In other news...Is Saskatchewan the Canadian version of the SW USA? What about the Alberta Rodeo? What about this guy:
(Topic ID: 203700)
Linked Games
Alice in Wonderland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2013-
Celts
Haggis, 2021
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Magic Girl
Zidware Pinball USA, 2017
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2012
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Arcade Edition)
Deeproot, 2020
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Xtra Edition)
Deeproot, 2020
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New City, NY
Quoted from greatwichjohn:Looks to be more of a factory minus any production line for Deeproot Pinball. It would be great if pictures are shown over the years of the factory. Looks like Robert can use a bunch of money that was spent over the years as part of a out towards failure. Even quad or octo manufacturing might get people away from line manufacturing. Same with the animation studio since most pinball games have displays for everything. Also throw in the few refunds & trying to do some scheme towards Zidware customers.
As for JPOP maybe he was smart & took a vacation. Funny how so much focus is on him, & no one seems to know where he is. It will upset the mob when he lands on his feet somewhere doing more pinball work.
But since JPOP took peoples money with Zidware, he must be the #1 reason Deeproot Pinball FAILED. History likes to repeat itself. Lots of info posted for people to decide if they want to roll the dice on a deposit or more on a pinball machine not in their possession. I rolled the dice twice with Jack, could lost everything (second game I almost did). Had my brand new WOZ out of the box crap out at the show. They got a part from the game next to it at the show so the distributors pin was just a display (off).
Finally over all the years going to shows, operating & servicing, producing playfields & backglass, other parts & pioneering uv inkjet playfield production. I applaud all those working in the pinball biz. I truely hope all employees find employment elsewhere quickly.
Finally lucky for me I could not go to Pinball Expo this year & do a seminar on Deeproot Pinball (my thoughts) on how to try to survive & actually make pinball games. Also I have left the Raza thread after the SEC came out. Maybe the constant gloaters should try & refrain themselves.
Get help.
Quoted from iceman44:Kind of funny how Mr Big mouth fell into river of shit. How ironic.
Lack of self perception or low hanging fruit to test me 
Quoted from Castlecade:Shut downs have nothing to do with how PPP loans work, im not saying he’s not a crook. But in this regard you are not informed. Also considering you knew all the things you have said prior and where afraid of retribution doesn’t make you any kind of hero ….so yeah
Most of what I knew was how litigious Robert was and how insane his plans were. Like most everyone, thought it was just another failed venture until last week...
Torrens Park
Quoted from Dkjimbo:Leasing packages by CBRE have been posted in this thread which take weeks to prepare and negotiate contracts with CBRE so the owner of that building knew for quite some time this was a sinking ship and was prepared to look for sublease tenants or new lease tenants for the space. The photos in the lease package show an abandoned DeepRoot space.
Thank you. I work in commercial leasing in Australia, so I find this stuff from other jurisdictions fascinating
Quoted from Dkjimbo:Leasing packages by CBRE have been posted in this thread which take weeks to prepare and negotiate contracts with CBRE so the owner of that building knew for quite some time this was a sinking ship and was prepared to look for sublease tenants or new lease tenants for the space. The photos in the lease package show an abandoned DeepRoot space.
Where have leasing packages been posted? The only things I've seen from CBRE are documents trying to sell the building which comes with a single tenant (Deeproot) through 2023.
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:Where have leasing packages been posted? The only things I've seen from CBRE are documents trying to sell the building which comes with a single tenant (Deeproot) through 2023.
Wait. I thought the building was owned by one of Robert's companies?
Quoted from benheck:Wait. I thought the building was owned by one of Robert's companies?
It's not
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:The brochure has been shared a fee times. The tax doc is new.
Looking at the doc, I think it is actually just tax related to an entity created by Deeproot for the money they put into the property (that Robert doesn't own). You'll note that the market value is only 132k and the land value is $0 (because there's no land). This actually almost surely explains the purpose behind one of his LLCs I never understood, which is an LLC in the name of the address of the deeproot offices.
Quoted from DennisNordman:Well, I'll be darned, that's my foamcore layout.
Hi Dennis! What game was it for?
