Dr. Ryan Czerwinski found!

[AmigaHeretic]

Didn't know he was missing?

Someone at Amigaworld.net posted a link to a folder full of Merlancia related stuff.  Much of it rather new. Here's the folder:
http://www.designbyxs.com/printdesign.php


I was looking at some of the pictures and it looked like a photo with different Amiga logos I uploaded to amigaworld in 2006 had been ripped off!!!  Here you can the image I uploaded :
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=436&full=1

If you view the full size version of that picture I made in 2006 with the ones on the server that were modified in 2007. The images are the exact same size. Looks like they just used the shape and re-photoshopped them.

http://www.designbyxs.com/printdesign/AMI%20LOGO%20500%20pix%20enhanced.jpg
http://www.designbyxs.com/printdesign/amiga%20logo%20enhanced%204.jpg
...


I also found a business card relating to, AmigaUSA.com :_)
http://www.designbyxs.com/printdesign/amigacorp%20card.%20r2.jpg


So I did a google search on the name http://www.designbyxs.com where the images came from and guess what I found?

http://www.myspace.com/designbyxs

Male from Pheonix, AZ and he lists Commodore Amiga among his interests.




I also found this:
http://starpas.cc.state.az.us/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=wsbroker1/names-detail.p?name-id=%2011679553&type=CORPORATION

Shows that the corporation
DESIGN BY XS, INC. is owned by
RYAN CZERWINSH ( slight name change? :roflmao:    )
in Phoenix Arizona.
Of course is shows
File Number:  -1167955-3      AD-DISSOLVED NON-PAYMENT 10/22/2008
I guess he no longer owns it.


Just thought it was interesting.  Especially since it looks like my images were ripped off by this guy.

:laughing:

[AmigaHeretic]

And now has reappeared and is in to cigars, being ballpunched and peed on.

It's funny when you put it that way, but it's true.

When he put that he was into being pee'd on and "water sports", I had a good laugh.  I'd never heard that term before.  Wish that site was never found though.  Did we really need to find out he was circumcised?

I feel a little damaged emotionally now, like the first time I got rolled to goat.se

[AmigaHeretic]

From an old Amiga.org interview by Kess with Dave:

Can you shed some light on the relationship you have/had with Merlancia?

I had known Ryan Czerwinski, somewhat casually, through the Amiga community. He made my Summer 2000 house party, I guess I saw him a few other times, like the 2001 Gateway show (I was interested in AmigaDE for use in the Phoenix STB). A weirdo, sure, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in my business.

As I was coming off the Met@box disaster, and not thinking terribly clearly I suppose, Ryan came by my 2001 summer party (also my 40th birthday party) and offered me the CTO job at Merlancia. Far as I knew, Merlancia was a small company based in Arizona, doing a variety of hardware projects, and funded by Czerwinski, who was apparently independently wealthy. Early on, things seemed to support that. For example, I flew with Ryan to meet with Bill McEwan at Amiga, Inc.; Ryan claimed they had about $650,000 ear-marked for his set-top/small computer project. Not a king’s ransom, but a reasonable amount for the work at-hand. So no alarms immediately.

The alarms began soon enough, though. First thing, Ryan was trying to weasel out of the agreement we had (verbal/email, sure, but that’s precisely the same as a full written contract, for the purposes of employment). Secondly, his supposed secretary, Christina, was making executive level decisions about who got paid, etc. Then there was the growing list of former associates of Merlancia’s, all of whom seemed to be owed substantial money.

We brought Skal Loret and Fred Wright on that fall, and that’s where things really started breaking. No one was getting paid. Ryan was disappearing for days at a time. He claimed to be an engineer, yet was stumbling on the most basic of things, and clearly had no concept about how engineering was done, or the time frames involved in product development. I guess, in retrospect, he knew his house of cards was falling, and wanted to get _something_ before it crashed.

I should have got out then, but I stuck it on for a few more months, and the lies just got thicker. The sad thing was, Skal and I had outlined a very real product strategy, using OEMed boards, to deliver a product that Skal could actually sell. Basically, nearly everything Ryan and Christina did from November 2001 to February 2002 could be explained as little other than sabotage.

So I spent some time, dug deep, and discovered that, basically, it was all a sham. Merlancia, as I’m sure some of your readers know, was nothing more than a storefront, with a few Amiga things for sale, and a bunch of that junk that Christina sells on eBay. Christina turned out to be Christina Czerwinski, Ryan’s mother. Ryan turned out not to be rich, but perhaps supported by a trust fund by his father (never married), who is apparently well-to-do and living in Florida.

And as it turns out, Ryan himself was the biggest lie of all. He was not an engineer, or a college graduate, in fact... I have my doubts about High School. He wasn’t 40, as he claimed, or “maybe in his early 30's”, as I guessed, but in fact, 19 or so at the time. So boy, did I feel stupid, being fooled by a kid, even if, as Skal guesses, he’s from Gypsy blood. Thing is, you don’t expect this level of fraud. I mean, he got to make some enemies, destroy any possible reputation he would ever have in the computer business, miss a genuine opportunity to actually BE something like what he pretended to be, probably wind up being chased by the IRS at some point (did he every pay FICA and all that other withholding he took from the little salary any of us got?) and what did he get in return? The right to day “Dave Haynie – CTO” on his web page for a few months. Idiot!

http://landley.net/history/mirror/commodore/haynie.html

[AmigaHeretic]

video of him at amiwest - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpsYdwGjryI

Wow. First video I have ever seem of him.  I know he was a con-artist, but it looks like that video is from 2002 and has some really grounded ideas.

Should I be scared that what he says from 3:30 to 8:00 is dead on about the state of the Amiga scene, Amiga Inc at the time, and other ideas?

He has ideas such as:

Amiga needs an Office Suite.
Amiga Inc. is dillusional and will only work with companies making 50+ millions of dollars and are missing out on making money right now(time of the interview).
Amiga needs more hardware.  

He seems petty grounded and I think his arguments make a lot of sense and are still relevant today.


It's not hard to see now how even someone like Dave Haynie got scammed by this guy.

Thanks for that link.