Debunked: Triton Artificial Gills (Indigogo Campaign)

We met with several attorneys today who have much experience in class actions and major tort claims. Assuming the Triton Gang of Three absconds with the funds a class action would almost certainly not be practical nor legally certified for a number of reasons. Additionally, it would be unlikely that injunctive relief would be granted to stop Indiegogo from disbursing the funds on May 1st. A claim against Indiegogo would hinge upon proof that their conduct constituted some degree of "active" participation in the misrepresentation/fraud. Toward that end we are soliciting people to send sincere complaints to support@indiegogo.com and/or by surface mail to:
Indiegogo, Inc.
965 Mission Street
San Francisco, California 94103
legal@indiegogo.com
Attention: Legal Department

Several of you have already sent us confirmation of making such complaints along with a copy of the form letter received back from Indiegogo. (If you wish to help our e-mail is stoptriton@outlook.com.)

The best outcome, obviously, would be for Indiegogo to suspend the campaign and refund the money before it is disbursed on May 1st. If the campaign is permitted to continue and funds are released we intend to file a formal action for misrepresentation/fraud against Indiegogo in the Superior Court for San Francisco County. To do so we will need to have as plaintiffs people who have actually contributed to the campaign. If you or anybody you know learns of any contributors please try to have them contact us at stoptriton@outlook.com. They can continue to believe in Triton (and UFOs, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny) but will be able to hedge their bets and get their money back and a share of any punitive damages awarded if we are successful.

We are deadly serious about pursuing this. By our analysis Triton has not only committed several acts of misrepresentation and fraud that have been relied upon by people to their detriment, but they also have breached their own obligations under the Indiegogo TERMS OF USE. If Indiegogo turns a blind eye to their conduct we do believe a jury will punish them by finding active participation in a fraudulent endeavor.
 
Now this is weird. Unless I am mistaken, the images and names of the Triton three have been removed from the web site at http://www.tritongills.com/#triton .

Can anyone verify that this is the case?

I just looked at the Whois info for that site. It is registered in the name of Jaebyun Yeon, but the address info is not genuine:

upload_2016-4-14_10-34-21.png

Kangnam-gu simply refers to a district of Seoul (as immortalised in "Gangnam Style" :) ), but the postal code, 427-736, is not related to that area, or even to Seoul at all. Postal codes starting 42 are for the city of Daegu. POstal codes in Kangnam/Gangnam start with 06.

The phone number appears to fit the right format for South Korean mobile numbers.
 
Check out the intriguing dialogue taking place on the campaign page now:

Barry Brown4 hours ago
Indiegogo TERMS OF USE: Campaign Owners will respond promptly and truthfully to all questions posed to them by Indiegogo or any Contributor

1) You said, "We are closing new deals with dive shops, distributors everyday,” Give names of a few of these dive shops and distributors.

2) Please identify the country or countries where you’ve filed applications for patents.

If you do NOT answer or if you DELETE this comment I will file a formal notice of your breach with the Indiegogo Legal Department


Saeed KhademiCampaigner3 hours ago
Good day Barry, thank you for the advice we will definitely talk about it on our Monday meeting, as for the updates we will release them like we have planned not on your request, running a company doesn't work like that, we have a timeline for everything, Try go to another tech company and tell them that you demand that they should give you there information about their patents that they have applied for and see what they will tell you, lets see if they even reply you, Have a great day Barry


Barry Brown2 hours ago
I asked you no information other than the country or countries you filed in. Your failure to answer is a clear violation of the Indiegogo TERMS OF USE.

I asked you simply to identify a few of the numerous dive shops or distributors you are supposedly closing deals with “every day.” Your inability to identify a single one is very telling and, again, is a breach of the Indiegogo TERMS OF USE.

I suggest you re-read the agreement you accepted when you asked Indiegogo to run this campaign.

Barry Brown2 hours ago
Another requirement of your TERMS OF USE:

Campaign Owners may not represent products created by others as your own creation, or act as a reseller of other’s products

Yesterday you admitted you didn’t invent "the membrane, micro compressor or the lithium-ion battery.” Assuming these actually exist, please identify the sources of these components.
.
You are young men who have no engineering or manufacturing experience but claim distributing a product to 80% of the world commencing in 8 months


Saeed KhademiCampaigner2 hours ago
Barry if you don't believe in us then I can refund you, but don't comment and pretend that you know what we have done for the last 3 years, I have been kind enough to answer all your questions as well as possible, but don't come and threaten me and my team to do what you demand, we know exactly what IGG's rules are we will release the information about Triton like we have planned it not like you want it,

Barry Brown2 hours ago
I’m not threatening you. I’m exercising my rights as a contributor. I’m entitled to ask these questions and I’m also entitled, according to the TERMS OF USE, to a “prompt and truthful” answer from you. If you are “closing agreements” with dive shops every day why can’t you identify even one? I don’t want a refund. I want an answer — a truthful one.