How much is the Raza prototype quantified at? $30m? Do we include the previous failures to bring Raza to market under Jpop?
RM & jpop have made history by being the largest failures in pinball, in a league that no-one can even compete with
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:So this
[quoted image]
is this?https://www.flasonsmt.com/samsung-sm320-pick-and-place-machine-5121251.html
[quoted image]
Simple it a counterfeiting machine. There was a few delays on green ink due to Covid.
Quoted from iceman44:Kind of funny how Mr Big mouth fell into river of shit. How ironic.
Ironic? This was expected.
Especially when he was bragging about his monthly expenses, that money just doesn't appear out of thin air. I would like to think anyone who has been responsible for a multi-million dollar budget saw the writing on the wall about where that money was coming from.
People who brag about how rich and awesome they are usually are some of the worst people. Robert deserves every bit of trouble he gets in, plus a lot more.
I have to say I really feel for the employees in this.
If you are an employee that got shit on by deeproot, and you have some programming skills in c#, typescript, or others, drop me a private message and we can chat. I've got some of those positions open including an engineering manager position. We are very profitable, so we pay well, and it's an amazing place to work.
Quoted from benheck:Most of what I knew was how litigious Robert was and how insane his plans were. Like most everyone, thought it was just another failed venture until last week...
I remember two years ago I went through this weeklong period where I was kind of obsessed with this topic on here and so I went and dug through all the SEC literature about the money raised. Me and another person in the pinball community chatted over FB messenger trying to piece it together. It seemed weird that the pinball company part could use money raised by the other companies, but I was not a lawyer. I didn't have enough knowledge to know what is allowed and what is not. I used the word fraud early in this topic, not because I had evidence, but because everything I’ve learned about business and building things indicated it is a conservative environment re: spending and claims. Get your customers and sales first, then brag. Not the other way around. The way Robert was acting, fraud was incredibly likely. I know our brains are warped by the size of madoff’s fraud, but this is a huge fraud at $58 million. Even billionaires like the sharks on shark tank don’t invest $50 million into one venture. They spread themselves out over many startups. And don’t get me started on returns. You don’t spend $10 million to capture a $10 million market, it’s a total waste of money. When we thought Robert was spending 10-20 million it was just absurd since stern does maybe 20 million in revenue a year? Why would you spend $20 million to capture a million in profits every year ? Takes you 20 years to make it back. Might as well invest in treasuries at that point.
And it’s also the nature of the business. People see Silicon Valley money and think, well, it’s totally normal to raise huge funds with anticipated sales. In software, yes, because you build the product once then it’s available to anyone to use and each sale is gravy once the software is built. Really in software the issue is finding customers and selling what you’ve built. Manufacturing real goods is a completely different ballgame. Yes, the larger the orders the more discounts you get but in general you have to pre buy all these parts and make huge capital investments or partner with firms who do. Its an incremental game. Treating a manufacturing business like a software business was bound to fail. We are also told “old industries are dinosaurs” and if they would just innovate like software companies then they’d be killing it. And anyone can come around and “disrupt” those industries. Robert thought he could “disrupt” pinball. But simple economics thought otherwise.
Quoted from greatwichjohn:Looks to be more of a factory minus any production line for Deeproot Pinball. It would be great if pictures are shown over the years of the factory. Looks like Robert can use a bunch of money that was spent over the years as part of a out towards failure. Even quad or octo manufacturing might get people away from line manufacturing. Same with the animation studio since most pinball games have displays for everything. Also throw in the few refunds & trying to do some scheme towards Zidware customers.
Read the room man. You are getting 40+ downvotes for every nonsensical reality-distortion field induced comment. In all sincerity your time is probably better spent doing anything else. The rest of us are all still here for the morbid curiosity.
