Remember that 16-foot tall, futuristic looking bus designed to reduce traffic congestion by straddling roads in China as passenger cars glided underneath? You might have seen a video of the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus, online — the concept has been floating around since as early as 2010 and a prototype was successfully tested in August 2016. But now that effort has crashed and burned, as 32 people connected to the project have been arrested by Chinese authorities on suspicion of illegal fundraising, reports The New York Times.

All 32 worked at Huaying Kailai, an online financing platform that allowed people to invest in TEB Technology Development, the company that purchased the patent for the bus. Huaying Kailai projected an annual return of 12 percent for the elevated bus company.

SupChina, an English language Chinese news blog, wrote:

Huaying Kailai 华赢凯来, the parent company of TEB Tech, which was to produce the bus, had reportedly raised billions of yuan online by convincing investors that they were getting in on the ground floor of the next big thing. But it seems that the company has spent less than 200 million yuan ($29.2 million) on research and development. There was also confusion about whether the project had ever been approved by local authorities, as many government departments denied any relationship. Critics also questioned the feasibility of the concept: how the bus would turn corners, whether it was strong enough to sustain its own weight and that of passengers, and how long its battery would last.

The Times reported that one of its reporters had witnessed investors stopping by the Huaying Kailai office and leaving with “gifts and grocery bags full of cash.”

Zhang Wei, the director of development and at the company that created the bus, told a New York Times reporter there was nothing fishy going on. “We are just a private tech company,” he said. “We are not a briefcase company for illegal fund-raising.”