Alice in Wonderland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2013
Celts
Haggis, 2021
Magic Girl
Zidware Pinball USA, 2017
Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2012
Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Arcade Edition)
Deeproot, 2020
Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Xtra Edition)
Deeproot, 2020Quoted from Rarehero:BTW, at what point does Pinside remove DR as a manufacturer & RAZA as a game?
Just like Skit-B, they won't be removed. It's still pinball history--no sense in erasing it. The game entries have been marked as cancelled, though.
Quoted from thundergod76:This Deeproot shit was a complete joke from day one when i heard John was involved. I Never for a second believed one word of their rhetoric. Quad/octo manufacturing. EAs from Jpops last scam made whole. More units built than all other companies combined!! What a joke!! Jpop should be locked up and the key thrown away. Worst part is when he resurfaces and tries this shit again many of you will throw him even more money. Does this whole debacle really surprise anyone? Downvote all you want.
I wonder what RM thought would happen? Would he nogginate himself into golden slippers and special underwear and float away with piles of money while the dumbshits like me, a buyer, wonder if he was raptured...
Quoted from Yoreland:I wonder what RM thought would happen; perhaps he would nogginate himself into golden slippers and special underwear and float away with piles of money while the dumbshits like me, a buyer, wonder if he was raptured...
A few people have indicated that "he didn't intend to defraud" or that a scam was "never the intention". It doesn't matter. The moment you misrepresent a fund's structure, or carelessly comingle funds between different corporate entities without even bothering to write up terms, you are committing fraud. And the rules are strict about that exactly to prevent this exact kind of scenario.
I earlier asked "how could a lawyer do this and not know what would happen" but really it was rhetorical. Regardless of the level of education or provenance of someone's degree, people can be sucked into bad/abusive behavior and shift from "this is wrong" to "this is normal" very quickly. RM opens the deeproot funds and slides a little cash to a pinball thing, and no one catches him, and he's embolded. Even encouraged, figuring, "of course, this is the way it should happen, all these other companies are chumps for not doing it". Same thing happens with athletes who take PEDs. Success breeds confidence, regardless of whether its earned or not.
Quoted from NickBuffaloPinball:15 minutes of this douchebag reinventing the box for non-existant games he'll never ship.
Can't wait for the documentary.
The irony is Robert himself actually commissioned a mini documentary, had a crew film it, presumably killed the production, and now (we believe) may be getting sued by the events company that was contracted for it!
Quoted from NickBuffaloPinball:15 minutes of this douchebag reinventing the box for non-existant games he'll never ship.
Can't wait for the documentary.
I love the editing on the video. Robert trashing cardboard boxes before saying it’s what’s customers get if they don’t upgrade, amplifying some oohs and aahs at the reveal, leaving in where Cary ask if it fits in a door and Robert hemming hawing about how it doesn’t, Cary asking if a couple straps on adjustable plates are really all that’s keeping it secure, showing them putting the pod together including where they don’t put the brackets on right the first time and have to rotate them around, Robert explaining the box is “backwards compatible”, what looks like Barry Ousler asleep while standing, saying it doesn’t do widebodies because they were worried about fitting it through doors (lolwut)
Quoted from toyotaboy:one thing ill never understand is how these people spend money that isnt earned. robert living like some millionaire, jpop buying a range rover and paying himself 100k salary during zidware days. its like that movie dumb n dumber. is robert going to hand over a briefcase of IOU'S?
I’ll bite, one word: patience.
Most real entrepreneurs land money, it’s in a bank account they control, but they know it’s money for the company not themselves. They can separate the company from themselves. They use that money and over years if they are lucky they turn it into more money thru lots of sweat equity for the company. When the company is successful only then do they take their payout for all that effort. Meanwhile they have a day job or live on ramen noodles. And if they aren’t successful they get nothing. People who invest invest in the company not the person. It’s understood.
Fake entrepreneurs see all that money and think it’s theirs personally to spend any way they want. In their mind the company IS them. But it never works out. The people who gave you that money expect the company to have done more than personally buy you a condo in Hawaii or a Land Rover. I call it idiots guide to entrepreneurship. You become rich for doing something successfully thru the vehicle of a company. You do not become rich from raising money for said company. If they weren’t total idiots they would have gotten that part.
Quoted from Guidotorpedo:Exclusive footage of the last deeproot funds meeting, before the SEC gave RM a free proctology exam
Hahahahahahahaha!!!! DEEPTHROATROOT WORLDWIDE!!!!!