Quoted from Richthofen:I remember two years ago I went through this weeklong period where I was kind of obsessed with this topic on here and so I went and dug through all the SEC literature about the money raised. Me and another person in the pinball community chatted over FB messenger trying to piece it together. It seemed weird that the pinball company part could use money raised by the other companies, but I was not a lawyer. I didn't have enough knowledge to know what is allowed and what is not. I used the word fraud early in this topic, not because I had evidence, but because everything I’ve learned about business and building things indicated it is a conservative environment re: spending and claims. Get your customers and sales first, then brag. Not the other way around. The way Robert was acting, fraud was incredibly likely. I know our brains are warped by the size of madoff’s fraud, but this is a huge fraud at $58 million. Even billionaires like the sharks on shark tank don’t invest $50 million into one venture. They spread themselves out over many startups. And don’t get me started on returns. You don’t spend $10 million to capture a $10 million market, it’s a total waste of money. When we thought Robert was spending 10-20 million it was just absurd since stern does maybe 20 million in revenue a year? Why would you spend $20 million to capture a million in profits every year ? Takes you 20 years to make it back. Might as well invest in treasuries at that point.
And it’s also the nature of the business. People see Silicon Valley money and think, well, it’s totally normal to raise huge funds with anticipated sales. In software, yes, because you build the product once then it’s available to anyone to use and each sale is gravy once the software is built. Really in software the issue is finding customers and selling what you’ve built. Manufacturing real goods is a completely different ballgame. Yes, the larger the orders the more discounts you get but in general you have to pre buy all these parts and make huge capital investments or partner with firms who do. Its an incremental game. Treating a manufacturing business like a software business was bound to fail. We are also told “old industries are dinosaurs” and if they would just innovate like software companies then they’d be killing it. And anyone can come around and “disrupt” those industries. Robert thought he could “disrupt” pinball. But simple economics thought otherwise.
Man, you just don't get it! He was going to grow the market and make all others look like garage-level production. 3500 bucks was overpriced! PINBAR! Every teen and 20 something would be buying them too! 20 million in market cap is just a small slice of what deeproot was gonna do!
Quoted from Stuieb84:How much is the Raza prototype quantified at? $30m? Do we include the previous failures to bring Raza to market under Jpop?
RM & jpop have made history by being the largest failures in pinball, in a league that no-one can even compete with
And yet greatwichjohn still wants to hire him.
Quoted from Richthofen:I remember two years ago I went through this weeklong period where I was kind of obsessed with this topic on here and so I went and dug through all the SEC literature about the money raised. Me and another person in the pinball community chatted over FB messenger trying to piece it together. It seemed weird that the pinball company part could use money raised by the other companies, but I was not a lawyer. I didn't have enough knowledge to know what is allowed and what is not. I used the word fraud early in this topic, not because I had evidence, but because everything I’ve learned about business and building things indicated it is a conservative environment re: spending and claims. Get your customers and sales first, then brag. Not the other way around. The way Robert was acting, fraud was incredibly likely. I know our brains are warped by the size of madoff’s fraud, but this is a huge fraud at $58 million. Even billionaires like the sharks on shark tank don’t invest $50 million into one venture. They spread themselves out over many startups. And don’t get me started on returns. You don’t spend $10 million to capture a $10 million market, it’s a total waste of money. When we thought Robert was spending 10-20 million it was just absurd since stern does maybe 20 million in revenue a year? Why would you spend $20 million to capture a million in profits every year ? Takes you 20 years to make it back. Might as well invest in treasuries at that point.
And it’s also the nature of the business. People see Silicon Valley money and think, well, it’s totally normal to raise huge funds with anticipated sales. In software, yes, because you build the product once then it’s available to anyone to use and each sale is gravy once the software is built. Really in software the issue is finding customers and selling what you’ve built. Manufacturing real goods is a completely different ballgame. Yes, the larger the orders the more discounts you get but in general you have to pre buy all these parts and make huge capital investments or partner with firms who do. Its an incremental game. Treating a manufacturing business like a software business was bound to fail. We are also told “old industries are dinosaurs” and if they would just innovate like software companies then they’d be killing it. And anyone can come around and “disrupt” those industries. Robert thought he could “disrupt” pinball. But simple economics thought otherwise.
