This is very similar to an issue that happened with an arcade company called Ram controls. The guy promised people he would build brand new Star Trek vector cockpit arcade games for 3K or so, and it all seemed legit at first. The guy actually produced some of the parts, for instance the steering control, PERFECTLY and was selling them on his website. Tons of people bought them. He reproduced other controllers and at first, everything seemed fine.

Then he started doing strange things, like saying if you sent him 500 bucks right now, he'd give you 1000 credit on his website to buy things.

Eventually he just disappeared with countless dollars he'd swindled out of people. It was the same kind of scenario where it seemed like he had all the best intentions at first, and then went into straight up scammer territory and was obviously stealing and lying to people. A few people got phone calls from him telling them that he had their Star Wars game finished, he just needed the $600 to ship it, or whatever, or for them to pay the other half of their preorder, etc. After they paid of course they never received anything.

Of course there was never a fully built game, you'd have to reproduce artwork, the wiring harness, build unique 1 off cabinets that were only for that 1 game, make the plastic seat, make all the brackets, the controller, recreate the game boards, create a new vector monitor. The whole thing in hindsight was ridiculous but yet tons of people sent him their money.

Kevin had a working prototype you could play, so it's easier to see why people would believe he could pull it off. Lots of the parts were off the shelf, and the other stuff he actually did make for the prototype.

In both scenarios, I think you likely have one of two things going on, unfortunately. A drug addiction, or a gambling addiction. Both can facilitate a small fortune disappearing with nothing to show for it. Even if Kevin built 10 games, spent money on EOD, flew all over the country, there's a huge, HUGE chunk of this money that is either still sitting in an account somewhere, or was blown on drugs or gambling.

I hope to god it's sitting in an account somewhere!

You're not a fool, you just got scammed. It happens to everybody in one way or the other eventually. Don't let it get you all upset or bent out of shape, there's a chance you'll get your money back (or some of it) and worrying about it or being embarrassed won't do anything but take time off your life with all the stress! Let the police/paypal/your credit card company do the best they can, you pay them fees to work for you, let them take the stress off of you.

I'm not convinced that any Mr. X's got this shut down. Fox probably knew about it from way back, and when Heighway got the license for Aliens i'm sure the Fox licensors did some snooping around and would have found the Predator stuff even then if they hadn't yet.

As for Mods that are infringement, you're talking about minor (a couple hundred bucks) money.

This pinball machine had a sticker price of over 1,000,000 dollars if he built 250. You can bet your ass Fox wants in on that.

This all stems from the Duck Hunt game, in my opinion. He made 1 licensed, 1 off game, didn't get in any trouble, and thought that even if he had to get the license for Predator it wouldn't be any big deal. Then he just started lying to people.

Roger Sharpe has talked about this license stuff a lot; in his words a lot of companies want to do licensed machines because of the prestige of it, not necessarily the money. The crazy thing is I feel that the license would have been completely possible to obtain, if... oh... he just would have TRIED right at the beginning to get it. Maybe not with full reign on Arnold's image or anything, but I'll bet there was plenty of stock art he could have used and even voicecalls from the movie for a pittance if he just would have worked it out like Heighway has worked out (with the exact same people!) the Aliens pinball.

Once you go behind someone's back and try to make 1,000,000 dollars off their Intellectual Property, I'd imagine they're not really in the mood to work with you on the idea. They probably have the idea that they're glad he's going down in flames, that'll teach him to not screw with Fox.

With all that said, unfortunately 100% of the funding of Kevin acting like a jackass the last 3 years has been from innocent people who just want a fun pinball machine.

Personal opinion: he has no business, just a personal paypal account and a website. Even if he had a business he's still liable for all of this, this is going to be a criminal situation, not just a civil issue.

This is really good advice. You'd be surprised at just how willing the police are to help out with stuff like this, it's their job and they're there for you. I had a situation once where I bought a house at a tax sale, the whole thing was an adversarial situation and we just went and got the cops to go with us, it changed the way the whole thing went down and everything worked out.

I can't believe Kevin's letting it get to this, surely he can't realize just how bad this is going to end up. Years in prison...

Since people are losing money because of his fraudulent activities, I think it would a slap in his victim's face to actually do business with this guy in any way.

I'm no lawyer... but on top of all the fraudulent things he's done, if he either

A. filed paperwork to be a non profit

or

B. went around claiming he was a non profit

That might be another thing he has to answer for in court someday. This whole thing is so recklessly crazy.

Wouldn't that be some shit if he never sold it to anybody in Michigan on purpose?

I agree he's a complete idiot... i'm just saying... wouldn't that be some shit.

