieved the rank of Imperial Diamond Director. He has also joined other MLM companies over the years, and in the video, acknowledges being “at the top of the pyramids”. Caramanis claims to have lost $12.5 million of his own money by investing in Ashes of Creation and believing in Sharif’s empty promises.

A Web of Deception

At the heart of his allegations is a key devastating claim: Steven Sharif never invested a penny of his own money into Intrepid Studios, despite publicly claiming to have contributed between $30 million and $60 million over the years. According to QuickBooks records recently obtained by Caramanis, not only did Sharif fail to invest personal capital despite claims to the contrary, but he and his partner, John Moore, who was listed as the company’s Chief Financial Officer, systematically withdrew $500,000 per year in salary payments.

The Money Trail

While public reports suggested the company had raised between $109 million and $115 million, Caramanis claims the actual figure approaches $140 million when accounting for Kickstarter funds, Commerce Bank loans, PPP loans, and various private investments. including $2 million from Tom Alkazin, a 70-something family friend. Those were Alkazin’s and his wife’s life savings, which Caramanis says he regrets. It should be noted that Alkazin is also an MLM entrepreneur who made his fortune via pyramid schemes; unlike Caramanis, who was never found liable in lawsuits, Alkazin settled with the Federal Trade Commission to pay $1.2 million (with a larger judgment of over $6.7 million partially suspended), alongside a forfeiture of 1.61 acres in San Marcos, California. Alkazin was also permanently banned from engaging in pyramid schemes and any future MLM activities.

But the single largest victim of Intrepid Studios and the whole Ashes of Creation project is apparently Robert Dawson, a wealthy investor whom Caramanis introduced to Sharif several years ago in Las Vegas. According to Caramanis, between 2022 and 2025, Dawson injected approximately $80 million of his own capital into the failing company.

No Transparency, No Governance

Despite contractual obligations and investor demands, Sharif allegedly refused to provide books and records, tax returns, or QuickBooks files for 9 years. Caramanis claims he was promised a board seat in 2019 but never attended a single board meeting for a straightforward reason: because none were ever called.

Do you know how many board meetings I’ve been to? Zero. Do you know how many board meetings he’s ever called? Zero. The only thing that guy’s good at is bullshitting people. And he might be a good creative director. He might be a good gamer, but everything else is full of [ __ ].

Even a lawsuit filed by Caramanis demanding access to company records yielded nothing. He allegedly obtained the QuickBooks files only three days before the livestream, provided by Dawson’s accountant, Ryan Ogden, after months of forensic review.

The Mansion and the Lies

The California mansion from which Sharif regularly livestreamed updates on Ashes of Creation’s development became a symbol of the alleged deception. Caramanis claims Sharif and John were originally renting the property, not owning it as many assumed. When they eventually purchased it, the down payment allegedly came from company funds, or rather, the very salaries they were paying themselves while claiming to be “losing everything” on the game.

The house drama reached a crisis point in 2024 when the original owner’s mortgage came due and Sharif couldn’t refinance due to Commerce Bank holding a second position as collateral for company loans. Facing foreclosure, Sharif turned to his investors once more, and Caramanis and Dawson came to his rescue again by contributing another $2 million to save the house.

A Company Burning Money

By 2025, Intrepid Studios was hemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. The company’s monthly operating expenses exceeded $2.5 million, while revenue from in-game purchases ranged from $150,000 to $200,000, resulting in a monthly loss of around $2.3 million. At this burn rate, even Dawson’s massive capital infusions couldn’t sustain the operation indefinitely.

The situation became dire in late 2024. Multiple payrolls were missed around the Alpha 2 release, which, as those who followed the game already know, got delayed by several weeks. Moreover, Alpha 2 bonuses, which had been promised to employees three months in advance, were delayed indefinitely.

The financial crisis affected more than just employees, though. In December 2025, cloud services provider SADA Systems filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court, seeking $852,630 for nearly three years of unpaid Google Cloud Platform services dating back to September 2022. The services were cancelled in April 2025 due to non-payment.

When confronted about the lawsuit on Reddit in December 2025, Sharif dismissed it as ‘peanuts’, claiming that ‘$800k is a week’s worth of opex for the studio‘ and suggesting that such disputes were fairly common and would be resolved in a similar manner to other disputes Intrepid had seen before. Yet, mere weeks later, the company was unable to process payroll and had to shut down entirely. The SADA case revealed that Intrepid had been technically insolvent for years, unable to pay even basic infrastructure bills for cloud services, yet still kept raising millions from new investors, including most of Dawson’s $80 million between 2022 and 2025, according to Caramanis’s testimony.

