Skully Served With Lawsuit
Crowdfunding gone wrong
The much-anticipated high-tech, promised-to-be-groundbreaking helmet from Skully went ass-up late last month ( Skully Done?). Now, according to documents filed with the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, Skully Helmets brethren founders, Marcus and Mitchell Weller, are being sued by their former employee, Isabelle Faithhauer who was “assigned responsibility for managing the books of Skully.”
Found in the court documents are tasty bits such as Faithhauer claiming “the Wellers used the corporate entities of Skully in such a fraudulent manner as to render the corporate entity a sham.” Also spelled out in the document were these inappropriations:
- A payout of $80,000 to a former co-founder of Skully was made and not properly recorded on the company books, and to conceal it from the accountants of Skully, by recording the expense as a reimbursement of expenses during a trip to China.
- During January 2015, Marcus Weller took a non-business related trip to Southern California, where he rented a Lamborghini for the weekend and expensed it to Skully.
- Four motorcycles were purchased by Skully, two of which were for the Wellers’ personal use. Insurance for the motorcycles was also charged to Skully.
- In the fall, 2015, Marcus Weller and Mitchell Weller booked a non-refundable trip to Bermuda. Marcus Weller was not pleased with Bermuda, so he booked on 24 hours notice a flight to Hawaii, first class, at Skully’s expense.
The list goes on – the document is 23 pages. You can read the entire file here. Towards the end of the complaint it reads, “Defendants, and each of them, did the acts herein maliciously, fraudulently and oppressively, with the wrongful intent to injure Plaintiff, from an improper and evil motive amounting to malice, and in conscious disregard of Plaintiff’s rights. The acts complained of were known to, authorized and ratified by Defendants. Plaintiff is therefore entitled to recover punitive damages from Defendants, and each of them, in an amount according to proof at the time of trial.”
Skully raised millions of dollars through crowdfunding donations. If the Weller’s are found guilty, is there any chance a class action suit could return money to the duped investors? Any moto-lawyers out there looking for some pro bono work?
A former Motorcycle.com staffer who has gone on to greener pastures, Tom Roderick still can't get the motorcycle bug out of his system. And honestly, we still miss having him around. Tom is now a regular freelance writer and tester for Motorcycle.com when his schedule allows, and his experience, riding ability, writing talent, and quick wit are still a joy to have – even if we don't get to experience it as much as we used to.
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There's clearly something dodgy going on here. Why, someone has even made off with the definite articles before every reference to the plaintiff and the defendents in the complaint! Good grief, if you can't trust lawyers, who can you trust?
I have to admit, I've been stupid and naive enough to pre-purchase video
games that turned out to really suck, and also those "early access"
scam games that just string you along forever and never actually deliver, but
I've since learned my lesson. But ouch! Dropping that kind of cash for
such vaporware must really be painful! :o