And I'm like, do I like to promote things in pinball? You bet I do. Do I endorse everything in pinball? No. There's a difference between promoting and endorsing. Any show I do, whether it's Final Round, but probably Pinball Profile, it's not an endorsement. It's a platform for whomever I talk to to talk about their product, their service, their hobby, whatever's on their agenda. And I let them have free will to say whatever the hell they want. What were you going to say, Ryan? I'm glad that I guess that post was made because I felt like after the last final round episode I was going to give you a little bit of shit I mean it's all about timing it was just incredibly bad timing that you were kind of like well you know let's just give them the benefit of the doubt and see what they come up with you know Hey hindsight! Yeah I guess hindsight is yeah of course of course hindsight yes. Dude nobody fucking knew and everyone is and I think in that same episode I said where there's smoke there's fire. Remember me saying that i'm pretty sure about that but we're not there we don't know anything about the sec you fucking don't you can say that of course but you can say that about everything in life jeff like well who knew who knew but you have to use your your best judgment you know as an as an adult to figure out you know what's what you're gonna do what's right and wrong do i do i take the vaccine do i not take the vaccine like you how do you know you could say the same thing about everything in life. So in this case, I don't know, Deep Root just, I mean, from the start, you know, indestructible play field. It's not going to take any pre-order money. Like everything was a joke to begin with. It was just hidden in this cloud of money because he had access to so much money. He was splashing around and people, I guess, you know, money talks and money made people kind of shut up and take him seriously and employ people. And in the end, I don't know, he was buying wedding rings for his second and third wife. I'm trying to find one podcast where I said, you should go buy this game, or you should do this and that. I don't recall that. I just said, I don't know. And yeah, I had a small part in it. It was a pleasure to work with David Thiel. I mean, that is a pinball hall of famer, and I can hardly wait to see what his next thing is, but that was a real thrill for me to do that. So I'm fine with that. I know that when I reached out to Robert for the Pinball Profile World Tour, He, Jersey Jack, and Stern all supported it. I can't thank them enough for that. What am I supposed to do? You know, at the time, that's going back almost two years. We didn't know anything. In fact, in that same Pinball Profile World Tour, we actually saw the Razzle Machine at the Houston show. So I saw a real pinball machine. I saw, you know, certainly not with the pin bar and everything else. I'm like, okay, at least they made something. Anyway, I feel fucking terrible for these seniors that have lost a lot of money. You can laugh all you want, but that's some serious fraud. And those people, how are they going to recoup that money? This is the thing, right? The pinball part of it, which we are exploding about, is such a tiny part of this. There are these people, as I said, these mom and pop people who were convinced, you can shorten that word if you like, convinced to invest their retirement money. move it from one fund into this and they've lost it all this is the biggest part they lose it all because we don't know what the reparations are the fund was you know 58 million dollars is there 50 million dollars left is there 10 million dollars left like how you know the only figures that i saw and i haven't read through the entire document is that you know the wage that i guess robert withdrew which to be honest isn't actually like people you know obviously on pinside and Facebook are like, scam, scam, Ponzi scheme from the beginning. And I don't know enough about the legal term of Ponzi scheme to call it that. But in terms of how much money he withdrew as a wage, you know, $1.5 million over four or five years, that doesn't scream scam to me. That would be the wage for someone who's controlling a company of that size. Obviously, the alarming parts were, you know using the funds for um sending his kid to school um funding weddings funding a hawaiian condo um let's not forget though that he did offer everyone a refund and apparently let's see if it's true three people took him up on the offer so people and i'm not sure if those three refunds went through but i guess it kind of speaks to pinball people just having blind blind faith or Everyone's just like, well, it's worth the risk. I've only put down a $1,000 deposit or whatever it was. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. What sort of deposit was it? You weren't paying for the full machine. It wasn't like full payment. I put down $800. Well, okay. Big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what? How much did you put down on a Stern book you never got? Shut up. Stop bringing up my Kickstarter failures. Hey, I'm just saying. No, you're right. I bought something on eBay and spent hundreds of dollars on it, never saw it. My wife, years ago, wanted to buy playoff football tickets, $800. Never saw it. Shit happens. So I don't feel sorry for me or any people that, you know, it's a buyer beware thing. I feel horrible for the actual people that were scammed in the investment, if that was the case. That's a different kettle of fish. What I really feel bad for is people I actually know, like Stephen Bowden, who I will say this, I love that man. I think he is a wonderful human being. and I've said to my wife before, you know, if I lived closer to that guy, I would hang out with that guy all the time. We would become, I don't know if Stephen feels this way, but we'd be great friends. Thanks, welcome. John Norris, super nice man. I've enjoyed my