Under the heading “Seriously Guys, You Should Have Seen This Coming Years Ago,” it would appear that Infinium Labs’ former chief executive was actually full of doo doo all along.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Tim Roberts with misrepresenting The Phantom game service to potential investors. The crime? Claiming that it actually existed.
I know this is shocking. Take your time. I can wait.
The SEC filing alleges that Roberts, through an intermediary, sent out “junk faxes” to potential investors making claims about The Phantom that could not be substantiated in an effort to increase sales of Infinium stock. The plan apparently worked, causing the company’s stock to surge upwards of 3,000%. At which point Roberts sold a portion of his own stock in the company, “earning” over $400,000 in the process.
This once again proves that the SEC has no real problem with making false claims and/or jiggering the market so long as an individual, rather than a company, doesn’t profit as a result. Still, it’s nice to see some official acknowledgement that The Phantom is a pipedream. Although the real crime here is that this scam was allowed to continue for so long, and that – by all accounts – is still going on.
Infinium recently relocated its offices and has attempted to distance itself from Roberts, but he still serves on its board (a position from which he would be barred should the SEC charge stick), and the company’s core business model appears to have remained unchanged, according their website:
Infinium Labs?, Inc., is a public company which is set to launch the Phantom? Game Service, a cutting edge gaming and content delivery system. Our common stock trades on the OTC BB under the ticker symbol “IFLB”.
For our current stock price, recent news releases and SEC filings, please click on the appropriate link in the Investor Relations section of this website.
As always, no real date for this “release” has been advertised, which would bring The Phantom’s development time to close to five years – and couting. Making announcements for gaming hardware that has yet to be developed is no real anomaly in this industry (see: Sony), but a VC-funded start-up making such announcements continually, for years, with nothing to show for their efforts should be a red flag that even a blind bull couldn’t miss.
Here’s hoping that Federal authorities will be just as vigilant in pursuing fraud allegations against the company when they move from defrauding investors to bilking consumers.
Published: May 17, 2006 12:03 pm