Saeed KhademiCampaigner2 hours ago
Barry let me tell you one thing, since we started to go public with Triton we have received hundreds of emails everyday from people around the world asking us everything you can imaging about Triton, if we were going to answering everyones request then we wouldn't be here today, we have a timeline for everything and our backers respects that, we can not sit here and answer everyones request specially when they demands it's from us, if you want to be a backer then great, then have some patience

Barry Brown1 hour ago
You seem to confuse receiving "hundreds of emails from people around the world" with your obligations under the Indiegogo TERMS OF USE. We have given you $367,867 as of this moment and YOU ARE REQUIRED to answer OUR questions "promptly and truthfully." It would take one second for you to identify one dive shop -- yet, you cannot. It would take you one second to write the name of a country where a patent application has been filed -- yet, you cannot. If you want the money 5/1 you need to answer
Content from External Source
 
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Your page not visible on Indiegogo as of now. Shut down? Any communication?
Yes, I just found it was shut down. I received this email from Indiegogo:
Your Account is Currently Frozen

Hello,

Unfortunately, due to unusual activity, we have frozen your Indiegogo account. No contributions or campaign disbursements can be processed for your account at this time.

There are a variety of reasons that this might have happened, and it’s possible that our team just needs a little more information to verify your identity.

Please respond to this email within 48 hours and we can help resolve the issue. Thank you for your cooperation, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
The Indiegogo Team
Content from External Source
 
Yes, I just found it was shut down. I received this email from Indiegogo:
Your Account is Currently Frozen

Hello,

Unfortunately, due to unusual activity, we have frozen your Indiegogo account. No contributions or campaign disbursements can be processed for your account at this time.

There are a variety of reasons that this might have happened, and it’s possible that our team just needs a little more information to verify your identity.

Please respond to this email within 48 hours and we can help resolve the issue. Thank you for your cooperation, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
The Indiegogo Team
Content from External Source
Have you responded yet? If not, I would like to offer a few suggestions.
 
Yes, I just found it was shut down. (...)

Well unfortunately they do have reason to do so. You did "steal" assets from the Triton campaign, like the images of their 3d printed fake device and their fake videos (and those 3d printed empty shells are literarily all they have, so they're worth like $350,000!). They shouldn't take you down for using the name, since Triton is not a registered trademark (to my knowledge) and I can't imagine it becoming one - since "Triton" is the name of a mythological goddess and a moon of Neptune. They could get a TM limited to the particular application, but again, to my knowledge they did not do so thus far, and Indiegogo should not be the jude of that anyway.

They could kick you out for "not being transparent" or other things they have in their terms of use, but that would just be hilarious.
 
I'll wait what they answer, and if they argument with the photo and the video, I'll put up another campaign without them.
 
There is now a second Triton IGG campaign, also by Saeed Khademi:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/triton--8#/
Fascinating. Now he says he is from Sydney Australia!

His linked Facebook Page says he worked at Warner Music, Sweden: https://www.facebook.com/saeed.khademi.18

It has posts that go back to 2011. Interesting......

Also, if you click on the "details" button you find this:

Saeed Khademi
C.E.O
Contact See Full Profile
0" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin-bottom: 40px; position: relative; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: 'Benton Sans', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
About Saeed
I am an entrepreneur that is always on the look out for the best products, ideas, and technology like any one else I didn't start with much and worked my way up and currently me and my team are working on a project called triton and I think it is ready to go on indiegogo we have had some technical problems with this product but after working with my team on this project we think it is ready for mass production
Verifications
Identity Verified
Email Verified


***

 
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I love how all these fake Triton campaigns just link to the same youtube video for the campaign. They don't even bother to re-upload it. All that Indiegogo would have to do to stop there copycats is check if a newly submitted campaign links to the same video as any existing campaign. Two lines of code.

But alas, that would also prevent completely legitimate Indiegogo "campaign owners" from re-uploading their campaigns every month to milk some more cash. Like this fellow here: https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/11979235/campaigns
 
The cloned campaign was created using the same account as the original one, so it does not look like a fake one, unless someone has hijacked Khademi's account. I suspected already at the other clone from Australia that it was made by Khademi too, and still consider it a possibility.
 
OK, nice, I failed to verify that. Finally perhaps it is another way how to shut down all of them. Just posting as much clones as possible, until nobody knows which one is the original scam.
 
