This thread should be a sticky.

This isn’t some provincial “village” BBS forum.

There are tens of thousands of pinsiders and they need to be protected from Amusement Scam of America.

Isn’t today the day the big “How I’m gonna pay you all back” email is supposed to drop? Hope someone posts it.

This is a lie. The game doesn't exist, neither does the "other customer." Just more lies. Like the Star Wars LE he couldn't sell because "the board was bad."

Lies, lies, lies. Thanks for posting.

It's just amazing how easy lying comes to some people.

SMDH at invoking the tired "cancel culture" trope here. Give me an Fn break. Might as well say locking up bank robbers is "cancel culture." Fairly reasonable (if wildly inaccurate) post until that bullshit came along.

There is no explanation that excuses selling and accepting money for "they'll be ready in 30 days" Aliens in 2019. The only possible explanation is that it was a scam.

Amusement Scam of America would be the only pinball vendor who didn't profit during the Pandemic. Even if part of his business was selling to ops, there's MORE than enough slack to be made up by the enthusiastic herd of new pinball buyers entering the market daily.

Can someone name another pinball "distributor" who has even hinted at trouble in the past year, much less stopped delivering games that were paid for or pulling bait and switches like this? Pretty sure they are all taking nightly baths in cash and Dom Pergnion 1952, yet somehow this guy is destroyed by a pandemic that has all the other distributors printing money.

This bad excuse stinks worse than a Florida swamp and everybody knows it - just like all the other excuses people have written about.

I’ll buy anything from a guy naked Curly.

Some spell check errors you just have to Leave.

I’m a victim of circumstance !!!

Quite an about face here. You went from “I’m gonna let the cat out of the bag!!!” To “hey everybody back off this guy is cool!”

Charles Ponzi paid back plenty of people, by the way, until the day his scam completely collapsed. Get back to us after the vaunted “13 month plan” is complete and everybody is paid back in full.

It's shit like this that makes me happy that I've managed to enjoy this hobby by carving out a nice niche buying and selling used machines for 20 years.

The whole NIB rat race seems absolutely miserable. Between the insane cost, waiting, deposits, scams, and virtually everybody who actually receives a game being thrown into a vortex of despair by every perceived flaw or defect on their brand new game, I just don't see where the fun is. Seems like a hobby for masochists with too much disposable income.

Florida has been "open" during almost the entire pandemic, cause, ya know, FLorida.

Give the COVID excuse a rest. It's 100 percent bullshit. The scammy behavior predates COVID by at least two years, it's documented.

Everything is bigger in Texas. If you are gonna get scammed, you gotta go all in!!!!

Precisely.

The ASOA "Alien Remake" that Ice was shilling almost two years ago and was literally betting would be out in a matter of months had NOTHING to do with the Italian Alien remake that may one day see the light of day. It was almost certainly a complete fabrication from the mind of ASOA.

I don't see how anybody can read this testimony and think anything different:

Bill said:

"The reason I gave him so much money and trusted him was because he had sold me a couple of pinball machines at a good discount prior to his convincing me to pay him in full for an Alien Remake, for which I paid him on 4/17/2019"

"In March [2019] he told me that he had a couple of Alien remakes in his “warehouse” and that he was involved with the testing and development phase of the pin. In April [2019] he told me that Alien would be shipped within 30 to 60 days so I sent him the money."

Ice - or anybody else who was sold this imaginary 2019 Alien - could possibly help clear up some of these details. For starters, was ASOA telling everybody these were gonna built in Italy? Was he telling people CGC was going to produce them, as was the popular rumor at the time? Did he provide any photos or any other actual evidence that anything was doing on the Alien Remake front back in March, 2019?

I’m still leaning toward theft / insurance fraud / some other bush league grift than this convoluted “undercutting the dealers” or “arbitrage” schemes you guys keep bandying around, which don’t make any fuggin sense when you consider the tiny profit margins distributors make on pinball machines.

Either way it really doesn’t matter. Well probably never know as it’s unlikely this ever goes to court. Amusement Scam of America has been called out and exposed and that should be the end of it. Hopefully he pays everybody back and moves on to some other grift far away from our beloved hobby.

I just can't square "good intentions" with lying about an imaginary Alien remake.

This is some Costanza-level lying shit.

"Not only is CGC (not some Italians as it turned out) remaking this thing, I've got two of them in my warehouse and I'm doing all sorts of testing for them! It'll be ready in 30 days! SEND ME MONEY!"

Anybody willing to shovel that amount of bullshit to solicit money hasn't had any good intentions for a very long time. He said he actually had two of these things in Florida!!!!

The general rule is get scammed first, google later.

At the very least, people who are owed money here should be happy he's still soliciting funds with which he may scam from new people so he can pay them back.

Sounds to me like ASOA bought another month by parceling out a little bit of cash and a whole lot of promises. Don't expect anybody to chime in again until the next deadline comes and goes without payment #2 arriving.

Obviously. Haven't understood the fixation on some distributor conspiracy, it boggles the mind. The margins are simply too small. Why get in bed with this loser in some shady scheme to add like 50 bucks to your bottom line?

Please don't answer that Elvis. Really. We've had enough.

Isn't the BBB kind of useless? Like what the fuck is it anyway?

It's where people left bad reviews before google. Surprised it still exists, really.

I have zero doubt Amusement Scam is still scamming fresh victims. There's a mad rush on pinball machines now among the civilians and most of them won't search ASOA here, and most of them won't even google ASOA. They'll google "pinball" and his competent, legit-looking web site will come up and they'll send him thousands of dollars. I bet they'll start trickling in here in the months to come, horrified when they come across this thread.

We know he’s paid back some or all of the stolen money to 3 people.

Can only imagine how many dozens of others are in the same boat as above.

You would have to have your head examined sending him money for anything, ever again.

It's nice that he's paying people back but let's not get carried away. You'd seriously have to be a mental patient to consider sending him any additional money for any additional games at this point.

There's a other million people selling NIB pinball machines. Why take the chance?

Thanks for making it clear how you feel, and that you didn't allow yourself to be forced to endorse this jackass as a condition for getting paid back.

It's been said many times, but just because a few scammed Pinsiders got their money back doesn't mean everybody did. Pinside is just the tip of the iceberg and there's doubtlessly many more people who we've never heard of who were victimized in this con, likely to help pay some Pinsiders back.

You guys are lucky that Amusement Scam of America has enough to lose - a house, a family, etc. - and the resources to pay you back. My advice to this community is quite while you are far, far ahead on this one. Plenty of distributors with stellar reputations who we know won't steal your money, even if they won't tell you want you want to hear and offer to sell you games that don't exist.

I still can't get over the fact that when Ice was bellowing and blustering about the forthcoming release of Alien remake 2 years ago, it was because he believed the con that ASOA had 6 of them in the shop and was testing them for imminent release. In fact, just send me money and you'll get one of the first!!!

It is kind of hilarious that this lie made it all the way through the Kaneda pipeline. I always thought Ice set him up but he really did just allow himself to get conned.

Hey sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong.

The main thrust of my argument - that an established pinball manufacturer such as CGC wouldn’t take on a the project - was correct.

It’s being made by some nobody startups in Italy!

The CGC lie was the one created by ASOA, and the one believed, Promoted, and bet upon by the likes of Ice.

It wouldn’t shock me that there are some folks who are so thankful they actually got paid back over the course of two years that they’ll shill for him.

I would think most people who have yet to enjoy the “ASOA Experience” will take that with a grain of salt.

There’s no shortage of people selling pinball machines. Why roll the dice?