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Android Police reports this as a photo of Kreyos co-founder Steve Tan with a new Ferrari. The photo was allegedly pulled off of his personal Facebook account before he kicked up his privacy settings and scrubbed clean all affiliations with Kreyos. (Facebook)

Crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter can be a great place to make impossible dreams come true. Some campaigns are total pipe-dreams, sure, but at least they often have a few working test models and a real plan. Others are simply empty promises and total trash.

The latest dubious campaign is the Kreyos smartwatch, which promised a waterproof, voice-activated wearable device. As revealed by Android Police late last night, the project founders never delivered on their promise, refused refunds, and have made off with the cash.

The campaign set out to raise $100,000, and managed to pull in a total of $1.5 million. For most projects, this would mean that the founders would be able to overdeliver, with even more features then originally intended. But out of all of the stretch goals, like sleep tracking functions, precisely zero of them have come through.

View photos The Kreyos smartwatch might look cool, but that's just the problem: on a crowdfunding site, all you need is the right pitch. (Photo via Kreyos) More

The Kreyos smartwatch might look cool, but that’s just the problem: On a crowdfunding site, all you need is the right pitch. (Kreyos)





The comments section on the original campaign is full of furious backers who have either never received their watches or received junk items that arrived months late and barely resemble what they were promised. Reactions range from outrage to tacit acceptance that the money they contributed is wasted and gone forever. Some have threatened to never fund another Indiegogo project again.

When we sat down with Indiegogo co-founder Slava Rubin recently, we asked him about these kinds of dubious campaigns. He didn’t answer directly, but pointed out that Indiegogo is a much more open platform than Kickstarter, which actually rejects projects it doesn’t like. Naturally, that kind of openness is going to lead to, well, issues like these.





View photos Another photo of Steve Tan with a pile of designer shopping bags. (Photo via Facebook) More