The real question is how fast would Whysnow show up to pick up his machine...

Id be SHOCKED if he wasn't STILL trying to get his hands on one of the "partially complete" machines as we speak.

Unfortunately, this is quite accurate.

I'm of the opinion that Kevin has no intentions of willingly refunding anybody any money (And I've got skin in the game, so sucks for me too). Here's why:

I, along with everyone else has begun the process of trying to recover what I can from this mess. That included an email to Kevin directly requesting an immediate refund (not that I expected one, just doing some bare bones due diligence). He responded to the email with essentially the same response that a lot of others received and has already been posted here. He stated quite clearly that refunds, in full mind you, would begin flowing in the next few days.

Setting everything else aside he's said, this alone stands as bulls#@t. Without bringing the context of his other lies into the picture.

Why does it reek of bullsh#@t on it's own merit? Because there's no possible way he's got 100% of the funds sitting in an account to refund us, and if he did, I believe we'd already be seeing reports of people getting their cash back. Additionally, who in the hell is going to lend somebody in his shoes the dough to make this thing whole? I'm guessing no one.

Had he send out emails stating something along the lines of: "I'm truly very sorry for this clusterf#@ck I've created. I need 12 hours to total up what's left, figure out how much each buyer gets back (as a percentage of their deposit that equals the percentage of original funds left) and start issuing refunds. There will be a shortfall, each pre-owner will be getting a personal IOU from me for the balance of their deposit that I can't immediately refund. I know I f#@cked up, I will work my fingers to the bone to get each and every one of you every dime you invested in me back. It'll take me a few years, but I'll do it."

Something like that, I would have believed. The "everyone is getting everything returned and doesn't it suck that people conspired against me to prevent me from building your pin" schtick rings hollow.

I'm one of the guys that verified Aurich's information regarding Paypal's practice of freezing accounts that have large spikes in dollar volume and/or number of transactions. It happened to me, it happened to a number of friends and acquaintances, and I'm quite certain it happened to Kevin. So there was that glimmer of hope that maybe Paypal still had the funds locked up and hadn't released them. I hope, for everyone with cash on the line, that that's true. But, upon further reflection, I doubt it. Why? Because there's got to be some legal time limit Paypal has to abide by that requires them to release the funds after a certain date. I don't know. I worked to get my account unfrozen as quickly as possible. But it seems that they would almost certainly have to release the funds at some point.

So, I believe that Kevin most likely got access to all the funds in his Paypal account, and those funds are no longer there.

I also believe people are in for a hell of a time getting any money back. I hope I'm wrong.

I'd love to know what the pinball price guide would value that machine :p

sigh... i give up... you'll never understand...

...and yet, that's exactly what seemed to happen. Obviously this was not some huge elaborate multi-year ruse to bilk people out of some money he would eventually have to refund in full.

The facts in front of us are that this guy a) was delusional enough to believe he could make 250 pinball machines on his own his garage, and b) was delusional enough to believe he didn't need a licensing agreement from FOX.

I can understand being delusional about (a) , especially since everyone who gave him money were just as delusional. But (b)? As you said, that takes an incredible, incredible lack of connection to reality.

Yeah but things are looking up! We got a guy from Winnetka running the state!

Not so sure about this. Given the long history of deceit by SkitB/Kevin, and especially his behavior even after receiving C&D communications from Fox, it's hard for me to imagine Fox granting him a license of any kind at this point. But it's all meaningless speculation since even Kevin has now admitted that the game won't be built and the only course forward is refunds.

You wouldn't blame him for shutting down the primary pinball site on the internet for a couple of comments made at moderators in a thread? I would sure as hell hope he has a stronger will then that. And I have no doubt that he does, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time here.

Let's keep your private life out of this!

Excellent summary and well detailed post! Amen sister on this last part too.

Let's give him till the middle of next week. If refunds haven't been reported by then we know it was another tactic. I haven't cancelled any of my appointments to move forward with legal action yet. The check has to come and clear the bank before putting the tourches and pitch forks back in the barn. If the money is returned, then it's over. Move on.

Nah, we mods have had a few Youtube rant videos aimed at us and some psychos cyber-stalking us, and yet Pinside survived. I don't think some comments will do it... we're pretty tough. Or at least stubborn.

After all this, Predator is *still* closer to production than Magic Girl!

Okay, you're disappointed.

As I continually pointed out, they have no obligation to your welfare. Maybe, instead of complaining they didn't do step 2 to your satisfaction, appreciate that they even bothered to do step 1.

Unless he knew he was proceeding illegally from the start and that he would be hosed if Fox caught him, but though he could get away with it. That's still a crazy thing to do from a risk/reward perspective, and is inarguably fraud on his purchasers. But it seems more plausible than that he thought he was legally entitled to just do whatever he wanted with the Predator material and was simply shocked to learn in December 2014 that the United States has enforceable intellectual property laws.

*Edited due to complex language*. Some people can't read between the lines!

I keep checking in here and wading through 6 pages of posts to see who's got their refund through....

Hopefully I see that post soon.

rd.

Wow! I really do sympathize. It's been a nightmare and still is. Wouldn't it be worthwhile though to ask a couple questions, if not to protect the community, to save you mods all the grief that goes along with a bad vendor?

You want to build 250 pins huh? What's your federal tax ID? "I don't have one..."

Show me your right to use the IP. "Well, I can't, but I really do have it."

At this point, they can get the f out of here and come back when they do have those things. Congratz! You just saved yourselves and everyone else a bunch of grief.

and this has exactly what to do with the price of tea in china?