Quoted from spfxted:How far back did I say Dennis has a fantastic bullshit-o-meter and to be aware when he left?
I guess when a canary has been in every coal mine they grow adept at smelling gas.
Quoted from Oldgoat:Not to suggest his actions weren't despicable; however, it doesn't appear that they were selling policies (there is a different set of licensing needed to sell life insurance). My understanding is the fund was supposed to purchase 'bundles' of life insurance policies from insurance companies below the value based on actuarial calculations. It is similar to companies that purchase bundles of mortgages from banks at below market. It appears, based on a quick skim of the SEC filing, that while they had the ability to invest some $ in other more speculative investments (like pinball), this was supposed to be a small %. Instead, they burned through way too much money on Pinball, putting them in a precarious position. Then as the five year term started to expire for some of the original investors, DR needed to pony up principal. They tried to move money between funds to help but eventually they had to start borrowing money to address the shortfall. Surprise, they weren't able to get cheap money. At this point they had to 1) make the recurring investment fund payments of 7% a year 2) start to reimburse principal for investors that hit the end of the five year term, and 3) make the payments on the money they were borrowing to cover 1 and 2.
I believe you are entirely right on this analysis. It is interesting to me that every time this was brought up we always had Ice telling us all what idiots we were for not understanding the structure of the 575 fund. Nope, we understood it quite well turns out.
https://twitter.com/nickpuente2/status/1428860996756533258
Screen Shot 2021-08-21 at 7.37.39 PM (resized).pngQuoted from spfxted:How far back did I say Dennis has a fantastic bullshit-o-meter and to be aware when he left?
IMO Dennis is always the canary in the coal mine. He was right on heighway and deeproot, I am guessing JJP was very close to being a trifecta. Hopefully AP doesn’t become the trifecta.
Quoted from Scandell:Every graduating class of law students has below average students.
This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: What do you call a med student who graduates at the bottom of their class?
Doctor.
JJP has to be pretty relieved with this Deeproot diversion right now. They may not even need the premium package from reputationdefender.com to negate the problems their shitty playfields, I mean customer inflicted damage has, caused to their stellar reputation....
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:SPECIAL REQUEST: Are there any stand-up, non-squelching-on-a-gentlemen's-agreement lawyers with Pacer access on this thread who'd be willing to pull some case files for me to review and share with our fabulous community? I have all the info neatly organized and ready to send to someone who can grab the goods. Thanks!
I can grab some.
Anyone can create a PACER account (it is called the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system after all). Only problem is that you pay $0.10 for every record you load (ie: pay per click!) so you can run up a bill pretty quick. It's also really really poorly designed -- it seems like every district court has its own site!
There's nothing interesting in there yet - only the initial filing.
There are lots of websites out there that scrape PACER data for you. CourtListener.com is a pretty good site that'll show you most of the the docket for free: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60223430/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-mueller/ I think the way that CourtListener.com works is that people with a PACER account install an extension and then anytime they visit (and pay for) a page, it downloads it and sends it to CourtListener for public consumption. Sort of a crowd sourcing initiative.
So what's next in this case? I have a hobby of following cases and the flow is basically this:
1) Initial filing
2) Judge reviews, approves summons, orders the defendant to be served (~1 week)
3) If the defendant can be served, then they get a chance to respond to the complaint.
4) ... And then months or years of wrangling over technical details of the case.
What I'm trying to get at is don't get too excited - it'll be a while until we see something interesting.
Quoted from Scandell:Every graduating class of law students has below average students.
good luck, robert. they are serious this time.
So on the pacer front, I was just educated that PACER is federal records only. Unfortunately, these cases are from different counties in Texas, and it does not appear that Texas provides an easy way to access them (beyond the initial overview). Rather, one needs to directly contact the county clerks to find out how to get the files.
The Texas counties in question are Bexar and Collin.
If anyone has a different understanding and can point how to access court records from either court system, let me know.
https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/Portal/ is for searching all Texas district courts based out of Bexar County.
https://apps.collincountytx.gov/judicialrecords/case is for Collin county
Texas has a funky thing where there are 472(!) district courts with multiple district courts per county. Usually the county's court house website will allow you to look for records for all the districts based in that county.
But why are you looking at state district courts? There are the two cases in there (Holts Mechanical & In Depth Events).
Edit: Interesting note, Jason E McKinnie is the deeproot lawyer.
Quoted from iceman44:Yeah I don’t know all the facts and I’m sure the SEC will get to the bottom of it, along with the investment advisors and other potential litigants.
