Holy shit.

Can I ask something oddly specific? Did Infernus come with about a one-page prose story?

 

It didn't come at all, it was a scam unfortunately

 

Woah. Okay, storytime.

So I was actually tangentially involved in this thing's production. Yeah.

Me and a friend of mine saw this being worked on and my friend is a BW kid so he messaged the guy and worked out an agreement to make an ad for it. So I got him to talk to Dave and got myself a deal to write a prose story for it. A few months go by because I'm a busy student and I have ADHD. I'm not proud of how long it took me to write a page, but I apologized to him for it personally when I submitted it for feedback. Then never heard from him again.

It looks like it was never used, which I'm glad about because it was the first draft and it was pretty rough. It was about Inferno surviving the end of Beast Wars and accepting that Megatron had betrayed and abandoned him them finding a new life guarding an anthill.

 

So the guy knew he was he never gonna need it because he knew he was just gonna scam everyone, yet he didn't even have the decency to avoid pointlessly wasting your time? Yeesh.

(Honestly though, I think there has to be some element of this where he just really enjoys seeing people get excited for his projects and operate under the assumption that they will materialize into what's been promised, all while knowing he's just going to pull the rug out from under them at the end. Like, he could easily go legit if he really wanted to. He's got to be screwed up mentally and getting off on the whole racket he keeps doing.)

 

I have no idea honestly. The fact that he didn't just turn me down makes me think that he did always intend on releasing something. Either that or he thought that playing me was a good idea so as not to look sus. But that seems unlikely because if he was willing to do that he would probably known that this ending the way it did would have been a bad idea.

Either way, all I know is I wrote him a story for a release, the story wasn't used and the release was a shitshow.

 

Okay, I went ahead and blocked him on Facebook so he can't, or will have a harder time, coming after me. So I can post the story and discuss my interactions in a bit more depth if anyone's interested.

 

Come after you? What’s he going to do? He’s a thief and a liar so he’d be even dumber than he already is, to go after anyone. His best bet is to ride off into the sunset and spring up again in some other hobby. Probably already has.

 

You never know what a scam running scum bag will do with your name and face in retaliation so it's best just to cut the one thread there is. Better safe than sorry, especially when it's so easy to cut that tie.

 

I just got the last of my refunds, for terrorsaur, so I’ve lost nothing but time on all of this, at this point.

The guy is still a piece of shit who deserves the worst. He’s been lucky to have the people he scammed not live nearby. One of these days, someone is going to beat him senseless for scamming them and they’ll be close enough to get it done before enough time passes for them to calm down.

 

They used to have scams like this all the time with customs back in the day, Used to be someone would pop up in radicons show a bunch of customs and offer their customizing services. Do 3 or 4 good ones to get a rep, then start taking a bunch of orders and never deliver 90% of them. Then they would get banned, then come back on the board with a new name and try the same scam again. I think one guy got banned 3 or 4 times. Left a lot of us older members mis-trustful of this type of stuff. Especially when better 3rd party customs are around. I also thought people weren't getting a good deal when I saw the protos. So I decided to avoid this.

 

I never got too involved with all of that over the years, I just tried to make my own versions of whatever I saw / liked. Never paid anyone for commissions.

Painting and kitbashing is easy. This 3D modeling stuff isn’t so easy to pick up. I was looking at this more like early 3p than customs. I was one of the first orders for City Commander back when FP was starting. Never really got let down on the 3P side of things

Too bad the guy didn’t just sell his files.

 

I’m still trying to get one of my 4 payments back. The other 3 have been refunded. The sad thing is he could have sold the 3D files for the figures and made money that way. No need to scam people. I would have paid $50 just for the Inferno file so I could print my own, and if something breaks just print a replacement part.

 

That's what boggles my mind the most. Scam artistry requires a bit of finesse. This guy just seemed to be too lazy to finish a half-decent job, but too incompetent to pull off the long con. Like you said, he coulda legit scored much bigger by selling the files, WITHOUT ruining his name. Might've even built up a little more street cred, but no. Just got out of the race five feet from the finish line and I guess won't be keeping the money if it's being refunded? So dumb. My 10-year old pulls of more competent schemes, yeesh.

Plus, if he is keeping any of that money, doesn't the IRS ding you for balances of $10K+ and any balances declared as income above $600 have to file a 1099-C so you just end up paying more in taxes or facing federal audit and possible jail time?

Dude shoulda just made good or sold the files. Whatever, looking forward a REAL MP Inferno or Skorpy down the line in the next 10 years.

 

These looked really nice, shame the guy was a scammer

 

I was wondering over the weekend where this guy was with his figures. I thought it was odd that he was on a steady roll, and then I stopped seeing posts popping up about progress or new items.

So he ripped everyone off? What a POS, but I'm not surprised. When he first started posting stuff, I tried contacting him multiple times to see where he was having his stuff produced so that I could pursue setting something up for some stuff that I've designed, but he would never respond.

I always thought it was odd he used ball joints on MP scale figures.

Hope you guys get some cash back and that there's some justice. I kinda feel like he may have gotten in over his head and realized he wouldn't be able to deliver on what was promised, but that doesn't excuse fraud like this.

 

I got denied by my bank - reported after the allowed timeframe. They are asking me to send more information. It's so hard digging back through this mess to find it.

Question for all.... does anyone have any screenshots where he provided an expected arrival date of Infernus. I have all the screenshots for detailed description of goods from Facebook... but I cannot for the life of me find a date where he said concretely these will arrive. There is just the post where he said 4 were shipping out after he shipped out the first batch? I don't even know what he is talking about the first batch?

 

Does it matter where it was produced? If not, I can definitely point you in the right direction if you have a design you want to manufacture.

I did import-export in China for 2 years and have managed a project designed by a guy in Colorado for context.

 

nevermind I think I have everything I need.

 

I would like to harvest this man's skeleton. That is all.

 

Do we know that Joshua Smith isn't just another pseudonym?