Hi all! I've been following the Triton project BS for a while, but I'm a first time poster here. I just wanted to share that a couple of days ago I sent a complaint to IGG as many did flagging the campaign as scam. I received the same boilerplate response. Interestingly, today I received the same response again (without me soliciting it). Has it happened to anyone else? Is it a sign that they are doing something, or is it just a glitch of the system? I wonder...
 
Hi all! I've been following the Triton project BS for a while, but I'm a first time poster here. I just wanted to share that a couple of days ago I sent a complaint to IGG as many did flagging the campaign as scam. I received the same boilerplate response. Interestingly, today I received the same response again (without me soliciting it). Has it happened to anyone else? Is it a sign that they are doing something, or is it just a glitch of the system? I wonder...
Yes, I've got the same answer today again too. At first, I thought it was concerning my anti-Triton campaign that they suspended, but there was in fact another email announcing me that.
 
BTW, Francesco, kudos for your comment on the IGG page of Triton's campaign! (quoted above) :D
Perhaps you could also ask them whether it is possible to come to the place of their choice, to test their prototype, or at least to watch it in use by themselves underwater, if they fear letting anyone touching it. I already asked another contributor, but I suspect he'll be banned soon, so he may not have the opportunity to do so.

On another note, is there anyone who'd like to re-post the now-suspended anti-Triton campaign? My account was banned completely, and I am too lazy to create another identity. I can provide the original text and also the logo that I now modified, so that nobody can complain about any copyright breech.

triton2-s.jpg
 
Loving the new image! I hate to be picky, but you should also change the font of the "TRITON" name, since that can be interpreted as a logotype, and those are somewhat protected by law, even when not registered. Can I suggest comic sans? The banana is beautiful. 10/10.

Triton.jpg
 
Really like the way this breaks down:


Saeed KhademiCampaigner3 hours ago
Good day Barry, thank you for the advice we will definitely talk about it on our Monday meeting, as for the updates we will release them like we have planned not on your request, running a company doesn't work like that, we have a timeline for everything, Try go to another tech company and tell them that you demand that they should give you there information about their patents that they have applied for and see what they will tell you, lets see if they even reply you, Have a great day Barry
____________________
Content from External Source
He's painted himself into a corner, and knows it. Since Triton is on IGG they clearly had to agree to the Terms, which they are now balking at in an effort to run out the clock. There's no other reason for the repeated refrain of "we will release them like we have planned" other than a stalling tactic.

Looks to me like he's desperately trying to hold the scam together, judging from that response.

Glad to see others are also asking for the names of the dive shops they are supposed to have agreements with. This is not confidential business information--in fact, it is to their and the dive shop's advantage to have this info out there as fast as the ink dries on such agreements since the public would start to flock to those shops to reserve their Triton gear, showing demand level.

A suggestion: ask them how a Swedish entrepreneur and (at the time in 2014) a South Korean design student (both in different parts of the world) could get together on this product. If they answer, it will be interesting.
 
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If anyone really wants to screw with them, since they are against the wall here offer them an unexpected lifeline--a seeming way out of part of the mess.

Posing as a new mark, post the following:

Don't let naysayers get you down. Even I know that you can get good oxygen storage using a Na/K alloy for dewar inner core. Rock on!

If they take the bait and say that's how they do it, all of you with chemical knowledge can then ask them to explain how it is that their Na/K alloy remains stable when wet.
 
I am afraid those are not any hard questions to answer. There may be millions of ways to meet a Korean student and cooperate with him (in plus they apparently indeed do it), and as for the Dewars, they can simply tell their construction is a subject of their industrial secret, and will not be revealed before patents are accepted. The simplest way to get them into the corner, is requesting a personal test, a public demonstration, or a test by an independent 3rd party.

If anyone can still post comments on their IGG campaign, you could also now post the link to the anti-Triton campaign at http://igg.me/at/triton-scam and ask them if they could address the arguments there.
 
This might be nothing, but running a security check on tritongills.com gives:
https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.tritongills.com/


The description of the mwjsanon7 "malware" is rather generic, and it might just be a false positive caused by code obfuscation in the Wordpress theme they are using.
Reading the detail page, sounds like the detection isn't based on a known malware signature but a script before the <html> tag. Which is nonstandard and weird (and used to break a lot of browsers, but this site seems to be fine on everything I've got available), but not automatically malware, it could just be shoddy work.
 
Reading the detail page, sounds like the detection isn't based on a known malware signature but a script before the <html> tag. Which is nonstandard and weird (and used to break a lot of browsers, but this site seems to be fine on everything I've got available), but not automatically malware, it could just be shoddy work.

Except there are no scripts before the <html> tag. But I'm inclined to think it's a false positive.
 
