Lolz! Well, he certainly has the JPop persecution complex down pat......

Yes, you are correct. But what about fraud to the tune of over a million dollars?
I don't see the police beating down his door with an arrest warrant.
Bernie maddof went to prison for basically the same thing.
Yet jpop and Kevin from skit b get a free pass.
Not to mention the worthless piles of dog shit who came on here again and again defending jpop and stating time and time again that mg was 90% complete and they had seen it and played it?
They are also guilty of committing fraud. Yet they get to slither off into the night without any accountability.
Justice needs to come soon or someone will say enough and take matters into their own hands.
This is human nature.

OK folks...enough. We don't permit any talk about showing up, demanding money, etc. That stuff can really easily lead to violence. The entire mod team get it...people are angry and rightly so. But you need to stop the talk about showing up.
Anything along those lines...talking about confronting John. Talking about "what if" someone did that.

Anything along those lines is not OK here. Consider this the reminder. Moving forward, posts along this vein are going to lead to ejects.

Not exactly a free pass.

If pinball is your life, and now you can NEVER go to an expo again, or NEVER work for a company designing pinball machines again, that comes with great costs, both financially and mentally.

And for jpop, that means that his legacy is forever destroyed.

No fond memories for him like Steve Kordek or Gorden Morison.

-

We all knew there was risk in buying a product from a brand new company.

94% of all new businesses go under within the first 3 years. Why would any of us assume that something as complex as a pinball company would be immune to that well known fact?

JJP has had been forced to seek additional funding several times to keep from going bankrupt. And that is with MANY TIMES the capital that Jpop collected.

So assuming you are willing to take "justice" into your own hands, are you ready to do time in prison for that justice you seek?

Call ftd. Send him flowers and a bill?

Oh, I totally agree with what you say. I'm just saying there are people out there that at a point lack good judgement and may do something stupid. Like act out in a violent manor. I'm not saying its a good idea. I'm saying it is a possibility.
I would rather see this resolved in court.

How about a deep dish pizza from Giordano's? The one on Barrington Road North of Irving Park can deliver to him.

is this good pizza? if so, then screw him. send it to me.

Send a few Dominos Pizzas

C'mon man! We were trying to keep this civil....

I ment send a bill for what you gave him for a game or games. Not the flowers.
It takes all the fun out of it when I have to explain it.
Thank god I don't have to have the birds and bees talk with some of you.

I'd rather take the punch in the face than be sent a Chicago pizza. Its basically a lasagne sandwich.

Well, I waited and I can still access the thread. I guess Dominos Pizza has not yet been classified as a WMD.

Sign the flowers "Love Pinside!!"

Why should he pay anybody back?

His victims are willing to let him run away with the money, even though what he's done is clearly criminal.

A civil lawsuit doesn't mean squat. Worst case he declares bankruptcy and starts over. Everybody thinks he's crazy but he's actually playing the perfect role to pretend he's still doing stuff. Everybody would have been paid if his victims had lobbied for criminal investigation/prosecution. I spoke to a few of the people who paid him. They all have weird personal reasons for not wanting to come forward. He picked a good group of people to take advantage of. None of them are willing to inconvenience themselves enough to hold him criminally-accountable - and make no mistake, he could be if his victims weren't so apathetic. So be it.

This.

Well I came back to this topic as the girls of Pinball was locked up. Now it looks like this one will be soon too. Sad.

I remember a TV qoute. Someone does you wrong don't put matters into your own hands, take em to court.

Was that judge wapner? Peoples court??

hahaha this made me LOL.

I had to work a 16.5 hour day yesterday and the boss bought pizza. A stack of dominos. I are appreciated!

The original People's Court had an awesome theme. Wapner was the man.

Hired goons ??BR8Slj-CEAElCOp.jpeg

I am assuming he would be happy to give me something deemed of equal value to what he owes and then i would leave. Nobody would be stealing anything.