He should have quite a bit of debt! He took everybody's money then spent it. He should refund every cent and borrow what he has to.

I think it's Kevin refunding the stuff sitting in his basement eating cheetos scared shitless that he's going to spend the next 15 years in prison if he doesn't pay most of this back. If paypal was doing it, they would have just refunded all of it and been done with it. Since it's so half-assed (some refunds, some people get half back, some people get the deposit back, some don't) it sounds like Kevin's got a steno pad and a pencil and is trying to figure out who to click 'refund' on. This is the type of stuff this guy does.

He's not telling the lawyer because the lawyer's trying to keep as much money as possible for himself, ultimately, right? The lawyer's telling Kev (probably) that he's alright, won't have any criminal problems etc. and lets fight this, and Kev's probably shaking in his boots, especially after one guy already dragged his ass into court last week.

This judge is VERY good. He's handled this very well, and gave Kevin a specific thing to do, that he was very clear about. He humored the excuses so that they can't be used again, and I have a feeling next week Kevin ends up in the pokey.

The whole thing is sad, because when this first fell all apart he was in a position with the right council that he may have been able to even LEGALLY weasel out of it, or at least get to a position where he could pay people back. Since the whole thing was based on a fraud (lying about the license) and he's made no attempt to pay people back, this is going to end very badly for him and his children.

He should have immediately lawyered up and worked his way through paying people back, now his kids are about to lose their dad for a few years.

That would be a very, very bad idea... but considering the symphony of bad ideas he's already came up with I don't doubt it!

Absolutely. He may have been able to do what you describe legally with council, too, and it would have kept him out of jail.

Too late.

If I were in his shoes, I'd get together all the paperwork I could (He can at least get a copy of all the paypal stuff) and show up with what I could get, turn it over and basically throw myself on the mercy of the court. The paypal records would at least establish what he received, that's easily provable by just signing into the account and printing things out (or call Paypal and have them prepare some sort of statement for you, they'd do it).

If he shows up and shows exactly what he received, maybe the judge will take it as a sign that he's at least starting to come clean. If he shows up with more lies I imagine the judge is going to have him held in custody until whatever's next.

If he refunds some people but not everybody (because some money's missing) it could get really complicated, so I'd imagine his lawyer told him they were going to do it PROPERLY, which is basically take the sum of money collected, subtract legitimate business expenses, then refund a percentage to everybody equally based on what they put in.

You know, like a REAL business would do... the lawyer probably figured out about a week in that Kev was screwing him around too so bailed months ago. The lawyer probably started with the assumption that Kev just didn't know what he was doing and wanted to 'do the right thing', then figured out quick he was scamming everybody.

I'll bet this judge has heard all this stuff 100 times. He probably has 10 favorite ways to make defendant's life hell that he likes to use, and will exhibit favorite way #1 next friday depending on what happens.

If Kevin's smart (he's not) he'll do everything the judge says, exactly how he says. So stupid to lie to a judge, they have almost limitless power and can ruin your life in a myriad of ways.... and Kevin's already lied to this one, that he just met today, a dozen times ON TAPE.

If he was willing to steal the license from the movie company, why are people basing the possible financial amount he stole on the arbitrary number of 250?

250 is just a number that came out of Kevin's mouth.

From day 1, when he spoke about the license, he was already lying. Why would you expect him to be telling the truth about the number, years later when he was still accepting deposits?

I can remember in the late days of it, he supposedly had a list of people, and people were saying that they had just heard from him, and a spot opened so now they're in on a preorder, etc. Who knows how many people he actually got to send in money.

We had a similar thing happen on the Arcade game side a few years ago, a guy was telling people he was building complete Star Wars Cockpit arcade games with new monitors, new wiring, new artwork, new everything. Had people popping up months later that had paid in full (several thousand dollars) and had never even seen a picture.

The world is just so big there's people you've never even imagined everywhere willing to spend money on things that sometimes end up being a scam.

The funny thing about this is the 'bank Secrecy Act' was first brought to most lay people's attention on an episode of the Sopranos LOL

Yup... this is the most amazing thing to me. He could have weaseled out of this, IMHO. He would have had to take it seriously, and he would have had to keep better records. I may be wrong and i'm not a lawyer, but with proper documentation he could have paid himself a salary which he could then use to buy his wife a house and his mom an R.V., etc.

You can't half ass your records and then decide to be a scam artist too. One or the other...

You know the old saying "revenge is a dish best served cold" ?

most people think that that means you should be vicious, and 'cold' when you get your revenge... but what it really means is, you should wait awhile.

When it starts coming down all around them, even if it's been 10 years, the revenge will be super satisfying for the people who got ripped off in this. The longer it takes, the better the schadenfreude will feel.