How a scammer ran a decade-long crowdfunding operation that raised ~$6M on Indiegogo and from other investors to build an ambitious phone/tablet/laptop device
The crowdfunded phone of the future was a multimillion-dollar scam — In 2014, Jeffrey Tschiltsch opened an email from Indiegogo and saw the future of computing. Tweets: @verge , @ron_miller , @thedextriarchy , @tayvano_ , and @chetfaliszek Tweets: @verge : The Dragonfly Futurefön promised to combine the smartphone, tablet and laptop into an entirely new form factor and raised more than $700,000 on Indiegogo, along with another $5 million allegedly collected from investors for an earlier, similar product https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Ron Miller / @ron_miller : I think a better word would be fictional rather than ambitious. https://twitter.com/... Adi Robertson / @thedextriarchy : In 2014 a guy raised $700,000 to build a bizarre phone/tablet/laptop called the Futurefön. Then he stiffed backers, faked updates, earned an internet hate fandom, and got convicted of fraud. https://www.theverge.com/... Taylor Monahan / @tayvano_ : I wish someone would do some deep research/analysis comparing the evolution of Kickstarter & ICOs. I said this back in 2017, but it would be even more interesting to look at it today + aftermath Came to mind again after seeing https://www.theverge.com/... & https://cointelegraph.com/... Chet Faliszek / @chetfaliszek : Great story covering how @Indiegogo and @kickstarter have just become the home to high tech scams. There is no checks on claims and fake science used to promote these scams. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Crowdfunding fraud has a documented arc on these pages: when Kickstarter's drone project Zano collapsed, a journalist hired by the platform concluded its makers were overconfident but not fraudsters — the charitable reading platforms preferred. The Futurefön story is the counterexample that reading can't absorb: Jeffrey Tschiltsch raised roughly $700K on Indiegogo plus about $5M from private investors for a phone/tablet/laptop hybrid, stiffed backers, faked updates, and was ultimately convicted of fraud.
What makes the case worth revisiting is how little the playbook has changed since: the same decade produced startups fabricating traction at higher funding tiers, from IRL's bot-inflated user counts to Builder.ai's round-tripped sales with VerSe. The Futurefön shows the mechanics — a compelling form-factor promise plus credulous money — were never unique to crowdfunding.
First-order effects
- Futurefön backers and angel investors are out roughly $6M with no product, and Tschiltsch's conviction converts their loss into a legal precedent for prosecuting crowdfunded hardware promises as fraud rather than failed innovation.
- Indiegogo takes direct reputational damage: commentators in the coverage frame the platform as having enabled a decade-long scam that ran on its updates page.
Second-order effects
- Kickstarter and Indiegogo face pressure to distinguish honest failure from deception — the standard set by Kickstarter hiring an independent journalist to investigate Zano becomes the minimum credible response, not a generous one.
- Private investors who supplied the ~$5M outside Indiegogo demonstrate that platform vetting alone doesn't screen risk, pushing hardware angels toward the same diligence burden VCs now apply after cases like Builder.ai's fabricated revenue.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, fabricated-traction liability migrates up the funding stack: what began as small-dollar crowdfunding losses reappears at institutional scale in cases like IRL's bot users and Builder.ai's round-tripping, making fraud verification a standing cost of every funding layer rather than a crowdfunding-specific problem.
- Platforms' legal exposure grows with each conviction — once one operator is prosecuted, 'we're just a marketplace' becomes a harder position for Indiegogo and successors to defend against defrauded backers.
The trend: Funding fraud is converging across tiers — the tactics proven on crowdfunding platforms now recur in venture-backed startups, forcing both platforms and institutional investors to treat traction claims as something to verify, not narrate.