Warning about Bridge Investment (May 2014)

A bridge 'loan' to nowhere......

 

bump since you linked to this thread from another one that is waaaay off topic over there... no on this topic... well, uh, is there any updated list of the Mindark investors out there anywhere, might be interesting to do some detective work on who exactly those investors are...

From way back we know about Golden Showers https://entropiascams.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/interesting-reading/ (wonder if that info is still accurate, given who was recently 'elected' and all)

 

2006 listing is below. Not sure if more up-to-date listings are out there... not that it really matters much... but anyways...
kteiinvest FK AB 0,01
Bankaktiebolaget Avanza 0,02
Marco Behrmann, Landvetter 0,36
Bo Bergman, Kalmar 0,01
Urban Bothén, Västra Frölunda 1,70
Patrik Broddesson, Australien 0,27
Carnegie Investment Bank AB 27,04
Sevo Daniel, Göteborg 0,17
E-trade Sverige AB 0,18
Tom Edlund, Göteborg 0,17
Lena Edman, Göteborg 0,00
Birgitta Ekasala, USA 0,01
Annika Eriksson, Göteborg 0,23
Expression AB 0,57
Lars Falk, Göteborg 0,17
Fischer Partners Fondkommission AB 0,42
Hanna Friberg, Göteborg 0,21
Andreas Funksjö, Göteborg 0,86
Rolf Funksjö, Göteborg 0,44
Golden Shadow Pictures, USA 0,36
Martin Gunnarsson, Sätila 0,01
Anders Gutenbrant, Stockholm 0,87
Lars Hammarström, Göteborg 1,74
Eva-Liz Harju, Stockholm 0,01
Christian Holmqvist, Lindome 0,17
Anders Johansson, Göteborg 0,00
David Johansson, Bromma 0,17
Jimmy Johansson, Västra Frölunda 0,31
Kaupthing Bank Sverige AB 0,01
Kronboken AB 1,94
Rickard Lagerbäck, Mölndal 0,17
Anders Larsson, Skövde 0,00
Jonny Lindh, Torslanda 0,00
Charlie Lindholm 0,01
Magnus Martinsson, Göteborg 0,17
Daniel Molin, Göteborg 0,09
Nordea Bank AB 4,42
Nordnet Bank AB 0,04
Kristina Olsson, Göteborg 0,08
Peter Olsson, Västra Frölunda 0,02
Stefan Olsson, Mollösund 0,01
SEB Securities Services Corporate Actions 12,32
Stefan Serrander, Stockholm 0,03
Niklas Severinsson, Göteborg 0,09
Skandiabanken AB 3,73
Patric Sundström Nordenmann, Töllsjö 0,24
Svenska Handelsbanken AB 0,63
Alf Svensson, Göteborg 0,18
Carl-Reinhold Uggla, Göteborg 0,01
Jan Welter Timkrans, Göteborg 39,04
Adrian Welter, Mölnlycke 0,01
Kim Welter, Västra frölunda 0,01
Anthony Wong, Vallda 0,01
Bernt Wåhlin, Göteborg 0,26
Samt: ”Ej offentliga ägare 6 st” 0,02

Wonder if Marco still has those shares even though Mindark fired him/See, whatever...

 

I'd love to find out what happened to Marco and SEE. I remember Marco said he was leaving to do another game or a tabletop game?

 

https://www.linkedin.com/title/ceo-at-mindark-pe-ab

 

As I happen to speak Latvian, I tried to look up Ilgvars Lapsa (that's a Latvian name; common last name ('Fox'), uncommon name).

First of all, on Xing (and elsewhere) he's listed not as an employee but as an 'independent associate' which is PC-speak for 'participant of a pyramid scheme'.
His website in (bad) English reveals him as an experienced male bovine excrement distributor (colloquially known as 'bullshitter').
Here's him talking to colleagues in Tunisia - unfortunately, there seems to be a language barrier between their varieties of English.
Here's his Twitter, pushing various MLM stuff.
More pushing MLM.

No significant mentions in Latvian.

Seems to be a random dummy, not even involved.

 

On a related note, I'm not sure all those Bridges are incarnations of the same Bridge, and that Bridge Group LTD is even related to Bridge Investment Network.

This discussion on a Swedish forum however explicitly mentions 'Bridge Investment Network'. I can sort of read newspaper Swedish but forum Swedish is a bit too hard for me :) so I'll let someone else sift through that.

