Fusion Garage

Fusion Garage Disintegrates: Founder Creating New Company For Lots More Fraud?

Last month Fusion Garage, a Singapore startup that has defrauded just about everyone and everything it has come in contact with, had a huge flameout when they were publicly fired by both their law firm and PR firm.

Since then, not a word. Except for a “gosh, everything’s just fine” “interview” by Engadget, which failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation. (Engadget has a history of loving everything Fusion Garage – my favorite quotes are from this 2009 interview where they said “Seriously, we were quite impressed [with the device]”). For the record, documents obtained via our lawsuit with the company showed that a total of 93 of those impressive little devices were ever sold.

Anyhow, Business Insider reports that the jig is up, and nothing Engadget or the Verge can do can save the company any longer from creditors. Did you buy a device and are still waiting for it to be shipped? Line up with $40 million in other creditors to get your refund.

CEO Chandresekar Rathakrishnan isn’t done yet, though. Here’s an interesting tweet from someone who worked for the company, noting that a new company is being formed: “I’m amazed about how badly a company can screw up, I can’t imagine that many people will be left once the new company is formed.”

In case it isn’t crystal clear, it looks like Fusion Garage is trying to get out of all that pesky debt, take as many employees as possible, and start a new company. This is what lawyers call fraud, which is exactly what I’ve been screaming for two years now.

It is the responsibility of the press to point out evil when they see it. Not just sweep it under the rug because one of their competitors (in this case, TechCrunch) were the ones being attacked. Some readers (thankfully very few) bought these devices based on these absurd reviews. There’s no excuse for that.

In the end, the press got played badly by Rathakrishnan. In litigation discovery it became clear that he, working with his PR firm, timed the fraud in anticipation of us screaming murder, hoping that other press would love the drama and immediately make him the hero. The only thing they got wrong was that they thought we wouldn’t sue. We did. And it’s over.