Mark Cuban to 'Shark Tank' scam artists: 'I'm gonna crush you'

On a recent episode of NPR podcast "How I Built This," host Guy Raz asked Mark Cuban why he can be so, well, mean on "Shark Tank."

Cuban, who is a multibillionaire serial entrepreneur, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and a regular investor on the hit TV series "Shark Tank," answered that he's not always mean - in fact, there's one major determinant of how he acts on the show.

Here's Cuban:

"If there's an entrepreneur who's got their life tied up in something, I'm not going to be mean. I'm going to be supportive and I'll come up with suggestions, even if I'm not investing.

"But if you're trying to scam me, if you're trying to pull a quickie, or your product's a scam, I'm going to nail you. Because I know that people see these products and they'll go to buy them."

He added: "Those situations, I'm going to crush you."

As an example of a seeming scam artist's company, Cuban mentioned Pavlok. In the Season 7 finale, Maneesh Sethi appeared on "Shark Tank" to pitch the Pavlov wristband, which is designed to help users curb bad habits by shocking them either through a manual or automatic prompt.

During the episode, as Business Insider's Richard Feloni has reported, the sharks argued over the product's validity. Cuban called Sethi a con artist. Ultimately, Sethi turned down an offer from Kevin O'Leary and left without funding.

On "How I Built This," Cuban recalled that Sethi presented research on aversion therapy in general, and not on Pavlok's effectiveness specifically.

"I called them out on it," he told Raz. "Why don't you just use a rubber band?"

In a September 2016 "Shark Tank" roundtable discussion, Cuban said scam artists make up one of the three categories of entrepreneurs he sees on the show.

For example, as Feloni has reported, in Season 6, Cuban called Tycoon Real Estate founder Aaron McDaniel "scammy" because he thought McDaniel's business was taking advantage of unsophisticated people.

In Season 3, Cuban labeled Esso Watches, which supposedly uses negative ion technology to improve decision-making and balance, a scam as well.

On the other hand, if Cuban detects that you've put honest effort into building a business, he'll play nice - even if he doesn't plan to invest. "If your heart's into it, and your heart's in the right place, and your effort's there," he told Raz, "I'm going to support you."