As we reported yesterday, the $100 3D printer project, Peachy Printer, has fallen to a major scandal where their business manager allegedly stole half of their crowdfunding raise.
The details are in the previous story, but the short version is that their business manager used a major portion of the funds to build his own house (image at top).
There are reactions beginning to emerge from the public about this terrible situation, and they might not be what Peachy Printer wants to hear.
Peachy Printer went to unheard-of lengths to explain in ridiculous detail how the disaster unfolded, going as far as posting timelines, scanned documents, video and audio recordings and much, much more. And that’s including a picture of the large house built with the stolen funds.
They did this to hopefully convince their backers and the public that there was no intent by the company to defraud those who had placed orders, and that the events were essentially the results of one individual on their team.
But what does the public believe? I found a few comments online that might represent what many are feeling after hearing about the Peachy Printer events:
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That video REEKS of horse shit.
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The amount of effort that went into the production of both the video and the site outlining the issue seemed like they were trying too hard to convince everyone.
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I dunno, sounds like EXACTLY the sort of thing that happens with alarming regularity when you dump over a half million in liquid funds onto a not-even-startup company. I mean sure, what happened was horseshit, but it seems like we got an accurate picture of that horseshit.
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The cynic in me says they kept going because they were still paying themselves from the remaining money. How can any kickstarter succeed if you lose 50% of the pledge but still need to deliver?
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The peachy website right now has a lot of info. It doesn’t absolve peachy in the slightest, either of fraud or being vulnerable to fraud. It does show their legal docs and fiance records, that they’ve been fighting this.
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if what they say about how all this went down is true, the guilty party needs some serious punishing.
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Prison.
While there are a few sympathetic to the owner, Rylan Grayston, some propose that he may have had genuinely good intentions, but found himself with a less-than-ethical business partner, which is a scenario where everyone ends up going down.
The final comment goes to Reddit users “sleepless_i”, whose conclusion is similar to mine:
My interpretation is that Rylan is a well meaning dude who was trying to: deliver the project, get the money back and not fuck up David’s life, in that order of priority. I’m worried that in the process he became somewhat of an accomplice to the theft, for a while he essentially went along with David’s very own plan to ‘borrow’ the money and return it as his home was incrementally funded by the bank. I’m convinced that he genuinely thought he could scrape through without destroying the project. Unfortunately now that the project is dead it just looks like he was lying and covering things up, which is quite sad.
Not a good scene, particularly for such an interesting technology that promised – and still could – be a very attractive technology for 3D printing. From what I understand, Grayston has pursued several options for re-starting operations, but has come up dry so far.
Perhaps with their announcement will come investors willing to take on the technology. Should Peachy Printer appear in another crowdfunding campaign, it’s unlikely they’d gain many backers, as the company appears to have lost the trust of the majority.
