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Unboxing the TRUTH on Haggis Pinball - Part 2: The Lies and Claims

Cary Hardy·video·38m 32s·analyzed·Aug 17, 2024
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Analysis

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TL;DR

Haggis Pinball collapse detailed: shell company asset stripping, $500K+ owed, systematic deception.

Summary

Cary Hardy interviews Wayne Gillard (former Bally Williams license owner, Australian operator/collector) about the Haggis Pinball collapse. The discussion reveals systematic financial misconduct: Damien Callan allegedly used a shell company (Hearts Co Pty Ltd) to strip assets, customers are owed over $500K in deposits/full payments for Centaur and Fathom games, and Callan refused to inject personal capital despite owning properties worth hundreds of thousands. Evidence includes PPRS paperwork showing Hearts Co financed equipment, liquidator documentation of creditors owed, and testimony that only 200-250 games were produced over three years despite high overhead ($10K/week). Gillard explains why he sold the Bally Williams license rather than risk the same fate.

Key Claims

  • Damien Callan created Hearts Co Pty Ltd as a separate entity to own equipment and assets, leaving Haggis Pinball with debt while assets remained protected

    high confidence · Wayne Gillard discusses PPRS (Property Personal and Register) paperwork showing Hearts Co financing equipment and liquidator confirmation of another entity owning warehouse equipment

  • Haggis Pinball owes approximately $500K+ to creditors including distributors (Flippin' Out: $60K, RS Pinball: $123K), customers, and tax authorities (ATO: $153K)

    high confidence · Cary Hardy reads from liquidator documentation listing specific creditor amounts

  • Callan claimed customer deposits were in escrow but they were actually in a regular bank account, potentially constituting fraud

    high confidence · Wayne Gillard states he has written documentation proving the escrow claim was false and discusses potential personal liability

  • Only approximately 200-250 total games were completed over three years (Centaur and Fathom variants) despite production capacity claims

    high confidence · Wayne Gillard calculates roughly 200 Fathom completed/near-completion, approximately 50 Centaur units, suggesting 2 games per week output

  • Haggis had rent-free warehouse for 12 months, subsidized labor through government job seeker programs, and paid electrical costs shared with neighbor, yet still failed

    high confidence · Wayne Gillard details the favorable conditions Callan received and warehouse costs of ~$120K/year in outgoings

  • Callan refused to invest his own money into Haggis despite owning property assets including a house in Upway and another property purchased for development

    high confidence · Wayne Gillard and Cary Hardy discuss how employees begged Callan to put money in; Gillard notes Callan sold a factory in October 2022 for $585K

  • Callan visited Pinball Expo (Texas) in business class (~$10K cost) while claiming insufficient funds to complete customer orders

    medium confidence · Cary Hardy discusses concern about Callan attending shows while owing customers money

Notable Quotes

  • “I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I owed anybody any money. It's just the type of, you know, I've got a conscience, I just couldn't do it.”

    Wayne Gillard@ 0:18 — Contrasts Gillard's ethical decision to license rather than manufacture with Callan's behavior; establishes moral framework for the discussion

  • “He said that money was going into an escrow account. How much money do you think that Damien has stolen from you? He clearly lied, and it can be proven that he's lied, and he's been deceptive and misleading.”

    Cary Hardy@ 2:53 — Core fraud allegation: written false escrow claims constitute provable deception and potential fraud

  • “He doesn't want to rely on anyone to supply him with parts he wants to be self-sufficient and manufacture all the parts themselves in-house... but he wouldn't put any of his own money into it at all.”

    Wayne Gillard@ 14:50 — Identifies key failure mode: overly ambitious manufacturing philosophy combined with zero personal investment

  • “His overheads were probably $10,000 a week. And if he's making, you know, $4,000 a game, but he's only building two a week, he's behind the eight ball, you know, a couple of thousand a week.”

    Wayne Gillard@ 15:53 — Quantifies the fundamental unprofitability: revenue $8K/week vs. overhead $10K/week deficit

  • “This thing had to have been set up this way from the beginning... it's a fail safe. You go into it with the intention that if it did fall over you know he's going to walk away pretty well scot-free.”

