Quoted from HappyDayz:I'm confident TigerLaw knows who I am as of several weeks ago and knows I'm obviously not Kevin.
I certainly have my suspicions. I'm in Greece and not able to confirm right now. I don't believe you are Kevin.
Quoted from HappyDayz:Are you not a lawyer? It's a little curious why you would assume his lawyer would give him that advice?
I'm not a litigator but I've had enough expierence with litigators to have a decent idea of what was said to Kevin. "Don't talk to anyone" is pretty standard in litigation. Also, telling him to let the courts sort out who is to be paid back what wouldn't seem unreasonable at first glance to hear said due to different amount of money being owed to different people and the likely deplorable way Kevin probably kept records (he possibly didn't know who he owed what to in any specific sense).
Litigation attorneys think of the world in relation to the case they are working. They rarely look at matters from the big picture standpoint. I've seen, numerous times, litigators win a lawsuit but totally destroy their own client in the process because just commencing the litigation course practically had the other parties exercise non-judicial remedies and smoke their client (I'm not talking about violence in any way, usually it is business related stuff, an employee sues an employer for some type of wrong, win the case but then find out no one will ever hire them or their spouse again - for example).
Here's the problem with Kevin from a practical standpoint, no one was paid back anything from Kevin. Not one red cent. The fact that some people were fortunate enough to get charge backs from the credit card companies is wonderful, but that is not Kevin reimbursing any money.
Here are the big mistakes Kevin made after the gig was up:
1) he went silent and never came out and clarified what happened to the money in relation to the chargebacks. If the money was in a paypal account that got significantly blasted during the charge backs by the people that were fortunate enough to get chargebacks and PayPal took penalty payments from the account in addition to the chargebacks then Kevin should have come out and said so.
Instead of Kevin said nothing, all of us victims are left to ponder whether it was the credit card companies / PayPal that had to eat the chargebacks or whether it was the account Kevin had that got hit. Did Kevin move out the money before the chargebacks hit? If so, was the money moved into a linked account? If so, did the credit card companies and PayPal get to the account and reimburse themselves (plus penalties and fees) out of the account for the chargebacks they paid out?
With Kevin's silence our assumption is the chargebacks had no impact on the money Kevin had because surely if the credit card companies and PayPal ate up everything in fees and penalties he would have said so right?
2) Kevin needed to fess up about what was spent during R&D, promotion, and limited production. He needed to say how much of the deposit money he used going to shows (they aren't free) buying parts.
Due to Kevin's silence the assumption is he spent a lot of the money having a good time traveling to Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, etc. to promote the machine. This is what it is, but he needs to break down what he spent the money on at the shows to illustrate it was reasonable and he didn't spend our money at strip clubs. He needs to say what he spent for the cabinets, what he paid the artist, what he paid whoever and if the person is related to him just come out and say so even if he thinks it makes him look bad (he should accept he already looks bad and he now can only mitigate matters).
3) While I get that he felt he "had" to tell law enforcement whatever he told them to stay out of jail, he should not have antagonized the pinball community by lying about the game still being in production and telling us he was trying to work out things with Fox and make the game still. We all knew that was bullshit and that no material discussions were being had with Fox at that point and he was merely posturing/grandstanding but we viewed it as him trying to keep whatever he had left because we knew the game would not be made. It made us know he had no intention of paying us back and that pissed us all off.
4) He needed to fess up about his likely accounting problem. He needed to inform everyone his books and records were so bad he was not certain who paid what and when it was paid. He needed to fess up that the chargebacks totally confused him as to what was owed and to who to make people partially whole and he needed to hire someone to help him. He didn't need an attorney, necessarily, for this function but he needed a book keeper to go through things.
5) He should not have sat back and waited for the courts to decide anything. He should have worked with the accounting person to figure out who hadn't received back any money and figured out a less than satisfactory but roughly fair way to divide out what money was left and pay it out pro rata without any stipulations. Him saying: "sorry, I only have X left and I'm paying it out using this formula that an accountant gave me and that's the best I can do, sorry I spent so much of the extra money and sorry PayPal charged fees and penalties against the money i planned to reimburse you all with but nothing I can do about it, I'm a fool and was not ready for this", would have gone a long way.
6) Bankruptcy appeared to be inevitable for him the moment the project collapsed. He needed to accept that idea early on and live with it but done what is right and used whatever money he had left to reimburse people something, pennies on the dollar would have a least been something. He delayed his bankruptcy filing too long and we believe he squandered our money paying his attorneys for his benefit and didn't spend any money trying to figure out how to pay us back.
Anyway, I personally feel that Kevin has been in super bad faith. I feel he made poor decisions and owes us not just our money but one hell of an explanation. He needs to drop the act about the license and how he thought he had it even after he scrubbed his webpage, we don't believe him on this point and it makes his position look even worse to us. I can accept that he thought his fair use letter was a license initially, but bullshit like him thinking he had the art approved and what not makes him look ridiculous and like an even bigger lier.
All the above is just my personal opinion, as a victim. It does not reflect Pinside and is certainly not legal advice to anyone from me.
Jennings, LA
. Good luck to everyone else!