The pinball money is a pittance by comparison. It’s also why I didn’t take any “refund” money in the first place, we knew where it was coming from and not Robert himself.
I will be calling Jason McKinnie on Monday
I had nothing before, I have nothing now. Life goes on. Carry on!
Is Iceman really Robert lol?
Back to the piggy banks, Robert seemed to adopt the approach "go big or go home" with the most recent rounds of additional offerings for the two big funds (screenshots from December 2020 filings). The sell rate wasn't so hot, however.
Deeproot Growth Runs Deep
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1606191/000160619120000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
Screen Shot 2021-08-21 at 8.07.21 PM (resized).png
Deeproot 575 Fund
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652459/000165245920000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
Screen Shot 2021-08-21 at 8.06.57 PM (resized).png
Quoted from Inside:https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/Portal/ is for searching all Texas district courts based out of Bexar County.
https://apps.collincountytx.gov/judicialrecords/case is for Collin county
Texas has a funky thing where there are 472(!) district courts with multiple district courts per county. Usually the county's court house website will allow you to look for records for all the districts based in that county.
But why are you looking at state district courts? There are the two cases in there (Holts Mechanical & In Depth Events).
Edit: Interesting note, Jason E McKinnie is the deeproot lawyer.Is Iceman really Robert lol?
I'll copy-paste all the links and case numbers I have. The problem is going from that to getting court documents. If someone can, please do!
******BEXAR COUNTY******
2021CV02299
IN DEPTH EVENTS, INC VS DEEPROOT TECH, LLC
https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/app/RegisterOfActions/#/6B7B7B63763E49A488A1307171AD08F82474214C588E7F7600228DF6C7CDAB4061343B32BFE22F4B120718CDF7F430C8/anon/portalembed
2020CI20793
HOLTS MECHANICAL LTD VS ROBERT J MUELLER ET AL
https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/app/RegisterOfActions/#/C992FCDA80AE26D28BC93E7F116E779A59C50D74A2A84B2080DDE27A6B413CF33CB177675E701FEDF7C8B2DF450771E5/anon/portalembed
2019CI22367
DEEPROOT TECH LLC VS G-FORCE TECHNICAL LTD
https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/app/RegisterOfActions/#/5158B236775D18688A6ADDC48FFFE25EB57A1942FDE0C85D3EF887B334E893BEAF9432DEFA6DDFA19323895E8B7FCD80/anon/portalembed
2020CV04262
FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF OMAHA VS ROBERT J MUELLER
https://portal-txbexar.tylertech.cloud/app/RegisterOfActions/#/670B5C6A2FEB12236B2DF756FCAA3A28513AA6B8D50849D7D16D86D91D3B1EECE90AE5E7C999144BAD9C4C971BF5D69A/anon/portalembed
****COLLIN COUNTY****
01-SC-20-00222
In Depth Events, Inc vs. Deeproot Tech, LLC
Oh I see! You want to get the actual documents from the court.
Hummm.. I will have some free time on tuesday - I could swing by the Bexar county court house and see if I can pull something up 
Quoted from underlord:But wait! Will he be disbarred?
Robert is a clever lawyer who will represent himself against these malicious allegations.
Of course with his intellect he will be on death row.
Goodbye mr. mueller. You don’t deserve capitol letters, just capitol punishment.
And another added to the pinball walk of shame. Maybe he and Kulek can share a cell. They’ll love his husky tenderloin in there.
as an attorney in CA, I can say that if he were in CA as a lawyer, he would almost instantly be suspended pending a summary hearing, after which he would 99% surely be disbarred for a certain number of years (5-10 minimum). this would occur very shortly after the bar ass'n receiving the pleadings or being notified of the case by the SEC or any other party.
CA loves to disbar lawyers for anything even remotely smelling like dishonesty. what RM has done, or alleged to have done, kinda smells dishonest imho. He DOES look super smart in those reading glasses though, so maybe they'll give him a pass after he convinces them that this was all just a straight up investment and business venture failed due to COVID or other force majeure.
Quoted from MrBally:JJP has to be pretty relieved with this Deeproot diversion right now. They may not even need the premium package from reputationdefender.com to negate the problems their shitty playfields, I mean customer inflicted damage has, caused to their stellar reputation....
This comment is too funny about JJP even having such thing as the mirage of a stellar reputation, lol. MrBally comments in jest: “ I mean customer inflicted damage has, caused to their stellar reputation....”. JJP is another example of a company taking advantage of its customers in so many ways and getting away with it. Unbelievable that Jack/JJP blames their customers as being the real cause of the JJP failed PFs.
