Your research skills are astounding. I am a woman and not TCA, nor am I affiliated or related to TCA. Now that you have proven to me how quick you are to judge people based on very little info, I hold no weight in anything you have said thus far. You have embarrassed and humiliated an innocent person, so thanks for that.  I will be spending the rest of the night with my family snuggled up on the couch watching a movie instead of wasting it here with people who I believed were "knowledgeable". Obviously not. You have lost a newcomer. Maybe you should get your facts straight before you accuse someone of something they are not.

@SQ: First off, I forgot to say welcome to the forums. Let not your first impression be that of a hateful community, we are very welcoming and the good people here are very kind to the card community. They have helped several projects go from nothing to a full-blown Kickstarter project that gets major funding, mine included.

We are also very, very card obsessed. We know the in's and out's of the industry, and while none of us are single-handedly geniuses on the matter, as a collective we have the power to check each other's claims.

However, you said in your post that "not all of the evidence is damning." There need be but one shred of damning evidence and no matter what excuse you can come up with for the other stuff, nothing excuses blatant ripping of artwork for use on a commercial site (or any site, technically). Would you pay for a pirated CD? Would you buy a stolen car? So why in the world would you spend a single minute of your time supporting this hack?

I mean, it's not like the selection of quality products is hard to find in the card world, and the selection of mediocre and terrible products is certainly easy to horde.

Thanks for the belated welcome alex!  I do not feel like this is a hateful cummunity, and I applaud the fact that many out there are being wary of this guy. Maybe you can help me out with this (about the artwork), but my understanding was that the picture in question came from this site: http://www.pptbackgrounds.net/blue-matrix-backgrounds.html, which The-Con-Artist admitted to. I checked out the site, and they are free downloads for you to use as you wish, including websites. I am not seeing how he stole any artwork, and supposedly there is a different website that will be launching. Does anyone know when or what it will look like? Was there another picture that you meant? The other cover picture was researched and found to have no duplicates on the web. Supposedly it is an original taken by TCA. Please understand, that I am not trying to make excuses, this is just information that I found. So again, if there was a picture that I am missing that was ripped off from somewhere, please slap me upside the head and bring me in to reality!

Aside from all of the other stuff, where does he stand in the cardistry/magic community? I think I saw a few posts on here about him winning something at a film festival? Is the movie out there somewhere? Also that his name is on the Arcane Gaff Cards? I would be interested to know what he contributed. I have a few decks of those myself, and love giving credit where it is due. For those that do know the ins and outs of the business, do you have connections to find out or are willing to find out? Then maybe we can see what some of his designs actually look like. I would rather look at what he has actually done rather than what he may or may not have done. Everything else has been speculation...unless someone on here was standing next to him when these things happened, how can anyone say this is 100% why he did this? When it all comes out in to the light, I will be happy to say either one of two things: "I'm glad I waited it out so I didn't get scammed," or "I'm glad I waited and didn't judge. And the free deck of cards was a nice touch." Either way, I know you guys will make your minds up on your own about what you think.

Quote from: SpadedQueen on March 17, 2012, 07:29:47 PM

Thnks for welcoming me! I do see that most people here have major issues with this guy. I guess I'm just the type of person that tries not to judge people before I have all of the information. There is a lot of info that has been found, but not all of it is damning. Saw that Mike the Greek was wearing his fight wear brand in a televised event. Also, did anyone check out the pic that The-Con-Artist just posted? Looks like artwork to me. Thanks for all the info you guys dug around for. Interesting stuff! I agree about not putting personal info out there for the world to see.  I googled my name and a ton of stuff came up that I didn't know about! It's definitely not hard to find! Thanks again!

Dude, what the f**k are you trying to say/prove?? Quote:"I guess I'm just the type of person that tries not to judge people before I have all of the information."
What more information do you need Kanped put a lot of information regarding this fella...
That guy even cancelled his Kickstarters projects and deleted his account there, within hours of being exposed...
Everything about this Con-Artist  project is fishy!!!!!

By the way can I have your Social Security Number, address, date of birth, credit card info,
because if so I can send you a free deck of a project that is ready to be launched....

Sorry love, but I am missing a few body parts to be a "dude".  Lol. I am not out to prove anything. You have made up your mind and I respect that. And, no I won't give you any of that information, but thanks for asking! I would never give it to anyone, but then again, The-Con-Artist has yet to ask me for any personal info. I made only that post visible to the public on Facebook. All other information is still private. If they do ask for personal info before showing proof of a deck, I will unlike them and move on. Simple as that. So far, it hasn't happened, so I'm still hanging in there. I would be sorely disappointed if there were no deck, don't get me wrong! But, I'm not convinced that there isn't a deck either, regardless of all posts about contacting USPCC. What if someone else in his company was contacting USPCC and not using the company name? I will wait and see.

I followed the link from The-Con-Artist's Facebook page. I'm brand new here, so please don't rip me apart! I just had a few things to add to all this thought provoking thread. Does anyone else find it interesting that the link to get here is still up on their page? If you guys are wrong, and there is a design near production, all this will do is make you guys look like assholes for trying to defame someone. Not trying to defend The-Con-Artist, but I'm also not interested in talking crap about someone before all the cards are on the table. (pun intended) Honestly, I am being wary, but I haven't been hurt by liking the page or getting my friends to like it. Has someone here been scammed by these people/person. Is that why everyone is out to make a fool of them? Looking at all of the links that were posted about this guy, I haven't seen anyone scammed out of anything. I see someone who has posted a ton of ideas, but do you know where they are at with these projects? Does anyone have personal knowledge or is this all Internet research?
You guys keep on doing your thing and tearing someone apart, but my guess is that they left the link up to this site intentionally. I will wait it out and see what happens. If they start showing artwork as promissed, I wonder how many will suddenly switch sides. I'm not going to jump to conclusions on this one. I haven't been asked for any personal info or money, so I'm not feeling scammed at all. I have not lost anything. If you guys are right...well then I guess you can say I told you so! If you are wrong, well then I feel sorry for you because you just made yourself look really bad!