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Is this the 2006 No Island Media non-payment to the Chinese film documentary company, or the 2009 Food for Thought scam?

http://www.b-roll.net/forum/showthread.php?t=24207
http://www.danwei.org/film/scam_alert_no_island_media_rip.php

Or is it another scam??

I am curious too... the comment said less than three years.
So must be another scam.
:O



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Do you think ADW will carry on with their KS after all the things happened today?



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Aarrd_Rinn is awesome!

Aard Rinn 2 minutes ago

Well, he sent me another message. If we got played, I guess at least we got played by competent crooks? If that's any comfort?

"The guy has many alias' he goes by Henry, Lars, Steven and several more that I can't remember off the top of my head. She is always Dina Walker. They claim to own a bunch of companies and properties, which of course they don't. Evergreen is also fake! If they ever threaten you with a lawyer, also fake! They have been thru Montreal once before and have also hit Toronto and Vancouver (where I am from). Richard who wrote the blog on broll.net uncovered tons of gak on them. When I met them they were boyfriend n girlfriend but they have claimed to be married, brother n sister, and also cousins. We were supposed to open a bakery and restaurant together but when we got the loan for renovations, they emptied the bank acct and left me holding the bill and a 10 year lease worth $100,000 with the city! I hired a PI to track them but they went underground for a year, until they popped up in Montreal again. They are in Canada Illegally and Henry does not have ID. My PI thinks there might be a warrant for his arrest in the US, and that is why he is hiding out here. He is very smart, and arrogant. He has scammed very large companies out of hundred of thousands of dollars of equipment and supplies! They were never really in the tv business, it was just one of their scams."

Hrrm...

I rather am, aren't I?

Just registered an account to post this, but was ninja'd to my very own scoop! Curses!

I can confirm this information. I talked to Pin mini about this a week ago almost. That guy put them up in an apartment in Montreal to help them out and gave them access to accounts for a business they were helping him with. Something about a resteraunt. The guy bought all new equipment for it and everything. They stole the equipment, cleaned his account out and left the apartment. Pretty much exact same story as Aards.

aard_rinn wrote:
I rather am, aren't I?

Just registered an account to post this, but was ninja'd to my very own scoop! Curses!

Either way. Welcome to Dakka. You will find this board is fairly liberal, and the mods and admins do a great job allowing people to vent, and work together to uncover suspected scams.

Carrying on, no. I suspect they will either

1. disappear, or

2. Claim another person, who coincidentally also has outrageously aggressive posting habits, had to be removed from commenting... or

3. Will we will get the, "so sorry, baby. It won't happen again. It was :insert excuse here: and it will stop this time, I promise."

Personally I think it will be #1, since they have freaked enough people out with today's behavior. They have to know it isn't going to be forgotten. Sorry only matters if they don't do it again, and they've now demonstrated they are not above fake apologies.

I actually think it is possible that the blow out was a tactic, not necessarily deliberate or planned, but effective. How many people are going to be thinking, "Man, if they just go away I don't need to deal with that drama?" A lot, I think. And that response is completely reasonable. Dealing with manipulation is so exhausting...

One thing to this that they are in Canada "illegally", they must have done some nasty things before coming to Canada.


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More stuff to dig and it will never end...

 Goblini wrote:
One thing to this that they are in Canada "illegally", they must have done some nasty things before coming to Canada.


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More stuff to dig and it will never end...

I actually have a friend that works for Canadian Border Guard, and he works closely with Canadian Immigration. Any known address for these 2 clowns? I would be happy to pass along the info.

Wonder if Kickstarter is gonna do anything about this as it is now super clear they are not qualified to run a campaign.

Also, someone on the ks said that Lars was using a wire armature... He's not. You can tell by looking at it. He is/was seriously sculpting those bare handed without a frame, so to speak. Thus why every single one he sculpted looked so unnatural. There were no concepts of 'joints' or movement. Its like if I watched a sculpting video in a language I don't know and just try to mimic what I see on screen, convinced that my mimicking is on par with Michelangelo.

 inquisitorlewis wrote:

 Goblini wrote:
One thing to this that they are in Canada "illegally", they must have done some nasty things before coming to Canada.


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More stuff to dig and it will never end...

I actually have a friend that works for Canadian Border Guard, and he works closely with Canadian Immigration. Any known address for these 2 clowns? I would be happy to pass along the info.

I can only assume that Weaver chest twist in Montreal (can't recall the name) Address earlier mentioned in the thread.

