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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."
Did it go 88mph?
Without doubt that guy could be on the board or be CEO of a big company...
(I'm being serious!)
Vaseline? Where we're going, we don't need Vaseline.
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.
Well, he figured if he was going to scam folks, why not scam folks in style?
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.
I noticed that as well, apparently the blog is here. It'd be laughable were it not so sad. The human capacity for clinging to ignorance in spite of well-known facts really is an amazing thing.
Caveat Utilitor
Seems fair enough to me :-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The first sentence cracked me up:
"Those of you who have been in the Free Energy community for years have heard of Carl Tilley and his claim to have a battery charger technology that could keep a system running indefinitely, though in fact he stole the technology"
OH NO!! He stole imaginary technology!!
I remember following this story back in 2002 and there was a report of Carl Tilley being hampered by a lawsuit -- some other guy was claiming that *HE* invented the imaginary perpetual motion battery charging technology.
While I can see where you come from, this is still deception and should not be rewarded. Neither should the greed of the 'investors'.
A bit of information: I've followed the Tilley story from the day he and Doug Littlefield announced their first "free energy" machine. Yes, Doug Littlefield, the guy who provided the evidence against Tilley, was initially his partner. Once Tilley realized what a gold mine he had stumbled on with "free energy", he went his own way, created the Tilley Electric Vehicle, and began selling bogus stock. By most accounts, Carl Tilley scammed at least $500,000 from various individuals in Tennessee until he fled the state. I actually saw his demo at the Nashville Superspeedway. I went there because I was curious how he was going to back out of proving the TEV actually worked. The bogus wheel bearing failure on the 13th lap was absolutely no surprise.
As for Sterling Allan, he is a "true believer" in every sense of the word, in terms of his religious beliefs and his belief in free energy. He's never met a free energy claimant he didn't like, and will bend over backwards to give even the most bizarre claims every possible benefit of the doubt. If Doug Littlefield hadn't provided Allan with such an overwhelming amount of evidence that Tilley was a two-bit check-kiting con man, to this day Allan would still be writing hopeful articles about Tilley's "technology". You just about have to hit Sterling Allan over the head with a two-by-four to make him change his mind. Even now, if you look on Allan's web site, you can find him giving publicity to guys just like Tilley, but with a slightly more sophisticated sales job.
The power of self-delusion is enormous, and nowhere will you find it stronger than in the free energy community.
I'm in the United States here so the results may be skewed... but how many people do you think out of a poll of 100 random respondents would be able to describe accurately what "perpetual motion" means? :-\
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
...just like muggers and other thugs who help to weed out the weak and elderly?
Right, assuming that GE actually paid him the $2B, even though when contacted they said they haven't heard of him and that they always do due diligence when investing in anything, especially for that much.
In other words, $2B sight unseen offers do not exist. This should have been obvious to anyone he told that to. Anyone investing $2B into anything is going to do quite a bit of research to make sure their investment is going to pay off.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The real question is, if you asked 100 random people what 'random' meant, how many could define it correctly.
Sounds like one of them would not be you. You've just described a quasi-random sampling of people who fly commercially, which by definition creates a very biased sample and one which would likely overestimate the percentage of people who know what random means. People who fly would tend to be more educated and wealthier than the general population. At any rate, it's certainly not a random sampling of the general population.
Your thinking is the broken window fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Your thinking is the same thinking as 'tax the rich more'. Which is a fallacy too as the 'rich' do not keep their money in big stacks sitting around their house. They keep it in stocks, bonds, bank balances, etc. They basically loan the money out to others to use for a fee. So people can have newer things now. With a tax the rich that money can not be reloaned out (thus helping build more things). It is spent.
Ever tried to get funding for something? You'd be amazed how little investors know about your project. How little they actually want to know. Confront them with the technical side and their eyes will glaze over before you're halfway through. They don't care.
Make wild promises and call it revolutionary technology, then break directly to investment plan and projected revenue, and you're set. I'm not kidding here. They'd invest in a machine that turns shit into meat if you make it sound halfway scientific (use cyanobacteria you genetically engineered with a retrovirus, that's 3 hard to spell words that kinda sound like they could sorta do the trick), but don't spend more than 5 minutes with the technical side, then go immediately to the part where you promise them lots of riches.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
[mode = evangelical german christian with 98 kids] Who are we to say that perpetual motion is impossible? Thermodynamic laws are just theories, like evolution and gravity.[/]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It makes you wonder how many times over the past 150 years people have been suckered into investing in machines that (allegedly) violate the law: energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
It's nothing to do with the frequency. You just need the right catalyst. It's 68% unicorn horn, 29% santa claus whiskers and 3% JWSmythe brain.
Ironically, the minor component is proving the most difficult to find.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because the H1B holders are as close to indentured servants as it gets these days. Their H1B visas are tied to their jobs -- if they lose their jobs, they have something like two weeks to find a new job or leave the country.
Employers like that bludgeon to hold against employees. Work your ass off for less pay, don't cause trouble, and in a few years you might be able to stay here on your own. I'd like to see a plot of how many H1B employees are laid off or fired vs time with the H1B. I bet there'd be a spike near the end. I bet a plot of hires vs time in visa would show hiring falling off near the end of the visa time. Why hire an H1B who only has a few months of servitude remaining? On the other hand, those within such close reach of a permanent visa might just be more desperate and more willing to take crappy terms.