Spot on analysis. You have to scale the investment to the expected return. He never did. That told you everything you needed to know
I suspect Robert was more enamored with running a business and having people bow down to him than he was with making a profit. And I also have no doubt that he said to himself whether I run a pinball company or buy the insurance securities I said I would, I can for sure make back 7% I have to payout. So it’s all good. Another Martin Shkreli. To him everything was a known, which is why he could claim pinball is easy. And yet all of it was ACTUALLY one great big unknown as it proved to be. It was a profound mix of hubris and incompetence. He presumed himself the expert of all - kinda like students who see a master perform and think to themselves “I can do that too”. And the most ironic thing of all is that he wasn’t even a very good financial advisor which was his primary job for which he collected $1.6M
Quoted from DudeRegular:Man, you just don't get it! He was going to grow the market and make all others look like garage-level production.
I know you're kidding but... most of America can't afford housing and healthcare, never mind pinball machines. The market for expensive toys will always be small. There's a term in business called Total Addressable Market, and folks, as much as pinball is a huge part of our lives, to most people, it's a weird relic from a former era. The IFPA says 25,000 unique people played in sanctioned pinball events in 2019. I've been to many events and talked to a lot of people. I'd say half or less have machines in their home. They're just an expensive luxury to most of the country. So the TAM is 12,500 active pinball collectors. (again this is an estimate. Lots of collectors don't play in IFPA events, but we need a benchmark). I'm going to say there's 2,500 operators buying games as well, worldwide. I got that number by taking the last estimate of arcade count I could find online that says 2,500 arcades and 3,500 FECs exist in the USA. The FECs almost never have pinball from what I've seen but let's say the arcades do, and they buy 1 new game a year on average. So, we've arrived at 15,000 pinball purchasers in the USA. For sake of argument, let's say they all buy 1 game a year. That is an optimistic maximum of 15,000 sales a year. Assuming no competition to split sales among. And let's say you have 20% margins on a $5,000 game (deeproot was gonna sell games at kia prices, after all). So that means $1,000 X 15,000. Which means a maximum of $15,000,000 in profits. Robert was burning $750,000 a month in Salary. At $9 million a year in barebones operating costs, Robert would literally need to sell every new pinball machine in the world for this to work. It's what we call a "long shot". There was never a middle ground here, either Robert captured the entire pinball market, and beat Stern at what they've been doing for 40+ years, or they blow up. With the amount of money spent, there was never a middle ground.
There. I just did more market research in the above paragraph than apparently deeproot did in 6 years of pinball "manufacturing".
If deeproot was planning on 'growing the pinball market', why did they do their sponsorship / advertising of pinball events, where everyone already knew about them? Why didn't they work with major retailers to get the games into places where new faces would see them (like Stern did with costco)? Why doesn't any other expensive home amusement manufacturer "grow their market"? Could you imagine a pool table manufacturer saying "A pool table for every family, every family needs a pool table"?
Quoted from Richthofen:I know you're kidding but... most of America can't afford housing and healthcare, never mind pinball machines. The market for expensive toys will always be small. There's a term in business called Total Addressable Market, and folks, as much as pinball is a huge part of our lives, to most people, it's a weird relic from a former era. The IFPA says 25,000 unique people played in sanctioned pinball events in 2019. I've been to many events and talked to a lot of people. I'd say half or less have machines in their home. They're just an expensive luxury to most of the country. So the TAM is 12,500 active pinball collectors. (again this is an estimate. Lots of collectors don't play in IFPA events, but we need a benchmark). I'm going to say there's 2,500 operators buying games as well, worldwide. I got that number by taking the last estimate of arcade count I could find online that says 2,500 arcades and 3,500 FECs exist in the USA. The FECs almost never have pinball from what I've seen but let's say the arcades do, and they buy 1 new game a year on average. So, we've arrived at 15,000 pinball purchasers in the USA. For sake of argument, let's say they all buy 1 game a year. That is an optimistic maximum of 15,000 sales a year. Assuming no competition to split sales among. And let's say you have 20% margins on a $5,000 game (deeproot was gonna sell games at kia prices, after all). So that means $1,000 X 15,000. Which means a maximum of $15,000,000 in profits. Robert was burning $750,000 a month in Salary. At $9 million a year in barebones operating costs, Robert would literally need to sell every new pinball machine in the world for this to work. It's what we call a "long shot". There was never a middle ground here, either Robert captured the entire pinball market, and beat Stern at what they've been doing for 40+ years, or they blow up. With the amount of money spent, there was never a middle ground.
