Dot Com Scammer Pleads Guilty
from the due-diligence-is-for-sissies dept
Apparently it was true that investors did no due diligence on their investments at the height of the dot com boom. That's the only way I can understand how anyone could have given Robert Robb any money. It seems a number of investors were conned by Robb out of $4 million, as he claimed his online gambling startup was backed by Steve Ballmer, David Copperfield, and the heads of some top casinos. It turns out, of course, none of that was true. In fact, it's not clear that Robb actually had any product. Instead, he took the $4 million, went to Vegas and gambled it away on $15,000 hands of blackjack. While many of the investments investors made over the past few years weren't all that different than gambling in Vegas, that still doesn't make this legal. After he ran through the money, Robb resorted to death threats to try to con more money out of his investors.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
