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By Sarah McBride, Bloomberg News

SAN FRANCISCO — Brian Wong, co-founder of mobile advertising network Kiip Inc., has held a high profile in Silicon Valley since becoming one of the youngest people, at age 19, to receive venture capital funding for a startup.

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Now he could become a cautionary tale.

Wong, a 27-year-old Vancouver native and UBC graduate at age 18, was indicted by a grand jury Friday on felony charges of sexual assault. The indictment stems from events during an evening at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, three years ago that Wong and his date remember very differently.

“Brian Wong is innocent of this three-year-old baseless accusation levelled against him,” Wong’s lawyer, Sam Bassett, said in a statement.

Wong maintains that the two met on the app Tinder and had a first date that ended in consensual sexual activity, and that on the second date “she falsely complained of this activity being non-consensual.”

“The evidence will show that Mr. Wong acted appropriately at all times,” Bassett said.

The situation marks the latest in a series of incidents that underscore the difficult environment for women in Silicon Valley. They include revelations this year over payouts to two executives at Alphabet’s Google who left in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations and a $10-million settlement last year of harassment and discrimination claims at Uber Technologies Inc., as well as troubling behaviour by venture capitalists at several firms.