Just because the Assistant AG has an overt man crush on a college gay president, doesn't mean he can't do his job

Is that Buster Bluth?

Oof. Go to about 1:19:15. Kevin discusses the license for EoD, then they ask him about his experiences with the Predator licensing. Knowing what we do now, it's pretty clear he was lying straight through his teeth without skipping a beat. He discusses artwork that was rejected by Fox, and working with a contact at Fox on an ongoing basis.

At about 1:23:30 he talks about doing an unlicensed theme. He says that Skit-B might do an unlicensed theme once they've graduated from the mantle of 'boutique' maker to a real producer of games, but that an unlicensed theme at such an early stage would make it look like they were "just cheap and didn't want to pay for licensing."

At 1:24:30 he talks about working for several weeks to get the license for Long Tall Sally, and says it was one of the most expensive aspects of the machine.

He's a very convincing liar.

http://www.pinheadz.com.au/podcast/ppp003-pinheadz-pinball-podcast-ep3-the-greatest-v-the-newest/

Wow. Do not know what to say beyond that. It is just surreal to me that he would try and spin this as being completely innocent and was just blindsided by this.

Anyone talking to the Midland MI police need to point them to this video and these specific references as the smoking gun on whether there was intent to defraud.

Well done. I remember him talking about Long Tall Sally, but couldn't find it. Look at the date of the podcast. When you tell so many lies to so many people, I geuss it can become a little confusing. Lets just call it "naive".

No offense to Rodger or anyone else in pinball. The hardest part of producing a pin is setting up and building 250 games, not getting the license, designing the game, promoting, selling, or shipping.

I doubt anyone would disagree.

The Michigan Attorney General is Bill Shuette. He hates the thought of the legal medical marijuana laws that the people voted for. He is more known for ordering police departments to think of creative ways to arrest legal cardholders and charge them anyway. He even ordered one department to send a copy of any police report involving a legal cardholder to their local gun board if they had a CCW. He tried getting a copy of the names of of the cardholders to every local gun board in the state to try to get their CCWs pulled.
So unfortunately our State Attorney General is probably not the right person to give a crap about a financial fraud involving pinball people. He would probably try to ban pinball if he could too.

2012 interview for Spooky Pinball Podcast.

9:00 - Interview with Skit-b begins.
10:30 - Talks about the licensing. "It's all taken care of, it's all legit." "We have a couple close friends over there who are helping us out."
12:00 - talks about production details, production number, "Hopefully shipping games by the end of the summer.(2012)"
16:15 - Says he's "not exactly welcome back there" referring to his old job
20:45 - Hosts asks how he will pull off building 250 games. Kevin says he has friend and volunteers chomping at the bit to help. "There's like local intern-type kids who go to the college and want in on it."
22:30 - Talks about being a non-profit. "If we have a lot of money rolling through, we'll get lost in it, but if we're legally obligated to keep track of everything, and not spend anything, it helps a lot."

http://www.spookypinball.com/http:/spookypinball.com/spooky-pinball-podcast-show-26/

Sounds like a piece of Shuette.

Someone needs to send that to the detective who is supposedly looking into Kevin's actions.

yea... i'm a total layman, but that is relatively damning (i'm trying to be kind)...

If your point is this dude was never going to build 250 pinball machines with or without IP rights, I definitely agree. I just posted that in response to someone's question about theoretical licensing costs. All irrelevant here of course because Kevin chose to go with an "imaginary license." Much cheaper and saves you the hassle of getting work approved by the IP holder, but the end results can be ... uneven.

I think this sums up where Kevin is about now.

exhibits A, B and C. Enjoy jail time mofo

That PBN article killed any notion this guy was innocently making mistakes and puts him fully in the corner of someone with issues... psychological issues.

The trail of flat out lies and misleading is undeniable.. yet he plods on trying to make people think 'if you just give me an inch...' everything will be cheeky. No one in their right mind can continue that trail of lies... and yet here he is again with no specifics, just give me some more time.

If the situation to date hasn't lowered the boom and made him wake the F up... obviously nothing will.

Complete lost cause - I can only hope for some criminal charges and a conviction to give people some satisfaction.

along with this from 2 years earlier...

a) licensing (no surprise)...
b) apparent claim of non-profit status... while this has been brought up before, it kinda got lost... this may, should someone choose to pursue it, be a VERY sticky wicket for kevin...