The to pinball related culture of retro-gaming saw a scamster who ran a number of shady activities mashed together for years. So much so that there is now written a massive book about it and him.
https://www.colecochameleon.org/
Never say never, Robert.
Quoted from Inside:Oh interesting. For 01-SC-20-00222 (In Depth Events, Inc vs. Deeproot Tech, LLC) it looks like it was transferred to Bexar county![quoted image]
Yup, so the original case would be the one of least interest to me. But I put them all out there because never know who can get what.
someone here should send Christian D H Schultz a thank you letter and some ice cream for being the lead prosecutor for the SEC on the case against RM
Six months from now, Charlie Brooker will have made a Black Mirror episode about this whole sordid affair.
Quoted from EalaDubhSidhe:Six months from now, Charlie Brooker will have made a Black Mirror episode about this whole sordid affair.
Except that Black Mirror episodes are based upon plausible scenarios, like prime ministers who are coerced into televised beastiality.
Anybody not already familiar with the deeproot saga would reject the story as patently unbelievable.
Quoted from Inside:What I'm trying to get at is don't get too excited - it'll be a while until we see something interesting.
Kind of like it has been with DR from the beginning you mean? And we’re all still waiting for something interesting….anything at all, like pinball machines that were never even attempted at being manufactured.
Quoted from soren:Is Dennis Nordman the brightest man in pinball? He can smell a fart and bug out in due time.
When the house said “Get Out”, Dennis didn’t sit around like the other idiots and say “We’ll that’s peculiar? Guess I’ll keep posting rulesets for RAZA”
Can we as a community agree to never, ever support these jpop titles again?
I mean... Fool me once
We are now at the ASSuME stage.
If he did a design for a reputable company I would (aka Spooky). But this would never happen because he’s poison at this point. Also I like to see him walk away for good because I want my 90’s JPOP pins to keep increasing in value due to the fact they are the last he will ever do and tied to the craziest pinball designer of all time
Quoted from jimwe5t:This is the tragic part of all the DR scandal, the poor victims.
Indeed: I feel sorry for the investors. The purchasers of RAZA: I'm sorry it turned out badly, but you could know how small the chances were that you were getting a game, and even got an 'get out' opportunity, so unless you didn't read any of the deeproot topics, you were warned and took a gamble most of us thought was madness.
The investors I feel really sorry for: I think they knew way less about the deeproot investments and deeproots work creating a pinball company with expenses, anyone with a sense numbers could see would in the most positive scenario still never make any profit ever, than we did (of the pinball part of the business).
This story has so many fucked up tangents, bodies buried, unbelievable twists, crazy characters it could easily play out like a Coen Brothers movie or a new Tiger-King style docuseries that no one knew they had to have in their life and will spend months talking about around the dinner table and water cooler.
Quoted from HEAD_boss_HOG:I can say that if he were in CA as a lawyer, he would almost instantly be suspended pending a summary hearing, after which he would 99% surely be disbarred for a certain number of years (5-10 minimum).
Here in TX he'll probably be elected attorney general.
Quoted from Dkjimbo:This story has so many fucked up tangents, bodies buried, unbelievable twists, crazy characters it could easily play out like a Coen Brothers movie or a new Tiger-King style docuseries that no one knew they had to have in their life and will spend months talking about around the dinner table and water cooler.
5FC2A5B6-E8AE-4C1B-96DA-A5A76A8F8F38 (resized).jpegDon't forget, every transaction, wire transfer, every penny Bob funneled to himself is taxable income. He will owe huge taxes and penalties on that income. That is, if the IRS doesn't just charge home with tax fraud first and he will still owe a huge sum.
Edit:. And embezzlement charges that would include anyone who partook in spending the money, such as his (ex)wives. The report shows they all used credit cards paid by the 575 fund.
Quoted from Beechwood:Don't forget, every transaction, wire transfer, every penny Bob funneled to himself is taxable income. He will owe huge taxes and penalties on that income. That is, if the IRS doesn't just charge home with tax fraud first and he will still owe a huge sum.
Edit:. And embezzlement charges that would include anyone who partook in spending the money, such as his (ex)wives. The report shows they all used credit cards paid by the 575 fund.
I really can't see a way that RM avoids jailtime with the potential for embezzlement & tax fraud in the mix
Quoted from iceman44:we knew where it was coming from and not Robert himself.
I will be calling Jason McKinnie on Monday
Quoted from Inside:Interesting note, Jason E McKinnie is the deeproot lawyer.
Is Iceman really Robert lol?
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