There. I just did more market research in the above paragraph than apparently deeproot did in 6 years of pinball "manufacturing".
If deeproot was planning on 'growing the pinball market', why did they do their sponsorship / advertising of pinball events, where everyone already knew about them? Why didn't they work with major retailers to get the games into places where new faces would see them (like Stern did with costco)? Why doesn't any other expensive home amusement manufacturer "grow their market"? Could you imagine a pool table manufacturer saying "A pool table for every family, every family needs a pool table"?
Man you have put some really good info together in your posts. My last post was simply in the vain of the common-sense ignoring blowhard type. They just have this magic vision that others lack. Mere mortals just don't understand!
When the volume is not going to move a ton on a per unit sales basis, margin is the target. Ex multiple tiers of product, accessories. These dudes were going to race to the bottom on price, yet somehow have better margins, better quality, higher volume, etc. Ridiculous claims from the get go.
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:So this
[quoted image]
is this?https://www.flasonsmt.com/samsung-sm320-pick-and-place-machine-5121251.html
[quoted image]
Yes it is a fully decked out pick and place machine. Basically it picks up parts like resistor, chips, etc and places them on the circuit board. Then the board runs through the wave soldering machine on the right in that first picture to get soldered in place all at once. This is a hugely expensive setup and it's not cost efficient in any way for this type of business. Looks like it has never been used, so it should get some money at auction.
Quoted from Richthofen:...Which means a maximum of $15,000,000 in profits. Robert was burning $750,000 a month in Salary. At $9 million a year in barebones operating costs, Robert would literally need to sell every new pinball machine in the world for this to work. It's what we call a "long shot"...
I love that some (well thought out) back-of-a-napkin math like this can so nicely underscore how divorced* from reality RM is/was.
*( 
)
Let's be conservative and say he "only" spent 20 million on pinball. At 2k.profit per game (again, unlikely) that's 10k units just to pay back the investors to say nothing of a 5% or 7% ROI.
How long did it take JJP to sell 10k units? And that's all licensed games. Deeproot was mostly OG themes. How long would it take to hit 10k sales with TNAs, AMHs, October fests and Dialied Ins?
The math never worked which is why I guess it was a scam - because no reasonable person would invest in this model.
Quoted from Roostking:Any chance jpop gets pulled in as a co-conspirator?
I doubt he had access to the company financials, so my guess would be no.
Quoted from benheck:Let's be conservative and say he "only" spent 20 million on pinball. At 2k.profit per game (again, unlikely) that's 10k units just to pay back the investors to say nothing of a 5% or 7% ROI.
How long did it take JJP to sell 10k units? And that's all licensed games. Deeproot was mostly OG themes. How long would it take to hit 10k sales with TNAs, AMHs, October fests and Dialied Ins?
The math never worked which is why I guess it was a scam - because no reasonable person would invest in this model.
Scam of the 575 fund investors - yes
Scam of the pre-orders - based on all the recent pictures and timeline -yes
Scam of a pinball company -hold on a minute, I think they were just grossly incompetent. Scam implies that they never had any intention of manufacturing anything. The photos of the back room and pick and place machines would argue otherwise. Now it was ludicrous of them to think that would be enough to make anything at all. But on this front I think they just earn the incompetence merit badge.
A good leader recognizes what they know and what they don’t know. Further they are able to marshal others efforts into a coherent whole. No disrespect intended for those who worked at DR, but he had the wrong team on this (JPOP is just the poster child for this). Bring in a George Gomez type, stand back and let them get go work. RM didn’t stand back. RM didn’t have a Gomez on this team to organize pretty much anything.
Laval, QC
Quoted from Mr68:I was also sent this picture in the original batch but hesitated posting it. Looks to be from the back wall of that empty office picture but I don't know. Doesn't make sense to me.
December 2020?
[quoted image]
Is the picture metadata still in the file? That could tell you the date the picture was taken.
Just google "free picture metadata reader". No software installation necessary.
