Kickstarter is an amazing platform that allows inventors and innovators to sell their ideas to the public that might otherwise have been passed on by bigger companies. Sometimes these campaigns involve all sorts of amazing technology, which in some cases actually turns out to be a fraud. While Kickstarter does have measures in place to deal with this sort of thing, it looks like recently the FTC decided to get involved.
There was a recent Kickstarter campaign created in 2012 by Erik Chevalier to create a board game called “The Doom That Came To Atlantic City”. While only asking for $35,000, the campaign managed to pull in more than $100,000 thanks to the majority of the backers spending their money in order to get their hands on the limited edition pewter figurines.
However about 18 months later, Chevalier announced he was cancelling the project but when it came to refunds, he was extremely slow in giving them back. Later during an FTC investigation, it was revealed that Chevalier had spent the money he received from the campaign on personal expenses, as opposed to using towards creating the game.
The was even a fine of $111,93 levied against Chevalier, although this was later suspended as it was discovered that he had no means of paying that amount. As part of the settlement, Chevalier also had to follow all refund policies and to avoid making misleading statements in future campaigns, assuming of course you still trust him.
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