Someone in the comments pointed out that the guy took 49.87% of the money, and he's a 50% owner in the company.
Coincidence? seems unlikely. Legally he owned that money.
Could be a very clever play. He could be off the hook on embezzlement, and being financial controller actually had say in how the rest fo the money was spent trying to deliver the goods. The CEO even admits they were very close to pulling it off, even with half the money gone. So it's likely going to be hard for the backer to take legal action for goods not delivered? The guy simply took half the money (his half) as wages and bonuses or whatnot.
![Clapping :clap:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/clap.gif.pagespeed.ce.LImJbaO0yv.gif)
That's what I was alluding to in this thread (or was it the other one?).
The backers have no claim against this David guy. They are not owners of the business, nor are they partners in any way. They are just backers, which is just a type of customer, but with less rights.
If the story is true as presented, Rylan is the aggrieved party. But it doesn't appear he has really done much to solve this problem. He sucked out almost $400k in funds, David sucked out $200-300k, and only $80k was spent on materials and tooling.
The video about illustrates that the pie chart wasn't even accurate - they had money from the gov't as well as family investment. And the video doesn't, AFAIK, include the Backerkit "pre-order" money. So it appears it was well over a million.
So they spent 8% on actual tangible goods, they spent almost half a million on salaries, a founder absconded with $200k, and who knows where the rest went.
And Rylan spent a lot of time (too much time, IMO) creating all sorts of charts, videos, reaction videos with backers and other content to absolve himself from any liability or blame.
I wonder how much he, personally, took out of the company? I wonder if that family loan was paid back, and at what interest rate? The Canuckian gov't really needs to investigate this one. I smell fraud (either willful or otherwise) all over it.