Under the light of this new information, the timing of the December 2025 Steam Early Access launch now appears even more strategic. The release technically satisfied the Kickstarter promises, as we had postulated in our previous report, blocked refund claims, and generated an estimated $3 to 5 million in revenue based on 220K-320K copies sold. It also provided the final pool of money that Sharif would seize through Commerce Bank just two months later.

The Final Betrayal

By January 2026, Robert Dawson had reached his breaking point. Having invested $80 million with no return and facing continued operational losses, he initiated what Caramanis describes as a reasonable restructuring plan. The proposal called for 60-70% staff layoffs to make the company financially sustainable, a new funding round requiring all existing investors to contribute 25% of their previous investment to maintain equity, and a new role for Sharif as Creative Director with earnout-based equity tied to company performance rather than immediate ownership.

Sharif, however, flat-out refused. Caramanis revealed that he demanded immediate equity despite having contributed no capital. When negotiations failed, Sharif allegedly took action that would destroy the company entirely.

Between approximately January 26 and 31, Sharif resigned as Creative Director and executed what Caramanis calls an act of sabotage. He had Commerce Bank send a letter to Valve claiming the Steam revenue from the December early access launch, approximately $3.7 million, that had been earmarked for the February 1st payroll. This money was instead used to pay off Commerce Bank’s loan secured by Sharif’s house, releasing $1.5 to $1.6 million in escrow to him personally. The seizure of funds left the company unable to make payroll and effectively bankrupted it. Caramanis portrays Steven’s seizure of the Steam revenue as a deliberate act of sabotage, thus destroying the company rather than accepting the performance-based compensation proposed by main investor Robert Dawson.

The Human Cost

Beyond the staggering financial losses, the human toll is immeasurable. As mentioned earlier, Tom and Bethany Alkazin, now in their seventies, lost their $2 million life savings and face financial problems they’ll likely “never come back from,” according to Caramanis. He himself admits to crying at night and breaking down during a dinner with Dawson in Beverly Hills, when the weight of the losses and betrayal finally overwhelmed him.

Ultimately, Caramanis can bounce back from this, but others won’t be able to. The company’s employees, many of whom believed in the project and worked tirelessly to bring it to fruition, found themselves unpaid and betrayed. The gaming community, which had invested not just money but years of hope and anticipation, could just watch as their dream of a promising new MMORPG collapsed.

What Comes Next

Robert Dawson now controls the Ashes of Creation intellectual property through foreclosure proceedings and his position as a secured creditor. Caramanis holds first-position UCC filings that predate Commerce Bank’s involvement. Multiple lawsuits are reportedly imminent, including from TFE Games (which invested $5 million), Commerce Bank (which Caramanis claims was defrauded with false revenue reports), and numerous other investors. Caramanis alleges that Sharif committed federal crimes by booking investor loans as revenue on tax returns. It’s a claim he says he can prove with documentation, including 380 pages of text messages, emails demanding financial records, UCC filings, contracts, QuickBooks files showing cash flows, and correspondence with Commerce Bank. He has offered to share these materials with content creators and the community to substantiate his claims:

There’s nothing I’m saying that is slanderous or libelous about Stephen. He’s a pathological nutcase liar. And guess what? You’re going to see numerous lawsuits come out against him for fraud, for whatever else. All this is going to come out in litigation.

Caramanis believes that the rest of Intrepid’s employees were also victims of Sharif’s alleged deceptions. His anger is directed solely at Sharif, his partner John, and Sharif’s mother, all of whom he accuses of being complicit in the fraud.

As for the actual game, Dawson is reportedly exploring options to continue developing Ashes of Creation, but key technical staff allegedly refuse to communicate with him, having been “poisoned” against investors by Sharif, claimed Caramanis. Meanwhile, Sharif reportedly continues to moderate the official Discord server, timing out critics and maintaining his connection to the community. Throughout the interview, Caramanis painted a picture of systematic psychological manipulation:

Go look up NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It describes him to a T. He’s the most narcissistic tool I’ve ever met in my entire life.

The End of a Dream

For the thousands of Ashes of Creation supporters who dreamed of playing a polished, final version of the ambitious MMORPG, which sought to bring about “the rebirth of the genre“, and for the investors who lost millions believing in that dream, the allegations paint a cautionary tale about trust, transparency, and the devastating consequences when both are absent. The truth of these allegations will ultimately be determined in courtrooms, but regardless of the legal outcomes, the collapse of Intrepid Studios may enter the history books as one of the most spectacular failures in the gaming industry.

Steven Sharif hasn’t publicly responded yet to the allegations shared by Caramanis. On Reddit, he hasn’t been active since Friday, January 23; on Discord, he posted the now-infamous statement on January 31, revealing to the community that he resigned because he ‘could not ethically agree with or carry out‘ the board’s directions. Of course, should he provide his side of the story, we’ll update this report accordingly.

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