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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."
Without doubt that guy could be on the board or be CEO of a big company...
(I'm being serious!)
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.
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
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.