 

Wait a minute...for all the accusations of EU being a pyramid scheme, the companies involved in its ownership are actual MLM firms outside of the digital world?!?!

Makes you wonder what would happen to EU if everyone withdrew at the same time. Do they have the capital on hand to deal with that?

 

3rd

Marco Behrmann
Brand Manager
Paradox Interactive
October 2013 – Present (2 years 7 months)Stockholm, Sweden
Brand Manager for Pillars of Eternity (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pillars-of-eternity), among other, yet to be revealed, titles.

Overall, my duties include:
- Plans and manages brands within Paradox Interactive including responsibility for the P/L of those brands.
- Responsible for the launch and post-release activities of those brands.
- Manages brand teams comprised of representatives from Sales, Marketing and Production disciplines.
- Establishes, oversees and coordinates all production, marketing and sales activities to ensure the fulfillment of the brand plan.
- Applies game metrics insights to optimize campaign tactics and drive revenue.
- Assists in the development of long term strategic roadmap and consumer marketing plans
- Maintain, develop and coordinate P/L models, sales, marketing, launch and post release plans and other steering documents with the brand team.

 

Gotta agree. Marco is the reason a lot of us started playing. Still read this old thread from time to time:
http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...3-Marco-said&p=2597728&viewfull=1#post2597728

The entropiatrash part that isn't public any more is below:
==============
Below is a list of various articles, Interviews, Q&A Sessions, Dev Notes, and a number of different Developer Comments as well as community commentary on various things related to Entropia Universe over the years. The goal here is primarily to preserve a bit of Entropia Universe’s history as much of that is being torn down over time as older websites disappear, get taken over by new management and urls change, etc. I will try to add internet archive links to each article as articles are added (when possible) to this list so that copies of the articles are available in the Internet Archives ‘way back machine’ in case the original articles get moved, deleted, etc.

8/18/2014 update on banks by Mcormick on Entropiaplanets Forum – entertaining yet somewhat sad history lessons
Internet Archive Link

July 27, 2012 thread on PlanetCalypsoForum entitled !!SCAM!!: http://www.entropiauniverse.net84.net/
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Thread discusses a scam in Entropia Universe in which a scammer was naming themselves with avatar names similar to “Entropiia Supoort Universe” or “Entropiia Supoort Universe” and sending out links in chats to phishing websites

Entropia Universe Interviews: MindArk Interview By Arno Laurman on January 30, 2012 at http://www.mmorpg.com/
Internet Archive Link

June 5, 2011 Apology to the Community by Mr Nukem Quayjay for allowing a list posted on The Patriot’s website to be publicly viewable.
Internet Archive Link
Notes: The Black and Red List were originally created by the NBK group of societies and one of the leaders of the NBK gave the lists to Nukem to use, who then put it on his own society’s website. I believe that one of the lists was a list of avatars that NBK leadership had created as a ‘Kill on Sight’ list and that the other list was a list of avatars to not trade with for various reasons such as accusations of scamming, hurting the feelings of NBK leaders in various ways, etc. I believe that both lists and any list created based off of those lists were used to harass, control, and intimidate people in Entropia Universe in multiple ways, which might be seen as a violation of either the terms of use or eula. I believe that the ‘kill on sight’ lists were not just used to create weapon targets on PVP zones, but were also used in non-PVP zones to create targets for mob-training. It is unknown if these or any similar lists exist today since most such lists are kept on password protected society forums, etc. However, it is likely that such lists that are used to harass and abuse members of the community do still exist today in various forms. It is sad that suchcyberbullying exists. We, as a community should do something to stop this type of ongoing problem. Mindark as the developer of Entropia Universe, should also do something to stop this cyberbullying that is happening on their servers, especially since it is part of Mindark’s mission to ensure that “Both Planet Partners and the participants on the planets should always feel safe in their endeavors in Entropia Universe.”