I've said it before, but great job all who have been digging stuff up. Does anyone have a media connection? Because this really should get publicity.

Oh, and welcome aard_rinn and missmelons!

 Goblini wrote:

 inquisitorlewis wrote:

 Goblini wrote:
One thing to this that they are in Canada "illegally", they must have done some nasty things before coming to Canada.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
More stuff to dig and it will never end...

I actually have a friend that works for Canadian Border Guard, and he works closely with Canadian Immigration. Any known address for these 2 clowns? I would be happy to pass along the info.

I can only assume that Weaver chest twist in Montreal (can't recall the name) Address earlier mentioned in the thread.

I highly doubt it. At best it's a registered agent, like the one they have here in Delaware. At worst, it's just another sham address.

MissMelons wrote:
Also, someone on the ks said that Lars was using a wire armature... He's not. You can tell by looking at it. He is/was seriously sculpting those bare handed without a frame, so to speak. Thus why every single one he sculpted looked so unnatural. There were no concepts of 'joints' or movement. Its like if I watched a sculpting video in a language I don't know and just try to mimic what I see on screen, convinced that my mimicking is on par with Michelangelo.

I think he did use wire armature before and it was all messed up as you can see wires sticking out everywhere

He's awful with them if he's continuing to use them. I dont think he understood their entire purpose. @_@

Only clues I can think of where they are...
-They are in Canada. (confirmed by victim and Trodax spotting google.ca link in their KS)
- Few initial hires are from Montreal. (confirmed by few people here)

we can check update pictures and some how spot things out?
Google map?




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MissMelons wrote:


He's awful with them if he's continuing to use them. I dont think he understood their entire purpose. @_@

yeah no kidding, I am no sculptor or have MFA but i know what is crap to cream


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IP address?

Hey Everyone,

I'm not in this KS luckily and I gotta say reading all of this really makes me feel for you and the others who are in this. I just had a question as to what Reaper has to do with any of this? They have a forum and ADW made a thread there that is now closed? I just want to make sure a trusted company like Reaper isn't behind any of this junk. They have their own KS going on and honestly I have no connection with the company but it strikes me as a good, honest, American company that I don't want messed up in a scandal.

Reaper has nothing to do with this. Other than being another unfortunate victim of these 2 clowns.

Let's start digging this one out first
http://411.ca/business/profile/4745345

Best way to find them is to let 4chan get involved. But its a wicked place and liable to open a larger bag of worms and cause irreversible damage. @_@ As can reddit, the lesser but still pretty evil in some places.

Reaper has a more strict policy on forum behavior, which is basically, "Be Nice". However, this sort of policy does not work when investigating companies for scams, because such investigations usually start out as unsubstantiated negative comments.

I find the Reaper forums excellent for leads on miniature KS, but Dakka's where I go if I want information to actually part with my money.

And a belated hello to the Reaper and Dwarven Forge posters! (:

aard_rinn wrote:
I rather am, aren't I?

Just registered an account to post this, but was ninja'd to my very own scoop! Curses!

I laughed at this . Welcome to Dakka, aard!

Holy crap! that wall behind the wookie resembles the wall in the real estate photo!!!!
can you spot more things out?

Very early on in the IAM campaign, I found the Kickstarter through a post in the "Kickstarters" area of the Reaper forums. As the KS gained speed, a lot of people were asking reasonable and well-thought-out questions, both dealing with the materials and processes being used on the figures, and the KS's finances. I, having seen several KS runners post on the forum, notified ADW Games of the forum, and that thread's, existence, hoping that they would go and respond to the suggestions offered, and answer any questions.

What followed was, to be blunt, a shitstorm. I have never seen a company act so unprofessionally in my life. Slurs against other, more experienced sculptors, accusations of sexism and harrassment against Reaper, insults and degridation of would-be backers...

Reaper closed the thread down, and deleted all comments by ADW Games. I got on the phone with them a few days later about another incident with a backer - I'll find the receipts in a bit - and read them the riot act... they cowtowed, offered all sorts of apologies, blamed it on a rogue sculptor... and I let it go. Shouldn't have, upon reflection, but there you are.

Reaper is innocent of any negative involvement in this; they closed the thread promptly and treated all parties fairly. That ADW games is apparently run by psychopaths isn't their fault.

Just to put a preemptive mod note in here: We do certainly allow as much discussion as possible, particularly when it is of benefit to the wargaming community, but we always ask that detailed personal information not be posted.