Probably nicer than a Glasgow kiss.

But, yep, agree with the above posts that due legal process through the courts should be followed, and is being. I have zero time for illegality, or potential illegality, of turning up etc etc.

Google it.

You are 100% wrong - about there being no attempt to hold him criminally responsible. You are also 100% wrong about the impact of civil proceedings against him, his wife, and all his companies.

I am suing. I gave gone as far as I can with the FBI, the locals, and the state AG. I have one more criminal card to play which I will keep close to the vest until financial blood is already spilling.

You think you can do better? Send him a deposit for AIW and start legal proceedings to recover your money. I bet you can get in for $500.

Yes, in addition to the civil case(s), various investigations are ongoing which may result in criminal cases. These things take time. But Mr Popadiuk, his wife and his companies will not get away with this. Actions have consequences, as he will learn.

Lets hope this is true.

I'd estimate the MG prototype could fetch 20-30k at an auction. Nothing else in his shop would even be remotely close to that in value, prosumer CNC and 3D printers don't hold much value, wide format printers hold none, and his Macs are old.

The rest is a bunch of hand tools and junk.

He is not going to happily give you anything, 'cept shit.

I hope the case is still open with the FBI and others. It would be depressing to hear they are not following up on this.

I'd be surprised if it brought in 2-3k at auction. I understand it's a part of pinball history, sad as that is, but it's toxic. I wouldn't take it for free.

You know the FBI has no knowledge about pinball production.

Some low level investigator looked at the website, saw that Jpus is still posting that he is working on this and that in the blog, and went on to the next case.

Even when he finally closes up shop, he would just tell any investigator "Hey, I really tried, but my whole company failed, and I never could find an angel investor".

-

How many local gyms open and sell people three year Platinum Memberships for $2000 and then promptly go out of business 4 months latter?

The FBI is not going to ever pursue any of those, and thousands of people lose their cash at every location.

dam, looks like I need to keep an eye on auctions in the bartlett area then

You're right. The only benefit I see to showing up at his office is to try and wrangle some answers out of him, but even that is unlikely.

His site was down for a bit now seems to up again. No mention of costs or price. Kind of a useless site if ya ask me.
John's finger paint shoppe. Oh a foamy stuff.

wide format printers hold none
My brother just told me that as well I was kind of surprised.

Oops double post.

Well thanks jonnyo for the tune. Yes really good.

My feelings exactly. I was shocked that statement was made.

Maybe a party at the Nugent ranch and uncle Ted could blow that POS sky high.

I could maybe see it worth some big money to a company that would make it into an emulation app. And sell to several million people for a couple bucks. But the game rules and features are still unfinished, unclear and it really should just be buried.

You could bury it where they buried all the et Atari Games in the desert.
Then in 30 years someone can make a documentary about digging it up.

Anybody here old enough to remember Amboy Duke, Incorporated of Hanover, Michigan?

I wouldn't have the standing the other people have if I sent him money. Not the same thing.

If I was "100% wrong" then the Chicago Attorney General would be launching an investigation, the FBI would have raided his place and taken all his computers and records.

I've read over this thread. The general consensus is, "we can't do anything because look at this other company and they didn't do anything about them..."

If enough people contacted the right people both locally and nationally, there would be a big investigation. I made a list of things to do for one of the victims, but he didn't want the hassle.

If I had been one of the people who had been screwed, there would be an investigation. I'd have called all the local news people and bugged them regularly until they did a story on it. I'd have plastered flyers everywhere; I'd have contacted the FBI, the AG here there and everywhere. If you make a big enough stink, they do something. You can't take peoples' money and screw them. It's illegal. The reason criminal charges are not being pursued is because the enforcement agencies don't have it as a high priority. But the people have the ability to make it a high priority if they make a big enough stink about it. It all comes back to the fact that the victims aren't willing to fight enough for justice. That's the way it is. It doesn't have to be that way, but that's how it's going down.

If you called the FBI, of course they're going to blow you off. But if you get the media involved and you're relentless; if you call attention to how local law enforcement are "letting people rip consumers off and not taking action" they will be forced to respond.

The civil case? What's going to happen with that? The law firm will get more money than anybody else. If there's any money to be had. The only real solution has always been lobby for a criminal investigation, and what are people talking about instead? Sending them pizzas and bugging JPop in public or at his office. Not the right approach for justice.

People think there's nothing that can be done... there's always something that can be done...

Here are a few examples of things I've done when I've been screwed by companies.. much bigger companies where I was much less important...

I hired a company to do some leveling for my house. They came out and jacked up part of the house and broke the brick facade on my property. I argued that was too much damage. They said, "Oh well, it's in the contract that we're not responsible for any damage of that nature.." I called the head of the local franchise. They told me they couldn't do anything about it.

So I registered a domain name (theircompanynameSUCKS.com) and I put up before and after pictures of my house. Then I called their home office and said, "check out the web site I did because your local franchise wouldn't help me fix the damage they did.." Within two weeks I got a check for three times the amount of money I paid them to fix my property.

A few years later I was looking at real estate in a rural area of the country. One prerequisite was that I needed high speed Internet, so when I found a piece of property I wanted, I called the local ISP/telco to inquire if I could get DSL there. They said yes, so I purchased the property and ordered DSL. It kept getting cancelled and I eventually was told, "Yea, you're too far out, we can't provide you DSL." Well, that's not what your reps told me... they said, "Yea, well they were wrong. Sorry!"

I guess at that point I could have just left things at that.

Instead, I drafted a letter outlining my situation. I researched who was on the board of directors for this super large telecom company, and I send e-mails to every member on the board and all their executive staff.

Three days later I got a phone call from the Vice President of the company and he said, "We'll get you taken care of."

If somebody does you wrong, there is always a way to make it right IF you're willing to not let yourself be railroaded.

The Attorney General of Chicago is an elected official. He cares about his reputation. If there's a movement to make him seem unable to take care of problems in the area, he WILL act. If he thinks the people JPop screwed over are unimportant, the he won't do anything. So it's up to his victims to make sure taking action is necessary. This is how things get done. If the local action reporter does a story on a business in area taking peoples money and screwing them over... they're going to ask the AG what they're doing about it. I guarantee you on camera, the guy won't go, "We don't care."

I've also heard stories where people will order a T-1 line for a month, then cancel it. In order to provide a T-1 line, that requires them to run the lines and equipment. Then since the backbone is there, you can order a more affordable service like DSL.

LOL, that's clever! I never thought of that.

In this rural area where I got DSL hooked up, I'm now known as "The strange man who brought Internet to the country." ha ha

I think all the country people think I'm some high-ranking government official because I got the hook up when none of them couldn't.

But in reality, if you make enough noise, you can make things happen.

I remember a friend of mind was having trouble with his telephone/internet service through Bellsouth. He felt like he couldn't get anything accomplished. I said, "Why don't you go downtown to the main BellSouth office and wait outside to speak to the president?" He was like, "Are you crazy? Why would they see me?" I said, just sit in the office. At some point they have to come out and you can corner them. So he did that, and got a short audience with one of the very high-ups, and after that, he had his own high-level Bellsouth representative assigned to him. Whatever he needed, was taken care of. The executive probably said something like, "Do whatever you have to so I never see that person again..." lol

Always reading! Always watching!

Get to ordering that "T-1 Line". You're gonna need it for the folks accessing that seminar.

If this were in Australia one of the current affairs programs would have loved this story, they love going after people who's taken money.

I dont think comparing a telco or a franchise with lots of $$ to JPop is really relevant. He can send a check for 3x the amount of a pin too but it would bounce.

Eeek, most businesses that have a pre-order model do take money. What are they going to report on, new business fails and investors lose money?

Were they investors or were they buying a product?