    Wayne Gillard@ 28:20 — Suggests premeditated structure: Hearts Co setup designed from inception to protect assets in bankruptcy scenario

Entities

Damien CallanpersonWayne GillardpersonCary HardypersonHaggis PinballcompanyHearts Co Pty LtdcompanyFlippin' Out PinballcompanyRS PinballcompanyPlanetary Pinball

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Haggis Pinball fundamentally unprofitable: ~$10K/week overhead vs. ~$8K/week revenue (2 games/week × $4K margin) despite favorable conditions (rent-free 12mo, subsidized labor, shared utilities)

    high · Wayne Gillard's detailed financial analysis of fixed costs vs. production rate

  • ?

    business_signal: Damien Callan structured Hearts Co from inception as asset protection vehicle; pre-planned bankruptcy exit strategy evident in equipment financing through shell company

    high · Wayne Gillard: 'This thing had to have been set up this way from the beginning... it's a fail safe'; Hearts Co PPRS paperwork shows financing of production equipment

  • ?

    business_signal: Damien Callan refused personal investment despite owning substantial property assets (Upway house, development property, $585K factory sale Oct 2022); signals either lack of faith or premeditated failure structure

    high · Multiple sources state Callan refused to borrow against house or invest own capital; employees begged him to inject funds

  • ?

    community_signal: Major scandal involving Haggis Pinball founder Damien Callan's alleged systematic fraud, asset stripping, and abandonment of customers; widespread creditor losses and community trust violation

    high · Extensive documentation from liquidators, PPRS paperwork, creditor list showing $500K+ owed, liquidator confirmation of asset removal before appointment

  • ?

    community_signal: Cary Hardy's investigation demonstrates active community interest in accountability; $10K bounty for asset recovery suggests grassroots creditor effort and documentation of fraud

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.116

0:00
So basically what's happened is he's wound up the business, he's emptied the place out and everything that's come out of the building is in his or Hart's code, his company's possession. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I owed anybody any money. It's just the type of, you know, I've got a conscience, I just couldn't do it. so it better to be known for someone that doesn't produce the game than known for somebody that's done what Damien's done then there's plenty of people who have actually paid in full for a centaur that was promised to be supplied you know clearly that wasn't going to happen in the previous episode we unboxed a couple of Haggis Pinball's customer experiences to kind of give you an idea of the relationship between a failing company and its hopeful customer base. Now, in this episode, I'm going to be talking to Wayne Gillard. He's actually the previous owner of the Bally Williams license. And he sold that to Rick at Planetary Pinball. And you may be asking, oh, why did he do that? Well, he'll tell you in this episode. Now, Wayne has been in the industry for decades. He's got a wealth of knowledge in the industry. And at one point, he tried to bestow some of that knowledge onto Damien. Now you would think, with the amount of experience and knowledge that Wayne has on this, that Damien would be a willing person to take it in and listen to him. But, Damien was set in his ways. He was convinced that the plan he had would work.
2:02
Obviously, he was wrong. Now, Wayne has all kinds of documentations, and he's done a lot of digging on this whole Haggis debacle.
2:16
And I'm not going to be talking a lot in this episode because I told him to just tell me everything that he knows at this point in time.

  • All three known Centaur games in America have unclear ownership: one with Nitro (claimed as compensation), one with Planetary Pinball (licensing approval), one private collector

    medium confidence · Wayne Gillard discusses Centaur distribution and ownership uncertainty

  • Wayne Gillard sold the Bally Williams license to Rick at Planetary Pinball to avoid the Haggis scenario, because Australian manufacturing costs were prohibitive

    high confidence · Gillard explains decision to license rather than manufacture; contracted with Chicago Gaming and others instead

  • Haggis used lean manufacturing with no surplus parts inventory, meaning few if any physical assets remain for liquidators to recover

    medium confidence · Cary Hardy cites 'good source' stating no physical assets remain; parts were consumed building final machines

  • “I've put a ten thousand dollar bounty basically on the assets... to try and locate the assets that you know that were taken from the building.”

