A Chronological decade long tracking of Christopher David’s longest scheme.
Hello there!
You have very likely landed here while doing due diligence on the serial sociopathic scammer known as Christopher David/ Christopher Pille/ Christopher Rafael David.
Chris has a long history of scamming (Currently he is peddling OpenAgents — an AI chatbot that he claims to be better than OpenAI). His longest, and most tragic of which is Arcade City.
The following is a decade long tracking on all the lies, evidence, scams, and trappings Christopher perpetrated under Arcade City. These events are presented in chronological order.
For scams and crimes committed prior to Arcade City see here.
March 2016:
Hello everyone,
I’m writing this to warn the Ethereum community…again… about Arcade City. If you need some background info on Arcade City, check out this article.
Recently Arcade City released their app in the Apple and Google Stores. The App, does nothing other than scroll users through a series of texts claiming that ridesharing capabilities will be “unlocked” once users gather enough “Karma” in each one of their cities. Understandably, drivers are frustrated and angry that the app was released with a “game” forcing them to work for free before any of them can start making money.
Many believe that the app was released with no ridesharing capability in it at all, and that Christopher David is simply using the karma points as a stall tactic. Several people opened up the app via an APK decompiler and confirmed this suspicion:
The app has no GPS, mapping, location and/or any functionality that would allow it to have ridesharing “unlock” after a certain number of “Karma” is collected.
Christopher David claimed that he had ridesharing functionality programmed into the original app released in February of 2016. However, that app only allowed riders to set up pre-scheduled rides. Moreso, the app did not have payment processing so Arcade City made no money from their previous app. As a result, Christopher was unable to pay vendors. Below is a snippet on how Christopher handled the payment of vendors — specifically the server supporting the app. This is very likely the reason why the original app went offline: Christopher David had no money to pay the servers.
On 09/07/2016 Christopher David called in to a local radio show in Austin, TX and the host, Mike Allen was willing to ask the hard questions that every Bitcoin/Ethereum/crypto journalist has failed to do. Skip to the 160 minute mark for when it gets good:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/mikeallen/on-the-air-with-mike-allen_5
Just today, I received from a former Arcade City employee the following chat message from the Arcade City CTO Mark Burggraf (who has not heard from Chris in 5 months):
This confirms our worst suspicions:
1. The app in stores right now is incomplete and was intentionally released to stall users while Chris completes the rideshare coding himself.
2. Chris blew through all $270,000 from investor Roger Ver (https://twitter.com/rogerkver) and others and still has no app to show for it.
3. Chris is broke, and is heading to DevCon 2 in hopes of finding “deep pocket Ethereum folks” to fund his continued fraud.
Please share this with as many Ethereum publications and DevCon 2 organizers you can. I don’t want to see any other investors/drivers/people hurt by Christopher David
Update: 11/9/16
The current Arcade City Development team (lead by Bernd Lapp)has been very gracious in reaching out to me hoping to address my concerns. They have actively distanced themselves from former CEO Christopher David. I cannot vouch for their current performance now, but I can see that they have tried their best to limit Chris’ managerial capability
I have also requested that in lieu of Chris receiving compensation that the 1% from ICO sales be diverted to a victims fund to make whole the victims of Christopher David’s past frauds. Victims detailed in my article here:
As of this writing, that fund has not been set up.
2018 Update: Arcade City, the Scam that wont stop Scamming:
If you are still a believer in Arcade City, you are the one being duped.
Since late 2016, Arcade City has gone through multiple revisions, face lifts, and re-launches only to remain the impotent start-up in the blockain/rideshare industry. To those who perform their proper due diligence, Arcade City remains an obvious joke:
However many people still arrive to this page everyday, read about Christopher David’s past lies, and continue to fall victim to his endless need for fame and deceit. Far too often, posts like this appear on the Arcade City page only to be removed by Christopher David later:
Since my last update, Christopher David has proven again and again that he is unable to deliver on the very basics of the Arcade City goal: Develop a working app. Rather, he has continued to wallow in the only few courses of action he knows how to perform: stir up press controversy, attempt to cheat money out of investors, and pay graphic designers money he doesn’t have in efforts to re-brand his latest scam. I remind all readers, Chris has a long history of scamming: Arcade City is only his latest one. If you still believe that Arcade City will become the ethereum based blockchain application primed to compete with the likes of Uber/Lyft, you have been sold a fantasy. But dont take it from me, lets look at the evidence post September 2016 (for evidence of Chris’ previous failures look here, here, and here):
In January of 2017, the Arcade City Council leadership led by Bernd Lapp decided to rebrand and shed the tainted Arcade City name. This was in part due to the largely negative reaction the Ethereum community had to any involvement Christopher David had with the Arcade City project. Bernd Lapp and other advisers brand-forked and formed Swarm City. I personally cannot attest to the success of Swam City, however looking at their development updates (and there are plentiful), Swarm City appears to be a working towards realistic obtainable goals. Something that Arcade City is incapable of. Instead of development updates towards a working app, Arcade City continues to spew propaganda page after another touting a pie in the sky vision with little to no follow through. If your goal in believing in Arcade City was to support a decentralized cryptocurrency powered Dapp, I’d suggest you place your faith in Swarm City. However, if you are still in the Arcade City cult, keep reading:
After the brand-fork Christopher David penned a sob story and vowed to continue milking his scam. He started by declaring no more token sales. A declaration that would later be revoked:
He then continued to over-promise and under-deliver, a classic Christopher David ploy:
The app released of course, much later than anticipated in March of 2017 to little to no fanfare. The app barely worked, and thus of course users were upset to be duped…again. Christopher David then disappeared for several months and the Arcade City page went into dormancy.