Kevin Kulek. Don't forget to type his last name.

Occam's Razor GO!!!

1) He still has no lawyer (follow-up article is a confession of guilt!)
2) He's sitting on the money but a good chunk of it IS gone forever.
3) Fox isn't going to pursue this any further since he dropped the project.
4) He still believes, deep down, that "this ain't ovah" (hence no partial refunds even)

Don't make the assumption that Kevin will use logic or reason to resolve this, when clearly his mind doesn't work that way.

Some comic relief:

This cartoon reminds me of how Kevin came across in the article.

Unknown-2.jpeg

Is this the same podcast where he states he's standing in front of a heap of playfields almost fully assembled and cabs as he's talking? Yer right.

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I'm sure Paypal has a ton of experience with this stuff, but shooting from the hip here, it seems that the logical thing for Paypal to do would be to take the initiative and file suit themselves.

They would file an Interpleader claim with the court. This is the process where you basically deposit funds with the court that you are holding for others, and there is a dispute as to whom is owed what from those funds.

Paypal would have to notify everyone who has a potential claim to those funds, which shouldn't be difficult since they know who made payments to Skit-B.

The court then decides who gets what out of the Paypal proceeds.

Here's the problem in my opinion. Kevin has proven to not be business savvy. So I'm guessing that this paypal account is not a simple holding tank for preorder money. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a great deal of co-mingling of funds..from buyers to vendors to perhaps even personal aquusitions and/or deposits. Tshirt sales, marketing costs, travel expenses....I bet it's a mess.

Too bad there is no specialty court system in the US that could handle complicated matters involving insufficient funds, co-mingling, financial disputes, fraudulent conveyances, prioritization of claims, sorting out who paid what, and distribution of proceeds.

Hey Rob, given your background with all this kind of stuff, your suggestion make a lot of sense. Here is the problem as I see it. Most everyone made large cash deposits to this account 6+ months ago, I guarantee you the minute those deposits were made, Kevin immediately transferred those to his bank account, more than likely into a dummy account at the bank which was then transferred into another account to which PayPal can't access directly. Scam artists have used this way around charge backs with PayPal for years.

The chances of any money actually being in this directly accessible to PayPal account are probably slim at best. PayPal can certainly freeze the account but that doesn't mean there's any money there. The money is gone folks, if it truly was there the refunds would already be coming back without any need to request your money back.

Compounding the problem he mislead everyone with misinformation in an attempt to "run out the clock" on the PayPal chargeback system. Your only legal remedy is going to be through the courts, as far as I can see it.

...and more

I don't care what the neysayers say. Sometimes a copy and paste from Ted is what we need.

For you Ted!

Question. Will local law enforcement be able to handle claims from out of state victims? My understanding is that very few guys in Michigan were in on this project because they all knew Kevin was a dipshit from the beginning, so I have to assume that almost all of the fraud complaints currently with the local authorities are from out of state people.

When I won full custody of my daughter, I had my court order in hand when I was in her state, and I talked to a local officer about coming with me to pick her up to make sure everyone kept their cool. He told me that since it was an out of state order, he could not and would not assist me in enforcing it, he could only go to make sure no one tried to kill each other. That was a civil case I had already won. I know this is criminal and not civil with the police involved, but I wasn't sure if the interstate nature of almost all of the victims would make it had for local authorities to do anything.

Signed: Obviously not an Internet lawyer.

FWIW, fraud is both a civil wrong (tort) and a criminal offense, so both civil law and criminal law may be in play here.

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You guys are both right. But take a look at the posts that I was replying to. I was talking from PayPal's point of view. They don't have to wait for other litigation to take place, they can initiate it themselves.

An interpleader action is what you do when you are holding money for others who are claiming a right to it and you don't know how much everyone is entitled to. So you let the court decide.

I wonder how fast Kevin intend's to refund everyone like he said in the PBN article.

Maybe Kevin Kulek could wear his badge.......
ahole.jpeg

right next to the spot that he keeps his watch......
awatch.jpg
up his ass.

Probably will be lots of time to hide things in prison

QSS

If everything else he said was not truthful, why would the one truth be that the money was safely held by PayPal in a locked account?