    Cary Hardy@ 22:02 — Active effort to recover missing assets; indicates substantial unaccounted inventory

  • “There is absolutely nothing pinball related that is part of the assets of Haggis Pinball Propriety Limited.”

    Cary Hardy (paraphrasing liquidator findings)@ 18:55 — Liquidators found zero recoverable pinball assets—complete asset stripping successful

  • “If Damien could do something to make things as close to right as possible... he'd pony up the assets... he would pony all of that and offer that all up to the liquidators.”

    Wayne Gillard@ 26:10 — Prescriptive path to redemption; Callan's refusal indicates lack of remorse

    • company
    Chicago Gamingcompany
    Nitro Pinballcompany
    Pinball Heavencompany
    Rickperson
    Martyperson
    Australian Taxation Office (ATO)organization

    high · Cary Hardy offers $10K bounty for asset location; receives feedback from multiple anonymous sources; documents liquidator findings on Pinside Labs

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Haggis Centaur and Fathom games licensing old IP (Bally Williams) positioning against modern manufacturers, but production failures prevented market competition

    medium · Discussion of Centaur and Fathom as licensed titles in competitive landscape; only 200-250 total units produced over 3 years

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Haggis Pinball over-engineered all components (316 stainless, excessive detail under playfield) increasing cost and build time without functional benefit; inefficient manufacturing philosophy

    medium · Wayne Gillard notes beautiful but unnecessary 316-grade stainless hardware and cosmetic quality beneath playfield; Cary Hardy initially praised but acknowledged inefficiency

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball market saturation with 16 active manufacturers; Gillard notes 'pie is only so big' and every manufacturer is selling fewer machines than 12 months prior

    medium · Wayne Gillard states: 'with the pie or the what i call the pinball pie is only so big and we've currently got 16 manufacturers making pinballs at the moment'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Wayne Gillard (former Bally Williams license owner) licensed manufacturing rights to Planetary Pinball rather than manufacture in Australia, avoiding Haggis-like collapse

    high · Gillard's explicit decision to sell license to Rick at Planetary Pinball and contract with Chicago Gaming; rationale: 80%+ of market outside Australia, manufacturing costs prohibitive

  • ?

    technology_signal: Haggis commitment to in-house manufacturing of all parts (no outsourcing) created dependency, inflexibility, and cost burden; contrasts with industry-standard supplier consolidation

    medium · Wayne Gillard explains Callan refused to use Planetary Pinball's supplier relationships for cheaper bulk-ordered components like pop bumpers/slingshots