Proper H1B reform would start with applying the visa to the employee, not the job. You'd see corporate interest in hiring H1B holders drop like a rock. That should tell you something.
Infuriate left and right
learning how to sleep with one's eyes open
Powerpoint.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The whole "but our ancestors worked and fought for it" argument is kinda pointless.
On the other hand, the whole "we are working hard and fighting for it" is relevant. It's completely fair and moral for a country's citizens to have their own culture, government, and economy.
The Tilley Foundation was supposed to go into production with an electric bike on July 4, 2004, but it did not materialize. I'm shocked. The Aptera 2e is going to be available in 2009. No, wait... The Corbin Sparrow went into production (sold 285 and went out of business). The Solus International KD08E COCO is available (it can only go 25mph). My liege, the list is long and the batteries still sucketh.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
An excess of supply over demand would drive down salaries irrespective of whether the surplus applicants came from Indiana or India.
Yes, and the normal cycle is that a shortage causes salaries to rise until sufficient workers are trained in order to alleviate the shortage. Then salaries drop. The point is, you see nothing wrong with a deliberately manufactured surplus of certain classes of traditionally well-paid workers instituted for the express purpose of driving down wages? How is that any different from what the oil companies did back in the seventies by manufacturing an "energy crisis" for the express purpose of raping our wallets? Either way, for an American corporate to treat domestic workers that way is sleazy, underhanded and treasonous.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Gearing and volumetric efficiency of the engine play a huge part in highway speed mileage. Some cars really do get better mileage at higher speeds because of those effects. I usually rent this model of car when in SoCal/Nevada because of the comfort over long stretches, the ability to take 3-5 people with me, tons of luggage space (or, in my case, demo products for CES and NAMM) and the great mileage on LONG highway runs. Add in the 19 gallon tank and you can get 400+ miles on the highway before having to refuel.
And when you rent a white or dark blue one, people tend to get out of your way when you come up behind them, since the only people who actually buy such cars are either retirees who putter along at 50 MPH or police who typically patrol that stretch of road at 80-90 MPH speeds (for those not familiar with the LA-LV road, the speed of traffic is typically 75-80 MPH, with a good 30-35% of the traffic moving at 90 MPH).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I disagree, completely. First of all if we opened up the boarders everyone would come to Europe and the US and the place would quickly degenerate into a filthy cesspit just like the overpopulated filthy infested impoverished ratholes that they left behind.
Furthermore what you are asking would make it impossible for any country to implement and enforce its laws. A country that implements good laws that protects its peoples freedoms and rights and create prosperity would be punished by a flood of immigrants, so it would be impossible for them to implement these laws. This would end up requiring a global government just to do anything enforceable. The fact we have had seperate countries is a good thing, it has allowed us to see what fails and what works and as well, the US and Europe have shown that democracy, secular government, and freedom does work and that when you regulate corporations in workers favor you end up with a growing middle class. The US has strayed from this recently and so we can see it is running into problems.
But it is clear that the combination of free enterprise and welfare state, stable population levels, religious freedom and secular state, with democracy and freedom works, and a strong regularioty government and employee unions, has created both a prosperous, safe and freedomful environment inside OECD countries. The low population growth in OECD countries has assured these countries have plenty of resources for these people and have not driven themselves into poverty with overpopulation. The free enterprise allows for individual creativity but government regulations prevent corporations and people from ruthlessly and brutally exploiting others (in principle at least).
If you like how our success looks, you should get to work in copying it in your own countries, work honestly and dilligently, stop reproducing yourself into an overpopulated ecological, disease, and resource depletion disaster, instead of wanting to flood us, instead of holding on to your fascist backwards dictatorships, pathetic barbaric state religion and brainwashed population who cannot question the status quo and the illogical behaviours such as burkha wearing that turns people into irrationalists who cannot act or think for themselves, and corrupt policies.
The core principle of capitalism is making mutually beneficial transactions.
If you buy something, the object was worth more to you than the money which was charged.
If you sell something, then that something was worth less to you than the price you got for it.
This isn't a flaw, it's the way that value is maximized.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I hate how the racists always have to rear their ugly heads when topics like this pop up.
Newsflash: race has nothing to do with a country's prosperity. Culture does.
Since you brought up Haiti, let's look at it more closely. It shares an island, Hispaniola, with another country called the Dominican Republic. Check it out on Google Maps satellite view; you should be able to see the border quite clearly even without political boundaries shown, because the Haiti side is all brown and the DR side is all green. That's because Haiti destroyed all their natural resources (namely, their forests), while DR wisely preserved theirs before they were destroyed like that. Now, the DR has lots of tourism (such as from divers), fishing, etc. Haiti only has dumb liberals visit to take pity on everyone, but that's about it (until recently of course). See, when Haiti destroyed their forests, this also caused massive soil erosion, which destroyed all the offshore coral reefs, which are a vital part of the ecosystem (something stupid racist conservatives like you probably dismiss as unimportant in your quest for more oil). So, no coral reefs = no fish, and also no divers or snorklers. Economically, the DR is doing just fine, while we all know how bad off Haiti is. Now, how is this all relevant? They're the same race of people! They're both Spanish-speaking descendants of African slaves (probably mixed with some Native Americans from the area). But, they obviously have a different enough culture that they decided to split the island into two countries at one point, and had different ideas on how to run their countries. One hasn't been too bad, the other's been a disaster.