BTW, Francesco, kudos for your comment on the IGG page of Triton's campaign! (quoted above) :D
Perhaps you could also ask them whether it is possible to come to the place of their choice, to test their prototype, or at least to watch it in use by themselves underwater, if they fear letting anyone touching it. I already asked another contributor, but I suspect he'll be banned soon, so he may not have the opportunity to do so.

Eheh thanks. Actually it seems to me that with every reply they give they push themselves deeper in the mud. Unfortunately, not everybody sees that.

I thought about writing something like that, actually I could quite easily hop on a plane and go to Sweden, but I already know how they would respond (if they decide to respond): "Thank you for you offer of trying Triton. Unfortunately we are swamped until the end of the IGG campaign. You are welcome to come afterwards." They don't need any extra credibility, they already have 370k virtually in their pockets, why would they fall for it? Also, I wouldn't assume that they don't follow this thread and so every trick we announce here should be treated as "burnt."

As a sidenote, congrats for the new Tricon campaign, it looks awesome.
 
Yes, that's true, and yes, I know what they'd reply too. That's also not too important. Important is that other contributors may see it, and perhaps get a bit more doubts, seeing them evading every such request.

And yes, I am almost sure they watch the thread here. They for sure come to visit the Tricon campaign (I see it in the stats), and since Metabunk is mentioned there as the origin of the critics, they for sure came here to look too.
 
Yes, that's true, and yes, I know what they'd reply too. That's also not too important. Important is that other contributors may see it, and perhaps get a bit more doubts, seeing them evading every such request.

Ok here goes nothing :) I commented on IGG, let's see if they reply what we think they will reply.
 
Ok here goes nothing :) I commented on IGG, let's see if they reply what we think they will reply.

As you said, I wouldn't count on them taking your offer. But if they do, feel free to crash on my couch, I live 4 metro stops from them :p I offered them to arrange a meeting with somebody from the staff of the Naval Architecture department of the Royal Institute of Technology here in Stockholm, but the ignored my message completely. It was a direct email since I'm not a contributor. I am tempted to give then $1 though to join in on the comment pestering :)
 
As you said, I wouldn't count on them taking your offer. But if they do, feel free to crash on my couch, I live 4 metro stops from them :p I offered them to arrange a meeting with somebody from the staff of the Naval Architecture department of the Royal Institute of Technology here in Stockholm, but the ignored my message completely. It was a direct email since I'm not a contributor. I am tempted to give then $1 though to join in on the comment pestering :)
You can just give $1 to comment? I bought the Retail Special perk for the honor ;)

Thanks for the offer, I'm also pretty sure that they'll refuse, but if they don't we'll arrange!
 
I've just added another paragraph to the anti-Triton campaign, where I permitted myself to paraphrase the Nobel-Prize-rant of Francesco, without crediting him. Hope I'll be forgiven:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/triton-world-s-last-artificial-gills-scam

Who Is Triton
  • Jeabyun Yeon, designer from South Korea
  • Saeed Khademi, former account, marketing and sale manager
  • John Khademi, another marketing expert
We have a designer, a salesman, and a marketing expert who claim they invented a device worth of four Nobel Prizes (impossible molecular filter extracting dissolved oxygen from water; micro compressor with the power of two trucks; mini battery powering it for 45 minutes; and cheap Dewar flasks surpassing the evaporation rate of thousand-dollars laboratory cryogenic containers by three orders of magnitude), yet they have no engineer, no scientist, no technician, and no expert in cryogenics, chemistry, nanotechnology, or hyperbaric medicine. Amazing results for three young lads with no degree in science, and just some experience with marketing and design!
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Might be worth including the specifics of Yeon's original claim regarding the battery:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/13434535/TRITON
The micro battery is a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly charge 1,000 times faster.
Content from External Source
Wow, I hadn't seen that before. That seems to be pretty convincing evidence that Yeon is actively involved in the scam himself. It also really underlines the extent to which they completely changed their story:

1. No mention at any point of the liquid oxygen canisters requirement, but lots of talk of the 'gills' and how they are supposed to work

2. Detailed, labelled schematic renders, not including (2x) oxygen canisters and not showing any space for them to be included.

3. Nonsensical descriptions - (Re. Triton) "does not require the skill of breathing in and out while biting mouth piece like conventional respirator." ...and then it shows pictures of a device with a mouthpiece from which you breathe in and out?

4. Nonsensical descriptions part II: (Re. existing diving gear): "In addition, there are people that cannot enjoy them from being afraid to breathe under water" ...and then shows a device for breathing under water?

It's as though he is claiming that in addition to breaking a range of laws of physics, sticking a Triton in your gob causes immediate dramatic changes to human physiology and psychology.

...not that any extra evidence is needed that all this is a scam, but it's extra illustration of exactly how clumsy it all is.
 
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