    • 2:29
    And boy does he. So by all means, guys, get ready for a lot of information and what's going on or what happened with Haggis Pinball. In this episode of Unboxing the Truth.
    2:45
    In this horrible story, I am a tiny slice of us. So many people got so tremendously hurt. He said that money was going into an escrow account. How much money do you think that Damien has stolen from you? He clearly lied, and it can be proven that he's lied, and he's been deceptive and misleading, and all of those things that don't make a good individual. sorry what's what's clear is that damien owns another company called hearts co proprietary limited that company is basically another separate company that he owns and basically he has set it up in such a way that that company was technically sharing the space at his warehouse and that company was financing equipment and haggis was paying hearts co um you know monthly payments or whatever it might happen to be for the payments on leasing all of this equipment and so on so basically what's happened is he's wound up the business he's emptied the place out and everything that's come out of the building is in his or hearts co his company's possession the Liquidator's confirmed that there was another entity renting space at the warehouse and that another entity, he wouldn't say who the other entity was at the warehouse that was renting the space, but it was another entity or person. And when they were appointed, were told that any equipment that they saw that was there was owned by this other party that was not owned by Haggis Pinball. I've got possession of what's called PPRS paperwork, which is basically when a company owns something that's leased to somebody, they put a property security register against that property so that they own that property. So it can't just be you go broke and it just gets sold off type thing. and there's quite a number of pieces of equipment that I've got a property paperwork on, copies of, that clearly show Hearts Co. Pty Ltd. entering into finance agreements with suppliers for that type of equipment that Haggis was using to produce games. Now, I just want to say one thing, and that is I don't have any personal vendetta or anything, you know, bad up until now, obviously, bad to say about Damien or Haggis or the product that they were producing. that wasn't really an issue that I had at the time the only issue I took offense to was the fact that he said that that money was going into an escrow account and he put that in writing and clearly that money is not in an escrow account the other thing was he's taking deposits for games now that in one point isn't the major issue the issue I had was when he said games will be ready in three to six weeks and 15 months later those games are not ready and he and he didn't complete all of the games people have paid for in full and then he started selling centaur now apparently i believe there's three centaur games uh all three i believe are in america at the moment so you know one's in possession of nitro which claims that he was given that game as compensation for all the games that previously sold so i'm not sure whether there's any real clear title on the ownership of that game ones with the licensee planetary pinball which obviously is all for the approval process for the williams owners to approve the you know the the the licensing you know a side of uh you know that the game's a working game and all the artwork's correct and all that sort of stuff and one's in the hands of a private collector in america and i'm and i'm not sure when that game ended up in the hands of that private collector or how and then as far as fathoms go i'm led to believe there was about 200 210 fathom games you know actually either completed or in you know final stages of manufacturing which would have left roughly 40 or 50 fathoms this is just the mermaid not not the normal edition and out of that 40 or 50 people it appears that many of them have paid in full doesn't look like there's too many that still had just balances to pay it looked like a lot of them have paid in full so if that was i think it's like you know um american i think it's eight thousand or something dollars eight to ten thousand i'm not sure what they were selling them for at the time but uh so there's uh what a few hundred thousand there and it seems like there's more damage on the centaur side with many distributors taking orders obviously including Flippin' Out and RS Pinball in Austria, and a number of others have orders and paid deposits to Haggis on behalf of customers, which now have to refund their customers. And then there's plenty of people who have actually paid in full for a Centaur that was promised to be supplied. You know, clearly that wasn't going to happen. So something else to note on this when it comes to how much money and stuff is owed to people. post this recording we have documentation basically showing how much money is owed to all the creditors including like you know the buyers the depositors the full paid in full people and a list of even the distros so this is going to be just a short little call out if you will to those that are owed money so for instance like he says flipping out pinball it says here now I don't know the full accuracy of this as is going just by the documentation that was released by the liquidators so flipping out $60,000 he owes planetary pinball for all those parts $56,000 business fuel don't know what that's about don't know but a hundred and forty six thousand dollars there Australian taxation office a hundred and fifty three thousand now this is something interesting also has Hartsco and Damien himself are owed right there at about a million bucks three hundred eighty eight thousand to Hartsco and six hundred and 21,000 to Damien. Interesting. RS Pinball, like he mentions, $123,000. Pinball Heaven, I believe that's another distro, that is 21,000. Nitro Pinball 76 And that is just basically a short list but he owes a lot of money to a good amount of people guys i'm seeing a lot of 6,000 here 2,000 here 2,000 there so i'm seeing deposits