There's nothing genetically significant about white people. Genetically speaking, we're more closely related to Chinese, Australian aborigines, Arabs, and Native Americans than one tribe of chimpanzees is to another; we're practically inbred as a species, probably due to the near-extinction events in the distant past that have popped up on Slashdot recently. However, Westerners have developed a culture, over several thousand years (i.e. Greeks and Romans) that allowed them to be rather successful. Lots of other people have been able to adopt some of the better elements of Western culture and be successful as well, learning from our mistakes and successes. America certainly has a unique culture as well, going back several hundred years, that is distinct from others, and has been pretty good about accepting others as immigrants and assimilating them, allowing the culture as a whole to prosper. 100 years ago, narrow-minded people like you were complaining about Irish immigrants of all people, who no one today sees as anything but "white". The only problem we have now is a little too much unchecked immigration; 100 years ago, there was plenty of it, but it was controlled, people were brought in from many different countries (not just one large neighbor) so that none of them would grow too powerful and overrun the American culture, and they were all forced to learn English and assimilate, and that seems to be gone now.
White people don't need their own country; they already have a bunch, like Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, etc. However, Americans do need to do a better job protecting their own culture, though without closing it off altogether from immigrants.
The SkyCar Guy.
http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=57
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
No. The core principle of Capitalism is Greed, transactions are simply a mechanism to satisfy that greed. There is no requirement that the transaction are "mutually beneficial" and one can easily see that by the way they are conducted in real life: most consumers are ripped off on a regular basis and many transactions are benefiting only one side, the other being coerced or bamboozled into the action.
The standard cop-out of the True Believers is that "buyers should be informed and they should beware", which is of course in practice impossible in majority of cases with most transactions.
Thus fleecing is far more the practical norm than any "mutual benefit".
No, usually it is because you have no clue as to actual (or even relative) value of anything and all you can do is to engage in flawed, mis-informed gambling. To further ensure that you remain clueless, most sellers engage in elaborate obfuscation and mis-information campaigns and because they usually are far better financed and experienced at it then you, they usually win with you ending up buying something at 100x price of an identical (literally or with just a different label made in the same plant on the same assembly line on the same day) product in a warehouse two blocks down the street. Since the products are identical, it is impossible to pretend that their value (even subjectively) is somehow vastly different. Yet this is par for the course for majority of transactions.
See above. If you manage to con someone out of 10x the value (even the value you estimate yourself) most sellers would gladly do it. This conning and mis-information are again Standard Operating Procedure in majority of transactions.
Yea, right. What is being "maximized" is the ability to manipulate buyers, value having remained wholly elusive and unquantifiable. No "maximizing" of it is going on. Case in point: most utterly destructive and counter-productive consumer practices, such as borrowing at 30% interest are also the most popular, leading to "maximizing" of utterly non-productive sections of economy, such as fictitious "derivatives" and other "financial instruments", which then collapse (repetitively, every few decades) requiring panicked influx of vast amounts of cash to stop the whole rickety pyramid of nonsense from collapsing outright.
Capitalism as espoused by fundamentalist believers is an Utopian ideal that might be operative in a world of idealistic, "honest" small-town bakers and shoe-makers but like all similar simplistic ideologies (like Communism) it falls apart as the scale grows, eventually (and inevitably) imploding into oligarchic-kleptocratic-pseudo-feudalism (which is what we are experiencing now). And before some fundamentalists start whining about "government interference", it is worth pointing out that most multinational corporations are larger and better financed (sometimes by few orders of magnitude) than many nations.
One big point... you state that "Haiti destroyed their natural resources (forests)". This shows a basic lack of knowledge of history. Haiti was a Spanish then a French colony (hence the French language). Like all colonies it was exploited... natural resources were plundered. Even after they had a revolution, they were forced to pay reparations to the French leading to the destruction of the remainder of their forests, among other things.
This was followed by a series of interventions by other colonial powers (primarily the US but also including the British, French, and Germans) which prevented them from forming effective government. Every time an effective independent government was formed which threatened to be too independent from world economic powers, foreign governments sent in the marines or engineered a coup by more "business friendly" (and exploitative) leaders. This pattern continues to the current day.
Haiti is a good example of the evils of colonialism that continues to this day.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I mean, just look at steorn.com ! Those guy preetnd to have 3 time OU. They are also pretending to demonstrate since 1/2 december. You think they would have a comprehensive evidence by now ? Think again. And look at the freaking FOLLOWING like a cult they got. Remmember Dennis lee ? Remmember the other scammer like Lutec ? Scam there are a dozen out there. Start by the billion dollard homeopathy industry (motto: selling sugar pills to the gullible since 1886).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org