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"Perpetual Motion DeLorean" Scammers Face $26M Judgment
An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2002, we discussed a story about the so-called 'Perpetual Motion DeLorean,' which could 'supposedly go "hundreds of miles" at speeds over 100MPH without stopping to recharge.' More than seven years later, the final shoe has dropped on this saga, with a $26 million judgment against Carl Tilley and his wife, who propagated this scam that ran for several years. Probably the height of its audacity was when Tilley told his shareholders in May of 2002 that GE had offered $2 billion 'sight unseen' to buy out the technology."
Serious? Really? How are most technology CEO's scammers on a level that this guy is on? Can you name a legit technology CEO that you think is at that same 'scam level'?
They're doing the human race a favour. Really.
Evolution in action, baby. Anyone who is willing to not only believe in perpetual motion but invest money in it deserves whatever it is he or she gets from their particular brand of ignorance. A basic grade-school science curriculum should be sufficient armor against a scam of this type (well, at least in my day it was.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It was a tax on people who don't understand the basic laws of thermodynamics.
This ain't rocket surgery.
The GP seems to think that these scammers did humanity a favor by removing large sums of money from the scammed (fools) who can't then use that money for other foolish purposes. Any crime could be justified along those lines by blaming the victim of the crimes for being unable to defend themselves against it. Social darwinism at its finest.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
While I can see where you come from, this is still deception and should not be rewarded. Neither should the greed of the 'investors'.
I guess you never went to the movies.
...just like muggers and other thugs who help to weed out the weak and elderly?
I would argue that the "alternative energy/environmental impact" community has got to be a close second. There are still *plenty" of "alternative energy" people who think that the big car companies are suppressing 100 mpg carburetors and intentionally stifling innovation, despite the clearly suicidal reasoning that entails, not to mention the second-law-of-thermodynamics issues. There are plenty of people talking about space power systems despite the unknown technological basis and absurdly prohibitive economics (and, bizarrely, environmental impacts) of such a system. There are still people advocating orders-of-magnitude level of "conservation" despite the obvious economic and quality of life effects that this would have. There are still those advocating isolating human population to walled cities with limited external activity to "protect the world from people" People set SUVs on fire to protest environmental impacts of SUVs, and release more pollution in 1/2 hour than the SUV would have released in its entire existence.
Problems will not be solved by "true believers", precisely because they are true believers.
Brett