and some paid in fools obviously there's 12,000 30,000 man but yeah so there's you a short list of just some of the things owed what sadly on the listing of creditors right here it has their full address so i'm not going to be showing you this document but yeah you know i realized that you couldn't make games in australia and it was going to cost too much to manufacture them here in australia the labor cost too much the parts cheaper to get the parts from america so unless i want to move to america and build them in america it made sense to you know um sell the license to somebody in the US who do something with the license rather than just hold on to it over in Australia and remake parts I mean we remade nearly 700 parts that weren't previously available any longer you know now we've got you know Rick working with a lot of people to have games made and you know we've got a number of manufacturers including Chicago Gaming and so on who are producing these games under the license that I had but you know that's the best thing for pinball is to get the product out and if I can't do it in Australia and and I would have been in the same position as Haggis if I'd gone through with uh making all these many evils and taking everybody's money a bit different our money went into a trust account an actual trust account so nobody lost any money they all got their money back or they got a game um through us through Chicago Gaming so it's a little bit different but I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I owed anybody any money it's just um the type of you know i've got a conscience i just couldn't do it so better to be known for someone that uh doesn't produce the game than known for somebody that's done what damien's done so let me just reiterate here wayne could have basically started manufacturing parts and all that stuff because he used to have the bally williams license He could have.
    11:52
    He had the choice to make all the parts and do things and make a business there in Australia, but he knew that it just would not work. And why?
    12:04
    Because 80%, if not more, of the market is located on the other parts of the world. so instead of just holding on to the license or possibly starting up something in australia and failing he chose to sell it to rick at planetary and since he knew that it wouldn't work he tried to tell damien this isn't gonna work but he didn't listen so like the the assumption here is that you know his intentions were good at first but kovid was definitely the catalyst for him getting behind and then doing what he started to do i mean can you like confirm since you live there in australia that kovid definitely was what caused this or i mean no it had nothing to do with it we were working full time flat out during COVID, you know, manufacturing like that or, you know, supplying product that is already sold, like if someone was buying new pinballs, it was all contactless, quick and collect, and we had a permit that you could come to work and work if you were classed as, you know, retail, essential retail, for example. So I really don't think that had anything to do with it. You know, he had the factory for nearly 12 months rent-free because he was complaining that one of his driveways, not both but one of them hadn't been finished yet then he didn't have to pay electrical power bill because the neighbor was building a factory and said i'll pay your power bill if i can borrow an extension cord to use to you know help build the factory next door and he employed a whole heap of people who were on job seeker you know where the government actually subsidizes the employment for so many months at very cheap labor so he had one point about 26 people working there you know working on building games and all that sort of stuff but the problem with Damien is he he doesn't he really had no idea about pinball when he started and he really didn't have the skill set to perform what he was doing plus he wouldn't put any of his own money into it at all many people said why don't you just borrow some money against your house or something and uh you know and and just get these games finished but no he he won't he won't use anybody's money at all. If the customer wants the game, then they've got to pay for it. And if you're not prepared to put your own money up, if you don't have enough faith in your own ability or your own business to put your own money at risk, how do you expect individual customers who are unsecured creditors to fund your business? Well, if you listen to him, he said that he doesn't want to rely on anyone to supply him with parts he wants to be self-sufficient and manufacture all the parts themselves in-house you know that's what he was trying to achieve and was what he was saying to everybody but then he says oh there's parts delays and there's all these things and prices of parts went up and all this sort of thing but look at the end of the day time kills you when you're manufacturing pinballs so if you take if he moved into that factory in march of 2021 and he has built, even if you say 200 games, maybe 50 Celts, maybe 250 games in three years,
    15:31
    that it's not many games per week, maybe a couple of weeks or something like that. And his overheads would far exceed that because the rent he was paying was $92,000 a year plus outgoings and the outgoings and GST, probably $120,000 a year. So, you know, $2,200 or something a week he was paying plus wages to people. His overheads were probably $10,000 a week. And if he's making, you know, $4,000 a game, but he's only building two a week, he's behind the eight ball, you know, a couple of thousand a week the longer it takes. Like he just couldn't even pay the overhead, basically. No. So he was constantly in the negative. of yeah and also i think he expected that um you know people would come forward and order centaurs get a whole influx of cash come in but that just didn't happen you know he didn't get and he didn't get his 250 people coming in all sending him 1500 bucks that just that just didn't happen because the economy's changed now you know