04/15/2011 thread Nostalgia thread: Once upon a time in Entropia…… explores what Entropia used to be like…
Internet Archive Link

December 16, 2010 Thread on PlanetCalypsoforum entitled Why is this allowed? which is a long winded thread that ended up being over 50 pages discussing Neverdie Studio’s use of what appeared to be ‘insider information’
Internet Archive Link

September 25, 2010 Apology to the Community by Mark Rufen Power for being Calypto’s Hired Hitman in game
Internet Archive Link

June 16, 2010 Comment by Marco on Planetcalypsoforum
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Infamous Quote from Marco Behrmann, “Understandably there are some questions raised due to the annual report. Unfortunately I cannot comment on the FPC part – yet. What I can say is that the future for FPC and Planet Calypso is looking brighter than ever.” This was an extremely ironic quote since FPC was history not long after this quote was made.

June 2010 Comment by Marco on PlanetCalypsoForum about no loot frequency
Internet Archive Link
Notes: The comment seems to indicate that Mindark has the ambition to reduce no loots even more in the future.

April 25, 2010 thread on Planetcalypsoforum by Mandu entitled Should NEVERDIE be banned?
Internet Archive Link

December 2009 posting by Marco on Planetcalypsoforum
Internet Archive Link
Notes: This Posting contains one of the famous quotes from Marco Behrmann

And it still stands – all avatars’ are equal.

November 14, 2009 Posting on PlanetCalypsoForum by Justin from Mindark
Internet Archive Link
Notes: This posting was a promise from Justin at Mindark that Mindark was aware of issues with booths that happened when version update 10 occurred and that Mindark was working on relocating them to pre version 9.4 positions. This posting also stated “There will be an upgrade to the booths in the near future.” The relocation did not work well since most buildings in game were turned around from where they were prior to version 10, and some were put in to awful positions where some estates were not even able to be viewed since the ground level was above the estates in the basements of some apartment buildings. The promised “upgrade” never happened… The “upgrade” wasn’t really an upgrade… it was an offer to “buy” an upgrade in item count on estates, and those that did buy in to that upgrade, which cost something like 2k ped did not see their estates upgraded for many months, if at all. If they would have increased item slot numbers freely, it would have been far more of an upgrade that seems to have been promised in Justin’s post.

January 30, 2009 Posting by Marco on PlanetCalypsoForum
Internet Archive Link
Notes: This posting from Marco at Mindark indicates that First Planet Company (FPC) did not plan to open up a Planet Calypso Forum run by FPC as Mindark believed that the forum should be handled by the community itself. This is interesting because planetcalypsoforum.com was originally created as a copy of the database of the forum that originally existed at entropiaforum.com when FPC/Mindark did intend to buy the database and forum from the individual in the community that currently runs both Entropiaforum and Planetcalypsoforum. Apparently that sale deal never went through since that individual appears to still own the forums today in 2014.

http://www.gamesradar.com/planet-cyrene-2/ 2009 Article on Entropia with focus on Planet Cyrene at gamesradar.com
Internet Archive Link

2009 “A Minute with Marco” by Skam
Internet Archive Link
Note: Discussion Includes mention of Factories

2009 post by Marco at http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?174048-Major-tier-upgrade-process&p=2219565&viewfull=1#post2219565
Internet Archive Link
Note: Marco’s mention of an “Upgrade Replicator”

Post on PlanetCalypsoforum by Justin from Mindark
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Promise from Justin at Mindark that “There will be only 15 sets of POE armor rewarded in this event.”

2008 Q&A with Marco Behrmann
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Mentions Beer and Fishing being added to Entropia… Also, ironically mentions that Marco hates Grinding x amount of mobs for rewards type missions. At a later date after that Q&A that exact type of mission/quest system is implemented in game on a massive scale.

2007 Article About CRD – http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_...5&sid=13861345&con_type=1&d_str=20070601&fc=8
NOTES: the original article has been deleted from existence, and there is no archive of it in the internet archive’s way back machine. However, A copy of it exists on Axe Murderer’s Blog.
Internet Archive of Axe Murderer’s Blog Copy of the Article
Notes: This was an article about CRD – Cyber Recreation Development Corp., which was to be a Planet Partner in Entropia Universe. That partnership fell through and never actually happened. The article indicates that there were extremely large goals with the project, which probably were not really obtainable, which may be part of the reason the CRD planet never saw the light of day. Part of the article stated:

CRD chief executive David Liu predicted that the virtual worlds will generate approximately 10,000 jobs in the mainland.
“An important aspect for this project is also the positive effects on our environment that we foresee,” Liu said. “People will actually be able to work from home inside Entropia Universe, as many people do today, even from rural areas, thereby decreasing the amount of pollution generated by travel.”

