Valleywag
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pay by touch
Washed-up NFL players want money back from SF startup
Seven former NFL football players — including Drew Bledsoe — are suing UBS, a Swiss bank, for investing their money in collapsed electronic-payments firm Pay By Touch. They claim the bank neglected to mention that Pay By Touch's founder, alleged cocaine addict John Rogers, was once charged with a felony. We'd love to know how an investment bank's lawyers would have framed this disclaimer in legalese. More » -
real estate
Commercial real estate vacancies show no sign of dot-bomb 2.0
Recent reports from local real estate trackers put the amount of office space relinquished by local companies in the last quarter at the highest it has been since the third quarter of 2002 — 436,933 sq. ft, according to commercial broker CB Richard Ellis, or the equivalent of nearly all the space in the Transamerica pyramid. The East Bay and the South Bay also saw an uptick in vacancies. The bankruptcies of Sharper Image, Pay By Touch, and RedEnvelope helped push up San Francisco's vacancy rate, but South of Market remained an untouched bubble of business leases, thanks to expansion by Monster.com, Advent Software, and Splunk. (Photo by Thierry) -
deathwatch
Requiescat in pace, Pay By Touch
Biometrics payments firm Pay By Touch shuttered for good yesterday. The last remaining client retailers will unplug their Pay By Touch fingerprint payment machines Thursday morning, a tipster tells us. He goes on to say, "I hope that piece of shit John Rogers goes to jail." Wishful thinking: Past run-ins with the legal system don't seem to have taught him anything. -
deathwatch
John Rogers's Pay By Touch finally falls apart
Here's John Rogers. He's morally and financially bankrupt. He's a once-convicted felon with addiction problems and a taste for threatening strangers and lovers. And his dream is dead. More » -
bloggers
Pay By Touch threatens to sue over blog post
Biometrics payments firm Pay By Touch is selling assets in "a mad scramble to recover any money whatsoever that our convicted Google stardom dreaming leader John Rogers pissed away," a tipster tells us. One of those assets was Pay By Touch subsidiary ATM Direct, a business Alex Muse and other Texas investors were hoping to acquire. But that didn't happen. To explain why, Muse wrote a post to his Texas Startup Blog. It's critical of Pay By Touch. Critical enough that Pay By Touch chief Thomas Lumsden threatened Muse with a lawsuit if he didn't remove it. Below, we've reposted the whole thing. More » -
pay by touch
Who stands to lose if Pay By Touch shuts down
These court documents show who stands to lose the most if Pay By Touch shuts down, besides its already ill-fated hundreds of employees. We like to think of corporations scheming to screw over the little guy. But Pay By Touch's bankruptcy filing shows us this: They spend just as much time trying to screw over the big guys. Big guys like Verizon ($135,000) and Oracle ($111,000). More » -
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bankruptcy
Creditors attempt to block Pay By Touch shutdown
A tipster tells us top management at Pay By Touch, the biometrics payments firm run into the ground by felon John Rogers and now struggling in bankruptcy, has auctioned off its "core assets" in an attempt to pay off creditors. That may not be the case: On Friday, a party of creditors filed a restraining order with a court in Los Angeles to prevent management from "shutting down the operations of Pay By Touch Payment Solutions" — its main business. A shutdown, presumably, would only come after a failed attempt to sell the operation. How touching that someone still wants Pay By Touch to stay in business. -
pay by touch
Pay By Touch tries free beer
Pay By Touch laid off 250 employees last fall and now it needs a $150 million investment to survive. So what's the company to do? More » -
rumormonger
Scandalous ex-CEO's mom to leave Pay By Touch
Remember John Rogers, the former CEO of Pay By Touch? He's morally and financially bankrupt. He's a once-convicted felon with addiction problems and a taste for threatening strangers and lovers alike. Rogers is, in other words, the type of guy only a mother could love. But now, even she's had it. Though Rogers remains on Pay By Touch's board, his mother, Judy Nelson, is out as Pay By Touch HR head, marking the end of a controversial tenure. More » -
deathwatch
Pay By Touch wants to raise $150 million next year
In a shareholders' conference call yesterday, Pay By Touch CFO Robert Sigler told investors the company plans to raise $150 million in 2008. This after Pay By Touch management has already burned through over $300 million since its founding and cost some 250 jobs just this fall. Tell you what, I hope Sigler and returning COO Eula Adams find their investors. Beause whoever they are, maybe I can find something to sell them, too. (Photo of the Brooklyn Bridge by absolutwade)
pay by touch
San Francisco, 7:17 PM
Thu Dec 4
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