with with the the pie or the what i call the pinball pie is only so big and we've currently got 16 manufacturers making pinballs at the moment so you know every one of them is going to be selling less machines than what they were 12 months ago that was the major thing was basically the location then that was essentially the killer it was that where he's located manufacturing is basically just not plausible for pinball well i mean if he's making everything in-house himself as he was saying and he could produce so many games a week 10 or 20 games a week and get them out the door um and the margins he was making i mean on paper it probably sounded okay but he was hunting for an investor back in january and wanted half a million dollars investment to get the business back on track and get games completed and all that sort of stuff but he wasn't prepared to let anybody come in as a director or take shares in any way shape or form so he didn't want to relinquish any control you know um and and but he wanted all this money but says i'll pay you back and all this but pay you back how i mean if you're gonna give if you're going to invest in a in a pinball business then you're going to want some type of equity in return you'd certainly want to be you know controlling or signing off on whatever's happening particularly now we know that his own company hearts co proprietary limited is directly involved in the haggis pinball scenario so he's hiding behind another shelf company basically as a director of that company as well hiding the assets and you must have planned that from the beginning since he emptied the facility before the liquidators got there the liquidators can only take control of what's in the facility well they can only go off what they see and what they're told and what they're instructed by the uh the liquidation so if there's no equipment there or if they're told that equipment's owned by another company and that other company can prove that they own that equipment you know we made an offer into them on behalf of a group of individuals there is no asset so there's nothing tangible that they can sell to anybody so there's no machines there's no ip there's no software there's no artwork there's no machinery there's no parts there's nothing There is absolutely nothing pinball related that is part of the assets of Haggis Pinball Propriety Limited. I having difficulty wrapping my head around some of the decisions that were made mainly the silence
    19:21
    I feel like we definitely should have gotten something from him by now. I know that when you're working for a company, you have certain individuals that are not aware of what the fiscal situation is. But I would like to think that, you know, some of the employees, including Marty, would be like, hey, are we profitable? I mean, if we're only putting these machines together, we're only putting out one or two a week or whatever. They all said to Damien, we need money. We need an influx of money. We need you to get some money in, you know, to cover that sort of stuff. And he just wouldn't put any of his own money in. And that was my thing concerned about this last Texas Pinball Festival is that I didn't know at the time if he was going to be there or not. But I was like, man, if he's here, that's at least, you know, for him and Marty, what's it cost to fly from Australia to America? It's like four grand. Well, it was business class, so probably 10 grand. Goodness gracious. And so that's why I was like, man, I hope they don't come because I would rather see that money go into making machines than having an appearance at a show kind of thing. And if he says the money's in escrow and it's not, it's just in a bank account and it's not in escrow, then technically he can be personally liable as well as potentially charged with fraud. What would, in your opinion, be driving him to keep going if he knew that it was a sinking ship? I mean, why did he feel like he needed to keep it going for over a year longer? Sure, I really don't know why he kept it going that long But for him to pull a Houdini and basically walk away and shut it all up with no assets Leaving nobody any assistance at all with parts Or getting anything to keep their games repaired or any of that sort of stuff By doing that really shows the arrogance of that individual That's all I can say He only cares about himself. He doesn't care about pinball. He never has. It's just a business venture to him. No, no. I mean, thanks for the information, but I can't just say these things unless you have some kind of evidence to also go along with it. well yeah along with all that's going on and all the information you have you've currently got a like a basically a ten thousand dollar award on something so what's the story behind this so i've put a ten thousand dollar bounty basically on the assets that was to try and locate the assets that you know that were taken from the building so if some individual knew where they were or where they went or who had them or anything like that um then you know we'd give them that ten thousand dollars basically um no questions asked now it looks like we've managed to locate well when i say locate we've got some reports as to where some of the assets are but the problem we have now is that these assets are claimed to be owned by hearts co-proprietary limited which is his other company that he's a director of um so he's claiming all those assets all belong to hearts co they don't belong to haggis pinball well just an example okay so through planetary pinball they could have got all the flipper mechanisms they could have got pop bumpers slingshots they could have got all of those those generic parts to use on the fathom and they could have bought them dirt cheap because they would have been tagging on to existing orders of other manufacturers like chicago gaming for example you know so if they order 10 000 pop bumper rings or for example then you know um what's the name damien should have been able to order order what he needed through planetary pinball at a much cheaper price than he could ever make him himself but he chose to make everything himself um and just over engineered everything all had to be you know 316 grade stainless or whatever the case might have been sure might have looked beautiful having all this stainless steel hardware and and side rails and all these things but they they didn't need to be as pretty as they were and by making them as pretty as they were made them expensive and made them too hard to build and cost too much to build as well yeah that was one of my like big features whenever they were first showing off fathom underneath the hood and stuff like that, I'm like, wow. I was like, that is beautiful. I'm like, they don't need to put all this detail and quality stuff underneath the playfield like that. I don't know why they're doing it, but if that's their method and they can make it work and they're making a profit, then okay, cool.
