This is a truly dark story about some events in the videogame industry where criminals exploit an otherwise very clean industry. This has tragically led to several people in the industry loosing their jobs as well as enormous financial losses.

I' ve tried to make a gist of the article in english (original article is in Swedish) but if you' re interested in the full story I suggest you try finding it somewhere else. I sadly don' t know of any sites where this might be available in english.

According to swedish news paper Dagens Nyheter' s website www.dn.se the men behind the Gizmondo (Tiger Telematics), Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson, have been arrested in the U.S.

Before they started Tiger Telematics Inc they were wanted criminals in Sweden for tax evasion and before that they had been convicted for other crimes, such as drug dealing, illegal possession of weapons and drunk driving.

But somehow they managed to convince foreign markets that they were legitimate bussinessmen.
They started a company called Eagle Eye Scandinavia Distribution Ltd in the U.K. in 1999 and focused on selling gps-equipment to companies that used lots of vehicles such as taxi companies and similar. The company claimed they had gotten a big order from Finland which made the stock rates rise and the company was sold for stocks in an US company worth 25 million SEK (swedish kronor, visit Forex.com).
But in reality the company had never gotten the order from Finland.

The company the two men had purchased, Floor Decors based in Florida, was selling floor carpets which wasn' t in Carl Freer' s interest. What he wanted was the companys position in the stock exchange market.
He then renamed the company to Tiger Telematics Inc.
To make the stock rates rise he had to come up with an interesting product and this was the Gizmondo.
They opened main offices in the U.K. with smaller offices around the world.
They begun ordering parts from several hardware companies and purchased the U.K. developer Warthog to make sure the Gizmondo would get software.

All these investments made the stocks rise and several investors believed in Tiger Telematics, among them the founder of Icon Medialabs Johan Staël von Holstein, who is now running a company called Icube. In the end the company was almost worth 1 billion US$ and they stated that the company had gotten pre-orders of about 500 000 units.

Now that the company had lots of money Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson gave themselves insanely high salaries and well payed jobs to their friends and familly. A couple of their friends where famous in Sweden, to the police that is. Three of the highest ranked men in the Tiger Telematics company had previously been involved with organised crime in Uppsala, Sweden.
In 2005 the Swedish news paper Aftonbladet exposed these three and Freer which made all four leave their posts as executives.

But their defections couldn' t save the bad reputation Gizmondo had gotten and Gizmondo was soon believed to be involved with organised crime and many wondered if Tiger Telematics where attending their affairs correctly.
When the Gizmondo was released it flopped completely and the previously stated pre-orders of 500 000 units turned out to be fake.
During the entire year of 2005 the company didn' t make enough profit to even cover the leasing expenses for the directors' cars (Ferrari).

Now the stocks are worth about 1 cent compared to 30$ when it was at its highest.
The brittish daughter company (Gizmondo) have gone bankrupt with debts of about 25 million £ and 230 people have lost their jobs, among them about 50 videogame developers in Sweden .
The Gizmondo and the company that created it are gone as well as millions of dollars, job opportunities and the dignity of the videogame industry.

Some of you might remember reading that some swedish big shot crashed a Ferrari, which was cut in two peaces, in Los Angeles in februari 2006. The guy driving was Gizmondo guy Eriksson.
Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson have been involved with several other types of suspicious activity after the Gizmondo such as starting their own police force in Los Angeles (yes, you can do that there).
Lately they have started a company called Xero Mobile which bought the american company Desi TV just a couple of weeks ago.
Keep a close eye on Xero mobile as we might see the same outcome, or even worse, as with Tiger Telematics.

My english isn' t exactly 100% so there might be some errors in my text. If you find anything that sounds wrong, please let me know.
If you find the same information in english on another site, please post the link.

Hehe, found this old thread:
https://forum.kikizo.com/tm.asp?m=17482&p=&mpage=1&tmode=1&smode=1&key=gizmondo&language=single
Kikizo Gizmondo Skin.
So this is the kind of companies that Kikizo work with...
I guess even the best makes mistakes.

Nice story :)

I don' t really give a fuck about their crimes but it' s interesting how they made all that crap work.

Smart guys.

They are smart indeed.
Thinking of doing something similar? Your alias is ]Gangsta[ after all... .

yeah but they were smart you know :)

If they really were smart, they would not have been caught.