Quoted from benheck:Let's be conservative and say he "only" spent 20 million on pinball. At 2k.profit per game (again, unlikely) that's 10k units just to pay back the investors to say nothing of a 5% or 7% ROI.
How long did it take JJP to sell 10k units? And that's all licensed games. Deeproot was mostly OG themes. How long would it take to hit 10k sales with TNAs, AMHs, October fests and Dialied Ins?
The math never worked which is why I guess it was a scam - because no reasonable person would invest in this model.
Keyword "reasonable". This was Dunning-Kruger writ large, with a healthy dose of narcissism, hubris and wishful thinking mixed in. Pinball was easy money, the profits were going to roll in...and near the end I'm sure sunk cost fallacy and Hail Mary joined the party.
Quoted from pookycade:Scam of a pinball company -hold on a minute, I think they were just grossly incompetent.
I disagree. It goes beyond incompetence when you lie to stakeholders and investors. Robert knew no one in their right mind would invest in the pinball business. It's a fraud if you lie about the details of a business to your investors. You have a fiduciary responsibility to them.
Investors are smart. Here are sales of deeproot pinball securities:
Deeproot pinball securities sale
Here are sales of deeproot growth runs deep fund (investors told the investments would be secure in life insurance and other safe investments)
deeeproot grd sales
Money is easy to lose and hard to make. These retirees wouldn't put their money down on a pinball manufacturer.
Quoted from Richthofen:Investors are smart. Here are sales of deeproot pinball securities:
Wow. That really tells the story with the least amount of words.
Quoted from Richthofen:I disagree. It goes beyond incompetence when you lie to stakeholders and investors. Robert knew no one in their right mind would invest in the pinball business. It's a fraud if you lie about the details of a business to your investors. You have a fiduciary responsibility to them.
Investors are smart. Here are sales of deeproot pinball securities:
[quoted image]
Here are sales of deeproot growth runs deep fund (investors told the investments would be secure in life insurance and other safe investments)
[quoted image]
Money is easy to lose and hard to make. These retirees wouldn't put their money down on a pinball manufacturer.
As I said 575 investors scammed. Pinball company itself not a scam, just incompetent. Also, I certainly didn’t read the prospectus, but he said he would spend 10% of fund on the category of “other” that would contribute to return on the fund. So it he had just limited spending to Relief Defendant businesses to 10% of the fund and not tied a personal spending credit card to the account he could have been ok (but would have as the SEC said needed an written analysis of financial benefit versus risk to the fund for those expenditure -even if the analysis was 100% wrong it would have been legal ). Believe me I am not trying to defend him in any way here. And it is splitting hairs and I don’t think a fundamental difference of opinion. But that said he could have had a failure of a pin company funded by said 575 fund and likely been in the clear legally. All hypothetical because it would presume he was smart enough to control his own narcissistic tendencies and spending habits. Obviously he wasn’t.
Quoted from Richthofen:I disagree. It goes beyond incompetence when you lie to stakeholders and investors. Robert knew no one in their right mind would invest in the pinball business. It's a fraud if you lie about the details of a business to your investors. You have a fiduciary responsibility to them.
Investors are smart. Here are sales of deeproot pinball securities:
[quoted image]
Here are sales of deeproot growth runs deep fund (investors told the investments would be secure in life insurance and other safe investments)
[quoted image]
And then there's the big daddy 575 fund.
The pinball company was fraudulently funded, but I do think they intended to build stuff. They didn’t know how to build anything though and they focused in many wrong areas
If the pinball was a total scam they wouldn’t have bought all the equipment they didn’t need. They didn’t need the illusion of production since the investors didn’t know they were investing in this.
I don’t know gentleman, I keep thinking that this company shouldn’t be in business because it has no chance. Thoughts?
Quoted from Richthofen:I know our brains are warped by the size of madoff’s fraud, but this is a huge fraud at $58 million.
I did fed time for marijuana. This is a Huge fraud at 58 million. Along with the elderly abused victims. This doesn't sit well with many on either side. Only a few guys I ran into were worse. Keating from Lincoln Savings come to mind.
The US Attorney from the district that started the SEC complaint usually indicts. Federal criminal laws are way different than state. Any of the other 93 US attorneys from other districts can indict if a victim resides in their district. (Mail fraud, one of just many potential charges).
