Virtual Reality Bites: SEC Files Suit Against Palm Beach County Company
If you think about it, the investment scam is the ultimate virtual reality game: It gives its customers the extremely life-like sensation of getting rich, albeit at considerable cost. So why not offer virtual reality itself as an investment scam? Too late. Someone's already thought of it.
The SEC is suing the Palm Beach County-based creators of 3001 A.D., a virtual reality game that purported to have deals with Microsoft and Apple, attracting some $20 million in investment capital.
The company was based in Delray Beach and feds say that five of the company's six principals live in surrounding cities Boynton Beach, Wellington, Lake Worth, and Fort Lauderdale.
Hilariously, some of the company's promotional articles are still available through a simple Google search, plus a whole slew of promotional videos, like the one above. If this was a scam, these guys did a bang-up job pretending to be on the video game vanguard.
Here's one of the defendants, former company president, Bob Ladrach, gushing about 3001 A.D.'s head mounted display:
"Players feel like they are actually in the game," says Ladrach. The view of the game is controlled by the direction you're looking. Improvements over the past two years of development have come directly from consumer and tester feedback. The Trimersion is the first game accessory that uses a wireless video headset and game controller. With the release of motion tracked controllers for new consoles, the Trimersion is an innovative example of the future of gaming. "There is nothing quite like it," says Ladrach, "the freedom to move around and not get tangled up in wires, plus the immersive VGA (Video Graphics Array) The display standard for the PC. All PC display adapters support VGA, and Windows machines boot up in "VGA mode" before switching to higher resolutions. ..... Click the link for more information. quality displays put you right in the middle of the action."
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