So, the address of a business is probably fine, the personal address of a person is definitely not. Links to information can also be fine at times. It's not really an exact science... but the idea is to keep it productive.

If you have any questions about what can be posted, please feel free to PM me or any other moderator. If you feel something is out of line, you can also hit the yellow triangle in the corner of a post. Thanks!

Hey, PROTIP for all you KSers out there:

If someone can spread the word about you, they can also spread the word against you! So, in grand ADW Games Kickstarter spirit, I bring you:

AN AARD RINN SPECIALTY SPREADSHEET!

This standby of all ADW Games KS thus far (except the first one, but who cares?) is now in commentable form! Have some info that's not on here? Post a note! I'll take a look and punch it in! (not editable because vandalism) But have fun! Let's centralize this gak!

What a mess this has certainly turned out to be.

Thanks to all who've been digging up info on this. Hopefully something positive works itself out for EVERYONE involved.

Eventually karma will catch up with them.

Hopefully some of us are able to recover some of those funds, as trifle as they may be in some of our cases.

It does blow my mind to think of what they've done if they're in Canada illegally.

Thank you RiTides Mod.
I did not think enough

Alright, that was that then I guess; jeez what a ride it's been. Seems it truly was a scam, and that Scott Lantry, Lars Sunderflyrr and Henry Kipling are indeed most probably the same person. What isn't absolutely clear to me at this point is whether or not his partner, Dina Andrews Walker, is the same person as the ex-actress Dina that has an IMDB page, or if they just used photos of her to create a fake Facebook account. When they were raging and stomping around on the Reaper forum, they used this as an argument to why they would succeed; that she was a public person with 4000+ friends and why would she risk her reputation by failing on a Kickstarter campaign for the production of little toys. Why indeed.

This may be silly, but I am actually feeling a small measure of pride that they may have chewed off a bit more than they could swallow when they decided to branch into our gaming community with their scams. This may be completely misguided; it's possible that they are reading this and laughing their asses off right now, pleased as hell with how this went down. But I suspect that they thought it would be easier, and that they would come away with more. Perhaps they thought they could pull a Kingdom Death and rake in millions by just being confident and swinging out words such as "resin", "boutique", "world-class" (looking at the Gigantopithecus mini this may be hard to believe, but they actually used all those words ).

If they truly are scam artists as it seems, I think the people who got threatened in the comments section can kind of relax; I don't think they will be stalking and harassing you, instead most likely moving on to their next scam. I have no idea of course, but that's what I think; it would probably have been a worse situation if the project was a delusional individual who actually thought he had a bright future in the miniature industry. As Gymnogyps suggested, yesterday might very well have been a played tactic rather than a true tantrum, with the intent of scaring people from attempting chargeback. They must have known that it was only a matter of days until everyone would be calling them on their bs, and that an overnight freezing and treatment with limonene wouldn't turn those turd-resembling sculpts into anything acceptable.

Now I'm wondering who did all the artwork for them. The one artist I managed to get in contact with had only done a couple pieces for their very first KS campaign that was cancelled (and because of the cancellation he was never paid; he had a face-to-face meeting with a Scott Lantry in Canada by the way). But they had a lot more artwork on the Ice Age Mammals KS and the ADW Games homepage. I'm guessing there must be several other unpayed artists out there.

There is one thing that is a mystery to me, maybe you people can help me out with this one. Why did that previous victim, the person who had been scammed for $60,000 by these folks a couple of years ago, decide to contact Aard Rinn just yesterday, exactly coinciding with this gak going down in the comment section? The only plausible explanation I can see for that is that Aard Rinn yesterday posted his email address in the comments, and two hours later he was contacted (correct me if I'm wrong here aard_rinn). This in turn implies that the person was monitoring the KS comments (which fits with them being on the lookout for the scammers of course). However, a google search should have found this thread or one of the threads on Reaper quite easily. Why didn't this person come forth sooner to say his piece?

Anyway, a good thing that came out of this is that Dakkadakka received a bunch of new members! Nice to see my Reaper peeps aard-rinn, MissMelons and Sirithiliel all here!

If you're talking about p, I got the impression from PMs he sent myself, MissMelons, and ReaperBryan, that he was pursuing his own legal action (not necessarily a lawsuit) against Lars. I think he *did* say something about ADW on the Reaper forums, but it was deleted or something.

Hope the new old-faces (: stay on Dakka for awhile. Good place to keep your wallet safe!