I was indicted by 2 different US attorneys for the same pot 3,000 miles apart. Double jeopardy doesn't apply. They charged me with conspiracy with possession in one district, and possession in the other. I noticed from working in a prison law library that these types of cases usually resulted between 8 to 12 years. And 5 years supervised release. Which they can restart if you violate your condition of release. Theoretical life sentence if you kept screwing up.
These are the following levels of incarceration. Federal prison camp, then low (FCI) Federal Correctional Institution, med. FCI, med high FCI, Penitentiary. When transferring to another prison, there is Air Con. But most get bused. His type somehow often takes months to get to your destination. When the last bus that left the prison gets there in hours. (Diesel Therapy) They drop you off in county jails and shit which is the Absolute worst he will see. Except possibly pre trial. The prisons are much, much better than county jail.
He will be housed in a place safe for him. Prisons at the lower levels have dorms. He won't have an easy time though. Best guess is he has to "pay rent". Cigarettes aren't federally taxed, and stamps were big too. My prediction would be an indictment within a year, another year of pre trial, 10 plus 5 sentence. Sounds like at least a 15 to 20 year ride to nowhere. The feds have so many moves they can make on this guy. I've lived it unfortunately.
So the feds messed with me because my co-defendant bosses seriously pissed them off. They were still in Mexico when I last heard of them almost 30 years ago. The feds will be pissed over the elderly abuse. But I got my bachelor's degree as my time was easy. His time will be much, much harder. I got along with most everyone. He won't. Not even close. He is an elderly abusing fraudster. Both sides hate that.
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:And then there's the big daddy 575 fund.
More like the Elderly Scammed 575 fund. This is how most guys like me who have unfortunately been there think.
Quoted from spfxted:Hi Dennis! What game was it for?
Ha I knew somebody would ask.
Hint: it doesn’t matter as it will never be built out of something besides cardboard.
But the good news is, since it was all a complete fantasy, you can just make up your own desire-fulfilling pinball paradise!! That sad piece of dirty foam and cardboard leaning up against a wall with the rest of the garbage can be anything you want it to be.
“50s B Movie Monster Mayhem?” Sure, why not!!
“Elvira’s Ed Wood Party Bash?!” Or maybe it was supposed to be “Whitewater Horror Scared Stiff Indy 600!”
Hey, it’s your fantasy!! Whatever your heart desires deep root will furnish it. Just send money and encourage others to do the same. No longer do you have to continue to accept the insulting “product” foisted upon you by the likes of Gary Stern!!!
jamesmc thanks for sharing your story and perspective. Cynical but legit question when comparing your and Robert's situations: did you have very expensive lawyers representing you?
How long would they have actually believed? The whole thing is just a complete clusterfuck. Nothing about any of this makes any sense. It honestly looks like a child pretending to be grown up. Very early on he knew the Pin was never going to happen, he just played along till the money ran out. I find it fascinating how this kinda thing happens, how no one says, ah we we have several orders of magnitude going out than could ever come in. I am a little jealous to be honest, I don't think I am capable of believing or going along like that. I remember back in the dot com days everyone I knew was at a start up and it was hysteria. I just could not do it.
Quoted from benheck:The math never worked which is why I guess it was a scam - because no reasonable person would invest in this model.
if only people had called this very stuff out years ago...
Quoted from flynnibus:So he's going to have a expense run rate of nearly a million dollars a month. Do the math on what you think his sales projections must be to sustain that kind of expense... then think about the price points he keeps talking about.
Let's assume he plans on a healthy 33% margin. That means he needs over 2.2 million a month in gross revenues just to break even (and this ignores startup costs). If you assume distribution makes at least 10% on sales... and an even 'average' price of 5k USD per unit. That means they need to sell 500 games A MONTH @$4500 to distribution just to break even month to month.
And if they go for some disruptor pricing... the volume numbers just go up of course.
And of course, every month you aren't making those kinds of numbers.. the hole just gets deeper.
This is the kind of stuff that makes people so skeptical of deeproot.