Still, points for creativity. When I first heard of the Gizmondo, I knew it was a bad company with a non-existent property, or vapourware.

Is that really true?..if so it' s a very dark under belly to a part of the gaming industry...saying that however they never we really successful with the gizmondo anyhow so at least not too many were swindled.

ORIGINAL: dasher232

Is that really true?

It' s true according to Swedens biggest morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Weither or not you want to believe them is up to you.
Personally I believe them.
I wonder if we' ll see similar things in the future.

ORIGINAL: ginjirou

It' s true according to Swedens biggest morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Weither or not you want to believe them is up to you.
Personally I believe them.
I wonder if we' ll see similar things in the future.

Thats what I was thinking how many others have similar stories and who....but I think they may just be a unique one.

I loved how they found a magazine clip in his ferrari,fucking nutcase :P

Sweden> all.

Hehe, found this old thread:
https://forum.kikizo.com/tm.asp?m=17482&p=&mpage=1&tmode=1&smode=1&key=gizmondo&language=single
Kikizo Gizmondo Skin.
So this is the kind of companies that Kikizo work with...
I guess even the best makes mistakes.

....o_O...

...?...

...i' dun work....

...all the posts are blank!...

....Kikizo covering up their tracks are they?....

...interesting....

Hmm, strange.
I a checked the link to that old thread again and was surprised to see that you were right. Blank posts.
But then I checked again after a few minutes and all of a sudden the posts were back.
Kikizo trying to cover up the tracks of their cover up?
Even more interesting...

I hate Gizmondo.

These things that come way out of left field and are destined to fail from the word go are a pain in the ass because on the surface they sound pretty good.

Look at Nokia' s N-Gage. It came out before DS and i picked one up just to play Tomb Raider. It looked retarded and the screen was pathetic, but when compared to GBA is didn' t seem so bad (i loved GBA but i' m comparing N-Gage to DS, PSP and GP2X). A small VERTICAL screen?!

I guess it was my own fault for bothering with it.



What about the Phantom?! Where the hell is that thing?!



Gizmondo sucked. It was too big, it was uncomfortable to hold, it looked stupid, the games were rubbish, the shoulder bottons were a joke. Who would buy that?!

The fact that these guys even thought it was possible that the thing would take off is unbelievable.

If they' d released this version...





...and given it a sharper screen with a better graphics chip, then maybe i would have considered it.

However, they didn' t and i didn' t.



Did the widescreen version see release?





In the end, Gizmondo was as bad as the Zodiac...



It never had much potential!

Judging by their history, I' m not sure Freer and Eriksson wanted the Gizmondo to be successful at all. They only wanted the Gizmondo to appear as it could be successful. Why else would they lie about 500 000 pre-ordered units? It' s a funny idea but still.
It seems all they wanted to do was to start a company, lure investors to invest lots of money and raise the stock rates to then give themselves insanely high salaries before making the company go bankrupt. Then they just start all over and thus they manage to live in luxury without making a single successful company.
Now before you get any ideas of your own, crime doesn' t pay! They got caught. Justice prevails!

These guys are brilliant, they start up a company. And basically give out false information to artificially raise the stock value. The own large shares of the stock and when it peaks they sell and leave all the investors fucked. Or maybe they' re not so brilliant, they were caught after all. But even when they do get out of jail, they' re still going to be rich.

But what they have done, was it illegal? they made a company, got a some money, and their product failed horibbley. Its just the share holders get screwed.

But I have allways wondered, what happens the guys in charge of a company when it goes bankrupt, how do they pay back the expenses? or is it just left and the guys are left unemployed?

Apart from all the previous crimes they' ve commited (drug dealing, drunk driving, car theft, driving too fast and more) I don' t know if they' ve broken the law or not but it should be illegal to officialy state that a company has recieved large orders when it in fact has not.
They are being charged for tax evasion which I' m sure is illegal.
In any case, the Gizmondo was a crime against mankind .

Somehow the gizmondo always eluded, me only heard the name recently.

Isnt what they did called embezzlement or somthing...i dont know shit about how the law works. But I dont think they created a police force, but faked one in order to gain access to guns. Thats anothing thing they got in trouble for was imersonating a police officer.

You' re not a daycare provider for real are you?