encounters with Barry Allisler as well. So these are three people I've worked with, working with David Thiel. That was a pleasure too. Just meeting Quinn Johnson, what a neat guy. And I'm sure all of these people I just mentioned will rebound and I hope they do. But for putting money down on a pinball machine, we've all done it i want to circle back quickly to comments jeff on on you and do you think and i'll go back to what i remember nate shivers said a long time ago when he was talking about john papaduke and i think what happened was this was when robert mueller was first hanging around and everyone was like hey we got to interview this guy and robert wanted to choose someone a podcast to go on a fair and unbalanced podcast obviously it wasn't head-to-head because we were fucking around way too much, Marty. And it ended up being Eclectic Gamers Podcast with Dennis and Tony. And I think what Nate said in an episode that aired like a week after that was that he was approached for that interview and he decided to turn it down because of what happened with John Papaduke. And he said that he felt a duty of care that because of his platform and because of how many people listened to him, he wants these companies to prove themselves before he gives them the spotlight. Of course, that's Nate Shivers' view, and Nate Shivers obviously has accomplished a lot in podcasting at that stage, and now he's doing his own thing with Stern. And Nate took a bunch of unnecessary bullshit for when he interviewed John Papaduke. So he had that kind of ghost on him too, which I think is, again, the same argument I have, is when Nate does an interview with John Papaduke, it's not an endorsement. When I do an interview with, I had Robert Quinn and Steven on, It's not an endorsement. It's information. No question about it. You know what my second ever pinball profile interview was? John Trudeau. Is that an endorsement? No, he had just come out with Ghostbusters. Do I need to apologize for having him on? I had Ted Nugent on, who's a fucking right-wing possible lunatic. Not because of being right-wing, just because he perhaps is the Motor City Madman. And people were offended about that. And who else have I had on? I've had Andrew Highway on. Should I apologize for that as well? No. These are all people that have pinball connections, and here's their story. You do with it whatever you want. Yeah, I guess the parallel is news programs, current affair programs, if they give people the spotlight, are they responsible for giving somebody the spotlight? Well, so you're saying the news should pick and choose whatever side their beliefs are. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, so that's the problem. I think if news picks and chooses, then it inherently becomes biased. do you think cnn is a little bit biased to the left do you think fox news is a little bit biased to the right yeah so which one do you accept they're both biased yeah yep first of all i'm not in fucking news well you're biased towards being pinball positive like yeah yeah you're right you usually don't poo poo like things you know that are coming out in the community you want to be a supporter of all things pinball and i guess like this is a stab at saying well you know you should have an opinion but as i said opinions can go both ways and you can be on the you know in hindsight 2020 you can be on the losing side and the winning side and at one point almost everyone kind of said all right let's give let's give deep root a chance maybe not every single one maybe not um maybe not scott from lose kids uh pinball podcast but um at at one stage i feel like everyone when they i guess hired yeah john norris and and um steve bowden and and the silver lining of this all is that through this absolute mess i mean if you if you want to look at the positives you know we have zombie yeti american pinball exists because of this that's something um steven steven baden will probably get hired somewhere hopefully it's i mean it sucks though like john john norris everyone was just like hey john norris was employed at gottlieb and he never got a chance because gottlieb sucked and they just they said to you have three months to make a game and you're not allowed to adjust the software afterwards and asked people like, well, these are cool layouts and it has cool things, but like John Norris was just plagued by not having the resources to finish his games. And then this was a second chance that didn't come to fruition. Yeah, you know, if I'm going to be careful of who I talk to, I better make sure I check their complete history and make sure they've got no skeletons that I'm not aware of. I better check all their past tweets. I better make sure that they've got a pretty clean record. Oh, there goes the end of pinball profile. Yeah, I'm just going to say this. I don't think, and people are going to come at me for this, but I don't think you need to be defensive, Jeff, even using sarcasm there. You don't. No, Ryan said I need to take a side. So I'm going to take a side right now. I've said my piece. People can hear me. People can reach out to me. There are thousands that do. Good on you there, pinsider behind a keyboard. Good for you. Do you think your stance would be a little bit different, Jeff, you know considering that you know this you know the collapse of deep root has had i still want to say a small ish impact on the pinball community i know it's big because it goes all the way back to you know the zidware days this has been going on for 10 years in some way shape or form but do you think you'd feel a little bit different if say raza pre-orders opened and they sold 2 000 of them and everyone was fully paid and there was you know 20 million dollars lost within the pinball community Or do you still think, you know, is your reaction and your positivity towards, not positivity, but, you know, just, you know, the way you felt about DeepRoot, is