Smart ring CEO found guilty of bilking millions from tech investors

The CEO of a California tech company has been found guilty of using her former business partner’s patented design to bilk investors out of millions of dollars, officials announced last week.  

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According to a Sept. 25 news release from the Central District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office, 59-year-old Michelle Bisnoff, aka Michelle Angeline Silverstein, a Florida woman who formerly lived in the Pacific Palisades and Santa Barbara, lied to investors about owning the patent to “smart rings” that stored credit card information. After forming the wearable tech company Esos Inc. and soliciting investors, she fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in funding from around 2017 to about 2023, a complaint filed in 2024 says.

Instead of using the funds for the tech operation, however, Bisnoff used them to pay about $15,000 in monthly rent at her luxury residence in the Pacific Palisades, as well as fund her American Express card, the court documents say. Out of the $2.1 million in investor funds that she obtained, Bisnoff used about $775,000 to pay off previous investors while paying over $700,000 in rent and funneling $300,000 to her personal accounts, the complaint continues. 

Despite promises to produce the rings for major retailers like Target and Walmart —  as well as receive funding from Apple and form a business partnership with Middle Earth Enterprises, which controls the Lord of the Rings brand — none of these deals ever materialized, the 2026 press release says. 

“In fact, Esos had little business revenue, no agreements with Target, had sold just six rings on Walmart.com, three of which were returned,” it says. When questioned by officials, Bisnoff provided “dog-ate-my-homework excuses” and “bogus explanations” behind the funding, the release says, including claims of terminal cancer, according to court documents. Similar to Oura, the sleek smart ring that tracks health metrics, Esos smart rings were supposed to provide contactless payment without batteries or Wi-Fi.

According to the 2024 complaint, at one point, Bisnoff asked one of the unidentified investors, a doctor, to sign a letter confirming she had uterine cancer to avoid in-person court proceedings for another lawsuit she was involved in. Upon further investigation, the doctor and Esos investor discovered that there were no medical records containing information about a cancer diagnosis or treatment plan, the complaint says. A lengthy statement on Esos’ website says that “the government has no evidence that she was not ill,” and that Bisnoff provided the government with “HIPPA” documents. 

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Years earlier, Esos sued Joseph Prencipe, an early Esos business partner who originally patented the smart ring technology, the statement on the company’s website says. After getting sued, Prencipe allegedly “threatened to kill Ms. Silverstein” and “sought the services of people to do so,” resulting in a five-year restraining order, the statement continues. The “actual Esos story” is also purportedly in production for a multi-part TV series. 

Michael Freedman, who is listed as Esos’ press representative, refused to address these serious allegations or provide any substantiating evidence to SFGATE. 

A sentencing hearing for Bisnoff is scheduled on Jan. 21, 2027. A jury found her guilty in September of multiple counts of securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering and one count of identity theft, among other charges. Each count of securities and wire fraud carries a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison.