Quoted from YeOldPinPlayer:That's what a scammer would say to try and keep people from coming after scammers.

Quoted from KeeperUSA:

So are some pin collectors. Of course, no one on pinside has even fallen victim to a scammer. Do you remember Heighway pinball or some of the other pinball scammers who ripped people off? This can happen to anyone chasing a dream game.
Feel really sorry for the KLOV members and hope they get their money back.

Quoted from vicjw66:

He lives in West Virginia. Sounds like he got scammed to me.

Quoted from Anony:I remember when Howard Stern went PC and he changed the names for two regular guests, Gary and Wendy the retard. Both of them said they liked being called retard and didn't want to change their names, it was their identity. I thought that forcing them to change a name that they preferred was more offensive than assuming every retard is offended by the term and not allowing them to go by the name they want.
I used the word spaz on a youtube video I posted and got a long diatribe about how spaz is offensive to some group... being offended on behalf of someone who isn't offended by the word is always going to be bizarre to me. You could even argue that assuming an entire group of people are offended by a word is offensive in itself. Are they not individuals?

Quoted from flynnibus:

I wonder how many involved are 'big fish'... meaning people that were talked into larger bulk buys as a way to get the $$$ amount up. Instead of 100 people at $1k... get 10 people at 20k... kind of thing.

Quoted from Manimal:

I can tell you from direct personal experience, you would be lucky to get a federal agency to investigate for even 5M. feds are usually not the primary court of jurisdiction for such matters....they are primarily an assisting agency, and their involvement usually starts when asked by local authorities. Yes, they do take on some really high profile cases on their own, but that is not the norm for basic theft cases such as this. Contacting a federal prosecutor or the FBI, DOJ, etc. is not going to get you anything but a referral to the state or local authorities. If there is any shot at a case, they need to start with the state attorney general at the Oregon Dept of Justice. That is a state agency, and one of their specific authorities is over consumer protection. If by some miracle they decide to take a look, they can bring in the feds if needed.....but that would be a really miniscule chance in you know where, with all of the criminal activity they are working these days.

Quoted from Anony:

This is exactly what I was thinking in my post earlier. It went from a case of straight fraud to something else when he shipped that garbage and the fact that we're dealing with obscure video games that 99% of people aren't familiar makes it that much harder to sort out when trying to explain it to anyone involved.
And politics aside one thing that the current climate surrounding police has done is push the good cops out. I'm far from a police apologist, I've been a follower/supporter of PINAC for over a decade and think we need serious reform around policing, but when the cops get shit every minute of every day on the job it means the good ones are more likely to leave and the shit heads stick around. Whether they do a good or bad job these days they take shit just for being in uniform so if you have skills and are smart that's going to push you into the private sector. It means we're left with the lowest common denominator still on the job, the type who will find every excuse in the book to not do their job.

Quoted from Manimal:

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but i would guess many of those cases started with other factors involved. If this were a "sexier" theft such as bilking some poor old folks out of their life savings, or even more of a straight forward scam that was easier to prosecute, there might be more of a chance. Heck, maybe claim the fraudster kicked his neighbor's dog on the way to the bank.....and before you laugh at that comment, I can show you countless cases where people received a much harsher sentence for animal cruelty than the guy across the street got for beating up his neighbor. If you want to get the public opinion on your side and get someone to look at the case, involve animals or little children somehow !
I never say "never" in this world, but I did point out the reality of how likely it is to find anyone on a federal level willing to investigate or prosecute the case. There is always a chance a victim or group of victims can find the right person to talk to, but video games are a specialized field. I'm not saying the KLOV Scam buyers don't deserve the same protection under the law, but the truth is unless you find an investigator or prosecutor that is a collector, there is a significant effort that has to be undertaken to get them to understand the significance in what has been done. From the outside, they see a bunch of rich,
middle-aged guys that didn't get the video game they ordered, and they figure "cry me a river"...... Again., I am not saying it is right....I'm just saying it is reality in the world we are in right now. But with all of that said, I don't want to ever dissuade anyone from following up on any legal remedy that might have available to them. It's really the only viable option out there.

Quoted from Norcalpin:

No, they won't. They'll keep scamming and getting away with it. They know who to target...notice they didn't scam the hells angels? Let's all be real here...we pinball and arcade guys are a bunch of softies. It goes with the territory; you can't be in our hobbies and be a hard ass. There's a thread somewhere here where folks talk about what they do. Not one profession led me to believe someone could flip a switch and go Punisher all the sudden.

Quoted from thirdedition:

https://www.secretservice.gov/investigation
The U.S. Secret Service has a long and storied history of safeguarding America’s financial and payment systems from criminal exploitation. The agency was created in 1865 to combat the rise of counterfeit currency following the Civil War. As the U.S. financial system has evolved - from paper currency to plastic credit cards to, now, digital information - so too have our investigative responsibilities.
Today, Secret Service agents, professionals, and specialists work in field offices around the world to fight the 21st century’s financial crimes, which are increasingly conducted through cyberspace. These investigations continue to address counterfeit, which still undermines confidence in the U.S. dollar, but it is credit card fraud, wire and bank fraud, computer network breaches, ransomware, and other cyber-enabled financial crimes, that have become the focus of much of the Secret Service investigative work.

Quoted from Miguel351:

Plus, that's the only kind of "talkin' to" these kinds of people understand and or care about. With over 100 citations/arrests, it's obvious he doesn't care about law enforcement because nothing has ever really stuck for all that long. It's not like he's in jail right now. And with nothing really happening with this whole thing, he's just going to further refine his scam and keep doing it over and over.
It was mentioned before in this thread, but someone needs to employ the services of a certain biker gang to go take care of this.