Quoted from flynnibus:But doing so requires having a story about what the payoff is... and is it achievable. If you don't do that, the investors don't buy in.
What we are saying here is... this burn rate is not inline with what is practically known as achievable (or in line with what your total addressable market maybe). Basically it reeks of "not economically feasible"
People lose money on investments.. but they usually don't just burn millions without some diligence.
[Of course now, we know you just don't tell anyone you're burning millions 
]
And what did the audience think of the very same conclusions people are coming around to now? Oh yeah, the 'no preorder money' fallacy...
Screen Shot 2021-08-30 at 12.01.43 PM (resized).png
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/twip-is-deeproot-the-next-misadventure-or-a-pinball-revolution/page/151#post-5475178
New minor docs from the SEC case available on https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60223430/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-mueller/ thanks to @inside. Also uploaded to this post.
Very procedural and next to nothing of interest except that it seems Robert has actually hired not one but two very expensive lawyers to represent him. Their bios:
https://dslawpc.com/attorney/jay-hulings/
https://dslawpc.com/attorney/jason-davis/
dr-sec-civilcover.pdfdr-sec-lawyers.pdfdr-sec-summonswaiver.pdfQuoted from John_I:Yes it is a fully decked out pick and place machine. Basically it picks up parts like resistor, chips, etc and places them on the circuit board. Then the board runs through the wave soldering machine on the right in that first picture to get soldered in place all at once. This is a hugely expensive setup and it's not cost efficient in any way for this type of business. Looks like it has never been used, so it should get some money at auction.
The overarching question is, why do it yourself instead of farming it out? Could it be that another manufacturer, one established, respectable, and with actual shipped product, might have sent out a notice to all the area board manufacturing houses warning of a possible counterfeit attempt that they would be eager to defend in court?
Quoted from LateCenturyMods:The overarching question is, why do it yourself instead of farming it out? Could it be that another manufacturer, one established, respectable, and with actual shipped product, might have sent out a notice to all the area board manufacturing houses warning of a possible counterfeit attempt that they would be eager to defend in court?
My guess is it derives from the jpop delusional fantasy that the only way to do the best and innovate the industry is to reengineer everything and do every last thing yourself.
Quoted from flynnibus:And what did the audience think of the very same conclusions people are coming around to now? Oh yeah, the 'no preorder money' fallacy...
[quoted image]
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/twip-is-deeproot-the-next-misadventure-or-a-pinball-revolution/page/151#post-5475178
People just REFUSED to let that one go, throughout about 4 years of this scam.
"Where's the scam? THey haven't asked for any money!!!"
Many people mentioned that just because he's not actively stealing from us - YET - it doesn't mean he's not stealing money. The cultists didn't care. And then when he DID ask for money? Hey they didn't care either.
Because this time, well...it's different!
Quoted from Darscot:How long would they have actually believed? The whole thing is just a complete clusterfuck. Nothing about any of this makes any sense. It honestly looks like a child pretending to be grown up. Very early on he knew the Pin was never going to happen, he just played along till the money ran out. I find it fascinating how this kinda thing happens, how no one says, ah we we have several orders of magnitude going out than could ever come in. I am a little jealous to be honest, I don't think I am capable of believing or going along like that. I remember back in the dot com days everyone I knew was at a start up and it was hysteria. I just could not do it.
See post #22819. Applies to both the seller and many of the buyers.
Quoted from TreyBo69:The pinball company was fraudulently funded, but I do think they intended to build stuff. They didn’t know how to build anything though and they focused in many wrong areas
If the pinball was a total scam they wouldn’t have bought all the equipment they didn’t need. They didn’t need the illusion of production since the investors didn’t know they were investing in this.
I personally think that RM was using pinball as just another personal hobby that he could funnel funds to from the 575 account, like he did for his other personal stuff. I think he really wanted to make pinball machines, and wanted to show the other guys "how it should be done", all as part of his ridiculous ego.
Quoted from wcbrandes:Blueberry the next post is yours!
Yoink!!!!
Honestly, it really should be yours, as the rightful owner of all that awesome Zidware IP.
So while I underhandedly stole 25K, I'm making sure you get a piece of the glory!
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