My concern would be that:
1 - he has paid himself an annual salary that most here would object to(my understanding is that he has no other income or employment).
2 - he already paid himself his "profit" that he planned to receive on this venture
3 - he employed and paid family members for their services (again beyond what most would consider acceptable)
4- His business partners departure was over some of these issues - perhaps business partner felt he wasn't getting his fair share or profits were being watered down through payment to others
5 - money was used to travel well to many shows and events
6 - money was used to purchase the license for the second game, and pay expenses for the individuals to travel to whatever show that was.
7 - the money above was used to buy the new house.
8 - money was still being used to finance living expenses and possibly to engage an attorney or financial advisor to find a way to extract himself but still keep some of the remaining money.

Even if all of the above were true and occurred, it would be difficult to spend close to $1,000,000 but who knows.

Did anyone talk to his former business partner at the expo? Didn't the business partners wife or somebody connected to him post on this thread alluding to the reason he left (can't remember)? Remember, there was no legal entity as far as anyone has been able to discover, his business partner would generally have individual liability as much as he would.

If I had money in on the project, I would be concerned about how much has been spent and where was I in line for getting a refund. Those outside the credit card chargeback are essentially looking at sharing the losses from any spent money unless he refunds some fully and some partially or not at all

Good luck.

I like it, and you're probably right.

I still am struggling to accept how easy it has been to essentially steal hundreds of thousands of dollars, and leave everyone with so few options and so little hope at getting any substantial refund, all because Kevin simply won't give it back. I would honestly expect to be arrested on the spot and pay restitution if I stole $50 from some dude on the street - how is this mess such a "can't do much about it" problem in this age of connectivity and global commerce?

Still hope this all works out somehow.

Come on Jiffy. Don’t be shy.

There is much that can be done about it, but it takes time. The legal system is slow, but in the words of you know who, "you can expect some good news in a few short days..."
Just because you don't see anything right now, does not mean that things are not happening behind the scenes. Be patient... Get busy doing what you need to do. No one can do it for you.

I see a lot of folks asking this. I remember asking Kevin this a long time ago. This was from Jan 9, 2013.

dayjob.PNG

That would require paypal actually caring though. Unless they've changed over the years I don't see that happening.

The big catch in this is your assuming they are holding money for others. I kind of doubt there's anything there to hold in this case.

His business partner and friend, Aaron Klumpp is not married. I'm not aware of anyone approaching him about Skit-B at expo. No specifics about why he left have been posted but I do know he and Kevin had a bit of a feud. Some things were said that caused a falling out. Whether there were disagreements with how things were being done with Skit-B that fanned the flames I'm not sure.

I do agree with all of your listed concerns on where money may have gone. There is just no knowing until everyone gets money back which obviously isn't happening because of anything Kevin is doing. I'd also add that I know Kevin's wife had purchased plenty of new photography equipment for her own side business over the last year or so. Also, after Aaron left Kevin hired at least 1 person (Jimmy) to help him. I have no idea what he was paid and I don't mean to drag him into this because he is a good guy and probably had no more knowledge regarding the lack of license than anyone else. But I'm pretty confident he was paid something.

<Edit> Oh, and also early on (but for quite a while) there was Steve who helped as well (who lived with Kevin for a while too). I'm pretty sure he was doing programming and other misc help. I'm not sure if he was ever paid anything.

He hired Jimmy? Must be for product testing. I always wondered what he was up to lately.

I think people should leave the vendors and workers out of the discussion, whether it's minimum wage guys wiring cabs or a company selling cabs or pop bumpers to Skit-B. Discussing a "claw-back" of their earnings is crazy IMHO. These guys had the foresight to get their money up front (hopefully) and they haven't done anything wrong.

Vendors, I agree. But workers? I certainly wouldn't label them guilty but if there is an investigation that is going to happen they should be questioned for what they did know. For the most part these are folks that are/were close friends of kevin's. Not random people who just showed up to do a job and leave.

There were always some red flags with Skit-B, but this is definitely one of those red flags that I had missed until recently. This just doesn't make any sense at all.

I just wanted to check in. I only started reading this thread 2 days ago so I am on page 110. I feel devastated for many of you. I hope when I get to the end of the story, there is SOMETHING positive that happens for the buyers.

Fair.
I hope it's the minority of invested folks who are struggling to see progress and solutions then. If things are moving on Skit B behind the scenes then that is great.

I really hope everyone gets what they deserve.

You're reading this entire thread? Holy hell!

Ever see one of those movies where everyone dies in the end, like Frozen?