I knew you wouldn't be able to read "between the lines". Why I even bother

logical-fallacy-logical-fallacy-windmill-beard-demotivational-poster-1226595016.jpgtitsorgtfo.jpg

^^ What do you want? lol, guy didn't understand simple English and had to explain him in a different way. Isn't that what they do in grade school?

I think you guys are just going to have to agree to disagree. Neither of you are swaying the other away from your chosen positions. Although it did make boobs appear so it's not all bad...

Well, this is what I told him initially that everyone has their own views. He just doesn't budge lol.

I haven't been following this since I could not care less about pred, but now that the shits hit the fan I've been going back and reading this thread. Holy crap its funny to read the stuff from 3-4 months ago. It not funny what happened in the end, but all the misinformation and "he said its licensed so it is" stuff, people getting pissed when questions were brought up (that turned out to be true). As someone on the outside of the problem its freaking hilarious to see the blinders people had on.

I give Kevin credit for at least admitting that the game won't be built and acknowledging the fact that refunds are the next course of action. -How/when he follows up on issuing refunds has yet to be seen but at least he isn't try to string people along further and is willing to admit defeat. This is something that Wayne never did with the first MMR fiasco. He kept insisting that games would be made and I think there were even some pre-order buyers that continued to hang on his word and ended up converting their "Pinball Factory" MMR orders to a PPS MMR order nearly a decade later....

That very well may be something to look into in the future. You've got to realize that Predator/Skit-B was started around 3 years ago. I myself was a newbie trying to figure out my first pinball machine 3 years ago. I've been a mod for 2 years now, I believe. I think it was a completely different time then. You had one big company, one starting-up "hopefully big" company, and a bunch of little home-brew companies all trying to get a piece of the pinball pie. Now that a couple of the little ones have failed and a few others are in limbo, there's a different light on things. Maybe Robin will want to start quantifying new companies as we go forward, but I'm not going to try to speak on his behalf.

I do know that we do spend a lot of time worrying about copyright infringements already, asking people for proof that they have the right to make products that are brought into question through reports to us, and closing threads until they show us that proof. If it gets to the point that we are asking everyone for proof of contracts, licenses, copyrights, business deals, etc, then we're going to have to get quite a few more moderators to be able to handle everything. And, as a few have said before, everyone is going to see less modifications legally available on here. I honestly don't know how far Robin wants to delve into the legalities of it all, but anyone with suggestions or comments please open a Moderator Feedback thread and let us know your thoughts so maybe we can work something out to avoid this type of situation in the future.

DOS EQUIS MAN.jpg

If this was a total scam from the start wouldn't Kevin have removed the money from PayPal as soon as it came in?

Why don't you, as the consumer in defense of your own money, ask for those things if you're so concerned about them? Why do you think it is the job of volunteers on a free interweb site run on donations to do this for you?

Okay, I've beaten this horse fully to death, but wow, the level of entitlement of some people around here utterly floors me.

You're assuming the money is still there. It may not be......

How do we know he didn't? For all I know, he's sitting on an island somewhere right now sipping a piña colada from a coconut? Has anybody actually seen Kevin in person recently?

Thanks for acknowledging my disappointment and thanks for slicing it into bits you can digest easily. If you have any other advice for me, please send me a PM.

Did you read Blondetall's post? Did you read mine? Obviously not. Who the hell would want to deal with all that she described? Doing something simple with vendors at the start protects from a whole lot of pain later on for everyone including mods. I dare say just knowing there is some basic vetting process would scare any true scammers away.

Read. Think. Post.

/insert floggingadeadhorse.jpg here

are we at 6666 posts yet?

Please stop engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.... its just not fair.

you are right... i won't budge... as i am correct...

it's not a "viewpoint" issue...

What would you have spent the money on, had Skit-B never announced Predator? Another pin? A motorcycle? A trip to the West Indies? A Vietnam-era Gatling gun in near-mint condition?

The dust hasn't even begun to settle and folks are educating others or doling out life lessons. Interesting that. And people are saying that they - we - won't get fooled again. Ha

Do you really care if this was a scam for the last 3 years or *ONLY* the last 2.5 years?

One cant be "partially pregnant" any more than
Kevin can be "partially a crook"

Your continued defense of this guy is inexplicable.

God damn you ask a lot of questions. Chill out, sit back, watch a movie. lol

It's times like these I finally understand.......LIONMAN!

Yeah, ok

You're reading something into the comment that isn't there. What I'm saying is that many people are trying to get money back from PayPal. There has to be money in there for them to get. If it was a scam from the start, wouldn't he take out the money immd and there wouldn't be anything in there to freeze...is that clearer now?

He's gaming for the movie rights.

I'd laugh my ass off if in the movie they did a scene where the original Predator guys posed for the playfield art while the mom drew it.

That Clinton pic is scary as ****!@$

scroll back my friend or have you missed the fact that you have more "contributions" here than I do over the last 2 pages... mostly trying to explain how your purchase on a smart phone app somehow connects to the issue of Kevin scamming people.

Plus, I've included boobs, which in almost any context is a tie-breaker.

Again man, too many questions! Just post boobie pics which is what you're good at LOL

I think some people are confused. Infringing a patent or other IPR is not a crime; infringement is always handled in civil court. It might bankrupt you, but you won't be wearing orange. However, claiming to have a licensing agreement when you don't is Fraud; that is clearly a crime.

I can tell you a partial refund will not suffice. I paid to get a machine and now no machine will be produced. Nothing but a 100% refund is expected. Why should the buyers be on the hook for the mistakes made by Skit-B.