2007 (updated 2009) Interview with Marco Behmann by Cody “Micajah” Bye on tentonhammer.com
Internet Archive Link
Notes: The article states:

So how many players are actually playing Entropia Universe? According to Marco, there are 625,000 registered accounts for EU at Mindark, which is not a number to take lightly. Couple that with an average payment of $23 per month for active players, and you have quite a large chunk of change.

December 14, 2006 Posting at New World Notes – Exploring Ideas with the Explorers of Worldsby Gwyneth Llewelyn
Internet Archive
Notes: Most of this article deals with Second Life, but one part of it says

Marco Behrmann, of Entropia Universe, is planning to set up a private island inside SL to use it as a vehicle of advertising of his own MMORPG. The boundaries are beginning to get thinner and thinner.

2005 Q&A with Marco Behrmann by Richard Cox on mmorpg.com
Internet Archive Link
Note: Famous Quote from Marco Behrmann, ” We are very reluctant to change the stats for any item in the virtual universe, as such measures would bring instability to the ingame market, which is just plain bad. We are a business and our main priority is to have pleased customers for the long haul. Anything else is just plain stupid.”

http://www.playmmo.com/forum/showthread.php?p=88717 – November 23, 2005 – Marco’s posting about PROJECT ENTROPIA VERSION UPDATE 7.8
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Dead Link now, but Internet Archive still exists. This version update implemented taming the first time.

http://www.playmmo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6099 – Very Early Interview with Mindark Representative.
Notes: Dead Link Now, and there is no internet archive of the above web page. However, at one point in time when the page existed part of it said:

6-a: Ventures into space will come in 2005. We hope to bring real time space ship combat with robot ships and other space living entities. Asteroid mining will also be a part of it. I envision a major star ship with a crew of 100 people all manning various functions of the ship, like engineering, guns, torpedos, strategic command, shields, power distribution, hull repairs, etc, allwoing for major epic battles in the sky.

These were big ideas for back then. Some of that vision has come to life now that space exists and ships with multiple crew members can pilot them, even if the crew does not contain 100 avatars simultaneously logged in on motherships yet.

http://www.playmmo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8005 – 2005 Z&A Session Q 38 – Auctions & Systems down
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Dead Link Now. However, Internet Archive Link works. This was a discussion about how that auction clock was tied to the real clock, even when the server was down, but that Mindark was talking about setting the auction timer to be linked to server uptime instead.

http://www.playmmo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8266 – 2005 Q&A Session: Q- 41 – Rare armor Sets and Missing parts
Internet Archive Link
Notes: Dead Link now. However, Internet Archive Link is active. This was a Forum Posting by Marco Behrmann that states, “Various items are more common at various times. All items can be found in PE, at any time,” in response to a question about rare items being able to be looted.

March 29, 2005 Gamespot article: MindArk threatens MS with suit over raid
Internet Archive Link
Notes:This article talks about the BSA Raid charges being dropped and that Mindark is still considering a countersuit against Microsoft and the BSA.

EntropiaPlanet’s Wiki Copy of June 26, 2002 Press Release from Mindark
Internet Archive Link
Notes: This was Mindark’s ‘official response’ about a raid on Mindark by the BSA Software Alliance that was done because the BSA believed that Mindark may have been using pirated software. A part of this press release states:

Benny Iggland, chairman of the supervisory board of MindArk AB says in a comment: “MindArk is prepared to sue Microsoft and the other companies for damages caused by their action. Proceedings from this process, which will certainly reach a substantial number of millions of United States Dollars, will be placed in the virtual universe of Project Entropia as a number of gigantic treasures that anyone entering the Universe of Project Entropia may find and grab.“

 

Can someone help me justify spending the time to take in all this information? After only a superficial glance, correct me if I got things wrong: Is there proof that companies red-flagged by supervisory bodies or watchdog organisations actually have stakes in MA, and if so how would this taint MA itself? How is Marco's role in the early history of PE/EU related to this? Then at the end I read something about sueing Microsoft... makes my head spin. I need to go out on some RL errands first.

 

You SEE history has a way of repeating itself... as far as the Marco stuff goes, it's way off topic a bit (not completely though), just an homage to the guy that is the reason most of us old timers are here.

 

That site has scam written all over it