it the same depending on the loss of the PMO community? Or is it just you're going to interview people the same way regardless? Well, I'll make it very clear for you. For all those people that lost money with J-Pop and Zidware, I feel bad that you lost that money, but they took the chance. people who did it with Deep Root, whether it's 122 or 2,000, whatever it was, as far as the pinball aspect, that's on them and myself being one of those people. So I don't feel sorry for us. We knew what the stakes were in both cases. I feel horribly about the people that lost their life savings, perhaps any kind of chance of a future. That's scary shit. I'm still going to be able to eat, sleep, have a roof over my head, losing a small amount of money. That's a different story. And that's what drives me nuts. So I'll take a stand right now and say, that sucks. On this program, I've said several times my thoughts of Homepin and Mike who runs that. And I make fun of that because of things that he has said, incredibly ignorant slurs towards certain parts of the community that I just don't tolerate. So I don't have any time of the day for that guy. We joked about him making a Spinal Tap game and how that would kill me because I love that theme. Still couldn't do it because of the things that he has said. But this right now, yeah, this sucks. And I'm feeling for the people that lost major amounts of money, not anybody who bought a pinball machine, not one person, myself included. I am concerned for my friends in Stephen Bowden, and I mentioned Barry Osler and John Norris and Quinn and all these good people. That's what I feel. my question i guess is about just deep rooting in general like well we're gonna find out soon but what was robert actually trying to do like with all this money that he he managed to get i don think it was a at maybe at one point he got in over his head and he just like well i got access to all this money and i going to start spending on my personal life and that that where he really messed up But in terms of Deep Root in general where he was promising the world indestructible playfields And do you remember he even said like, hey, post some stuff about how like Stern promised this and we'll send you a free t-shirt. And that was the amount of times he promised things that he clearly couldn't deliver and told people flat out. I remember seeing a distributor email when they were first opening up the banks for Rasa orders. I had a distributor send it to me and the wording was so strong it was like we do have manufacturing capabilities and no we will not show it and that was over a year ago um and to this day I kind of always think about that it's like well did he ever have that and why wouldn't he show it and what was the plan was the plan to ever make these things or was the plan to for someone to swoop in buy all the designs why did they yeah it's it that's the part that's the missing piece of the puzzle that I would love to love to know Robert's a smart guy clearly he he wasn't I don't think he got into this thing to defraud investors like eventually you're going to get caught um he wanted to be successful but surely he had some kind of plan that wasn't executed properly yeah I mean look I'm no I'm no lawyer or financial expert but he didn't use the funds this is outside of pinball. He didn't use the funds to purchase the insurance policies that he said he was going to. Like he didn't, early on, didn't actually spend the investment money on what he said he would invest in. So when money started drying up, there wasn't these investments to draw on, I think is the problem. So look, my point where, the point of no return for me, I guess, was, I don't know when it was, but remember he came out and made some announcement that he's spending something like, I don't know, it was like $250,000 a month, something like that. It might have even been $750,000. It was a lot of money per month. And that's when I said to myself, how many pinball machines do you have to sell at a particular margin to get that money back. And that was when I thought, this is a passion project. This is not a money-making scheme at all. It was a chance to be a rock star in the bubble. Isn't it? Yeah. The older I get, the more I realize that so much of life is derived from ego and the sense of self and someone trying to prove someone wrong or being like, I want to be this thing. I want people to love me. I want my stamp on the world to be this. And I think we can all agree that regardless of what Robert did, the good things and the bad things, that his ego was huge. Maybe the biggest we've seen in the hobby in the time that I've been involved. And yeah, ego can be a great thing sometimes. Ego can be a really, really bad thing. I know he tried to buy spooky pinball people have been like Charlie and Ben Heck have talked about it but yeah I think he wanted a shortcut into the pinball industry and he didn't get that so he tried to build it from scratch I mean maybe that was part of it as well part of it was just like okay this small little Benton, Wisconsin thing won't sell to me so I'm gonna take over the world I'm gonna be bigger than Stern bigger than JTP I'm gonna ship more pinball machines in whatever year it was it 2019 or 20 I don't know when he promised it than every other pinball manufacturer combined you know like that's that's a crazy statement and we all knew it was crazy but we're all like do it we we want this in the industry we want someone to come in and and shake things up but yeah i i just don't don't know what the end game was after all these years i'm just gonna say it we'll move on today is a fucking dark day for pinball it really is it's shit i feel shit i feel shit this fucking gin is really nice. I decided to go... So who are you drinking, Marty? I'm drinking Malfi, which is an Italian gin, but I decided today to go Blood Orange. So this tastes like alcoholic Fanta. It's beautiful!