    24:20
    No, I understand. I got you. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks anyways. If anything changes, by all means reach out to me again.
    24:32
    Okay. It's amazing of the kind of feedback I'm getting. It's because you get certain individuals that supposedly have information, but they don't want to go on the record, they don't want to be recorded, they don't want to be on video, and they don't even want to take the chance of altering their voice or anything. I'm not sure if it's fear or just because they could be just entirely lying.
    25:14
    And then you have others that have stated that they need to talk to their lawyer first. I'm like, okay, I mean, I get it. if you had to put a number on it how much money do you think that damien has stolen from people um well the rumors i'm hearing is it's in excess of half a million dollars now when you say stolen you know yeah i mean it's a time hold his end of it kind of thing yeah I think obtained money and payments by deception would be a clear way of putting it, because obviously those games are not going to be supplied in the time frame that he's indicated, and he would have known that. He would have known that there was no way. If Damien could do something to make things as close to right as possible, what do you think that he could do right now? he'd pony up the assets you know for all the parts whatever parts there were whatever drawings there were for the parts whatever details he has the source code for the programming of the of the software pretty much you know everything as far as the ip is concerned he would pony all of that and offer that all up to the liquidators so that the liquidators were then able to see valuable equity in that, be able to sell that asset to, whether it be us or whether it be to another individual, so that that will enable, you know, people to, A, get parts for their machines and B, potentially get the machine that they paid for in the long term. You know, those assets do not belong to him. Those assets belong to the creditors, the people who put money up front and and gave him money in good faith uh and he clearly lied and it can be proven that he's lied and and he's been deceptive and misleading and all of those things that don't make a good individual so here's the thing guys haggis was running on lean manufacturing okay so with lean manufacturing you're only ordering parts that you need you're not going to have a surplus pallet for just in case or anything like that so chances are there are no assets left and according to a good source of mine there are no assets left they pretty much used up all the parts that they could on the last few machines that they got out of that factory so don't really know what they're going to do with assets unless they're like digital or something like that but as far as physical you're going to get what some assembly some brackets stuff like that that they did i don't know be interesting to see how that goes and uh moved out but this this thing had to have been set up this way from the beginning meaning for you to have another company and put that other company down as owning the assets and financing equipment to manufacture pinball machines in another company name while the other company manufactured the games and had one company taking the heat for all of the equity sorry for all of the debt and the other one for all of the assets you know you go into that setting that up like that in the beginning you know with the intention that if it did fall over you know he's going to walk away pretty well scot-free it's a fail safe it's a fail safe yeah so man so it's like he went into it but he's like just in case it doesn't go through or that we don't make it or whatever, then at least I've got this. Nope.
    29:22
    So we had a major information dump on Pinside Labs, not by a former employee. I have reached out to this individual hoping to be able to speak with him. I would love to, but we'll see if they get a response, if they respond back to my email. I don't know.
    29:43
    We'll see. It's definitely puzzling, and like I said, the more information that comes out, then the more and more intriguing it gets to where it's like, how deep does this rabbit hole go? Well, he has assets too. So he has his house in Upway, and he also has a property that was purchased where they were going to sub-develop this product, which is also up in Upway. So they were advertising for townhouses to be built on this particular site. And then he had his old factory that he owned because he sold it back in October 2022 for $585,000. So that company, sorry, that asset must have been either in his name or Hart's Co's name or something along those lines. So he does have assets that he could have drawn upon to utilise money or funds to keep this side of it all going. so we don't know and i'm not making any assumptions but whether or not any money has been directed out of haggis pinball into any of these other property investments so it seems like you know he could have put his own money into the company but he refused yeah good off yep we refused yeah yeah and you'll find that when you speak to ex-employees they'll tell you the same thing we begged him to put money in