A few days ago, Mark Stephens (aka “Robert Cringely”), started suggesting that victims of his Mineserver scam are members of a “Jihad”:
https://www.cringely.com/2018/01/02/a-visionary-returns/
That's a new low, even for Mr. Stephens. At least in the past Mark and his followers tried to sweep his fraud under the rug, by simply brushing away his victims as “trolls” or “spammers”.
Now Mr. Stephens is equating his victims with terrorists? Seriously?
Instead of simply stopping his ongoing criminal enterprise, he now has the brass balls to ask his marks to look for “a new shipping schedule in a couple more weeks”. This after years of delays, misdirection, and many months without any updates.
In fact, Mr. Stephens’ Kickstarter campaign has still not been updated, where the last post on November 10th blathers on about shipping “week after next”:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/583591444/mineservertm-a-99-home-minecraft-server/updates
Mr. Stephens now claims that $20,000 worth of parts were “BURNED DOWN” (his capitalization, not mine) and that for unknown reasons, the State of California doesn’t believe him. (More on this in a moment.)
If Mr. Stephens insists on continuing his life of crime, then perhaps he could at least respond to some of these latest developments and other relevant facts?
The web site at http://mineserver.com is still taking credit card orders for products that don't exist. There's no indication on the site that it's a Kickstarter-style “pay-and-pray” site, so isn't that fraud, plain and simple?
Mineserver LLC was set up to funnel funds into Mark Stephens’ 401K fund? True or false?
The Wyoming filing says that Mr. Stephens resides at 1934 Los Alamos Road in Santa Rosa, California. Doesn't look like much room for arm-waving about that not being his address, unless the filing was fraudulent?
Public records in Santa Rosa also list Mark Stephens, age 64, and someone named Mary Stephens, age 49, at that same address:
https://rehold.com/Santa+Rosa+CA/LOS+ALAMOS+RD/1934#
The Wyoming business listing indicates that Mineserver LLC has now been dissolved. Where did the money go? Where is the money from new sales generated at http://mineserver.com going now? Into Mr. Stephens' personal bank account?
The latest updated map of the fire damage in Santa Rosa continues to show that Mr. Stephens' neighborhood and other local businesses did not suffer any fire damage:
https://robinkraft.github.io/norcal-fires-imagery/map.html#16/38.4934/-122.6044
- Pride Mountain Vineyards, located just to the northeast of Mr. Stephens' home, recently posted that the fire didn't make it up that way (“no damage to our property or vineyards”):
https://www.pridewines.com/news-events/news/2017/
- Mr. Stephen’s neighbor's home at 1946 Los Alamos Road just sold a few weeks ago (on December 20th) for $675,000, which appears to be full market value for that location, so they just got lucky?
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Santa-Rosa/1946-Los-Alamos-Rd-95409/home/2280659
In Mr. Stephens’ “Boils” blog post, he claimed that his neighbor's homes burned down too:
https://www.cringely.com/2017/10/13/i-have-no-boils/
Or was that just more of his usual “embellishment” to make his post more dramatic?
By the way, for the benefit of anyone else investigating Mr. Stephens’ claims, the address at 1934 Los Alamos Road is accessed from Holst Road, which intersects Los Alamos Road just before it dead ends. There's a sign post at the turnoff for Holst Road that shows the Los Alamos Road addresses that are located on the turnoff:
Thanks to Redfin for clearing up this bit of local trivia. (A number of other posters in earlier blog posts were wondering why the street addresses in Mr. Stephen's neighborhood didn't seem to correspond with what was shown on the map.)
The many customers from whom Mark Stephens took money and never delivered a product are his victims, not the other way 'round.
If Mr. Stephens insists on continuing his fraudulent business, engaging in name-calling, and pretending that he is somehow a victim and his marks are simply trolls, spammers, and now terrorists, then details about Mr. Stephen’s ongoing fraud will be posted everywhere he appears online that has a comments section.
Until this fraud stops, the investigation continues...