and he just wouldn't put any of his own money in so it's like he almost didn't have faith in it himself kind of thing you know yeah but you don't put your own money and you take risks right in life yeah you know and if um if you decide that you want to start up a business tomorrow you know making ballpoint pens right might not be a great idea but if you if that's what you want to do right and you believe in that that idea then you know you'll you'll spend your own money and prototype and do whatever it is to build a game. I mean, I'm sure he did that with Celts. I would have thought he would have spent his own money in the beginning doing Celts. Yeah, invested in himself. A lot of the time, especially starting up, you don't typically make any money for the first few years or whatever because you're taking the money that you're getting and you're reinvesting it to make it even better. I think if you're going to be starting a pinball business like this, I think what you would do is that you would have a group of people and they would all put in a couple of hundred grand each and you might have five directors and you start up the business with a million bucks starting with. And that million dollar amount of money is what your equity, the equity each shareholder has in that business. None of them are really drawing a wage, you could say. And obviously maybe some of them who are working there. But, you know, and that's what you do. So you're using that money that's been put in to set up that company and that money is owed back to those individuals at some point. And if it runs at a profit, then you can pull some money back out of the company to start paying back money to the investors who set it up. But, you know, this money that's come in, I'm 100% confident in stating that the only reason that he even started this Fathom stuff and licensing these old titles is because nobody wanted Celts and he couldn't get anywhere or go any further. He was working out of his factory, you know, doing his Celts machines and took it overseas and I said to him, look, mate, how much does it cost to build 10 of these kelps? And he said, oh, six grand each. I said, well, why don't you go to the bank, get 60 grand and actually build 10 games in their inboxes and then take them to Pinball Expo and sell them. People will buy them and take them. Oh, no, no, I'm not doing that.
    33:34
    I said, well, no one's going to buy them on this pre-order window thing. And I'm guessing 50 people did because they made 50. Eventually, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I'm sure they were getting built with fathom money too. But who knows? But, look, you know, I'll give him some credit, okay? I heard he used to get in there at 5 o'clock in the morning and work until 9 o'clock at night, right? He used to put in the hours and do whatever it took to build these games. So, you know, these are some positive things I was hearing, right? But how about you start and turn this negative into a positive and do the right thing and relinquish your control over all of these assets that you clearly have and give them to the liquidator so that the liquidator can actually do something with them to recover some money on those assets. And then, you know, people will probably leave him alone because he's, you know, then been seen to sort of at least assist in trying to do the right thing by the community. yeah like because holding on to him is not going to do him any good i mean what's he going to do for him just having it all in storage or whatever unless he's planning on selling them or something who knows he probably thinks he honestly believes that those assets belong to him and he paid for them and he created them so he owns the rights to them so another day and another source with information will not allow themselves to be recorded or video or anything like that. They want to stay out of this. So what this does to me, in my opinion, I want to be able to give all this information to you guys, but try to make it entertaining as well. I don't want it to be just, here's all the information, and it basically just looks or sounds like a damn podcast. I mean, I could do that. But I was really hoping to get more feedback from people that were willing to be recorded.
    35:46
    I mean, I could read the emails, I guess, but it just makes it seem more like it's just one of my regular old videos, and I guess I was expecting more from this. But it looks like, at this point in time, that I don't know it's a little disappointing to me but I don't know anything can change in the next 24 hours or whatever but we're creeping on the point to where at least episode 1 I've got to wrap it up and be done with it kind of thing damn it as I say no issue with the product right no issue at all with the product you know just the management you know um i bought i think is where everything let down lack of lack of uh you know poor management and um you know arrogance poor management and lack of lack of funds basically you know so we'll see what happens um you know with with what comes out of the uh liquidation but you know i've been through these liquidations before meaning I've been owed money by creditors before. And, you know, unfortunately, you generally don't get anything out of it. And the person ends up walking away and then moving on and doing something else.
    37:10
    Just got out of the gym. Got an email. One of the sources that used to work there is willing to talk with me.
    37:22
    Good. just gotta work our schedules out but hopefully we can get this done soon but i'm super excited that someone that used to work there is willing to talk because martin never got back to me so i don't know when or if we're gonna hear from him hopefully he comes back to pinball but it wouldn't surprise me at this point if he's gonna be ducking out for a good while The problem with this acrylic is like you know it's super strong for impacts which is you know the hammer test they were like hitting it with a hammer it's like look it's not doing anything but it's brittle under pressure
    38:21
    you