With no real app development abilities and no team working with Chris, Chris decided to perform another Christopher David misdirection: hire graphic designers to redesign the Arcade City logo in efforts of duping users performing due diligence so that he may continue to scam investors for money:
After several months of ostensibly hosting an amateur art page, Arcade City still had not managed to build an app. So Christopher David decided it was time to pay PR Newswire for a Press Release of the Arcade City app launch. Of course, like all of Christopher David’s past app launches, this one was no different. An unworkable app was once again downloaded by hopeful users:
With no real working app, and no real way to earn revenue, Christopher David resorted again to his old tricks: Press > Product. He goes on a jet setting tour (figuratively) and decides to stir up trouble in the Philippines. But as always, Press does not translate into company revenue. He admits in this interview, Arcade City makes no money in its (illegal) operations in the Philippines. With still no working app, and multiple failed attempts to generate revenue, Chris decides to go on expensive business trips to Zurich, New York, and various Bitcoin conferences in failed efforts to raise more investment capital, and I need not remind you what happened to previously raised investment capital.
With no working product, and no revenue brought in via said fake app, Christopher David decides to revoke his previous declaration of “no more token sales” and has a token sale:
Luckily, the token sale was a colossal failure. To this day the value of ARCD tokens is effectively $0. Coinmarketcap.com has also delisted the old ARC token and has refused to list the valueless ARCD token:
Ask yourself, if Arcade City claims to be a revolutionary ICO-powered rideshare application, why has not one ride been given on the application? Why are all rides given on a network of facebook groups that anyone could create? Why has there been little to no 2018 American coverage about the impotent startup other than paid press releases? Why has Chris gone in searching for press in other countries (like South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, and the Philippines)? Why has not one reputable venture capital firm given any credence to Arcade City when investing at ICO’s are at all time highs? And finally, why is the value of ARCD still nothing and CoinMarketCap unwilling to list the coin? Lastly, if you were the CEO of a successful rideshare app powered on coins (with value), would you be travelling the world soliciting for investment when the product itself is still inoperable?:
April 2018: The Philippines debacle
Arcade City had largely become a comedic afterthought in the United States, so Chris resorted to the only thing he know how to do: cause regulatory trouble to stir up press — but this time in other countries:
In early April of 2018, Uber exited the Southeast Asian market due to its merger with Grab. Christopher David,thinking he could replicate his “success” in Austin when Uber pulled out decided to foment anti regulatory populism to serve his own means. His target soon became the Philippines Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), which regulates the licensing and operations of TNCs in the Philippines. When the LTFRB issued a cease and desist letter to Arcade City, Christopher David got everything he wanted: controversy.
However, the Philippines English speaking press was not as easily duped as Christopher David thought they would be (unlike the crypto press in the Unites States). When the app did another late launch (as he always does) on April 16th, multiple Philippines outlets called him on his bluff. I personally have to have give extra special recognition to the Vulcan Post, who copied sections from this Medium post word for word in their article. Hey, whatever gets the word out.
After all the controversy, promotion, and hot air, one would assume (not knowing the history of Arcade City of course) that their app would be life changing and worthy of coverage right?:
The Philippines network has since dissolved into nothingness, and the LTFRB has prudently chosen to ignore Christopher David’s antics.
August 2018 : SCAM Onwards!
With no success in any of his international PR tantrums, Chris could have buckled down and made a working app. Instead, he chose to buy Facebook ads to promote an Arcade City “launch” in New York (spoiler alert, it didn’t work):
No success in NY? None in the Philippines? Considered a joke by American press? No more avenues to promote a scam? What else could be done? How about constructing a working app? Nah, that’s too much work lets do another Christopher David Re-brand:
This time, Christopher David promises “Peer to Peer EVERYTHING”. Evolving his scam, I couldn’t wait to see the capabilities that Peer to Peer Everything could bring to its users. Something truly revolutionary, I hope:
Stay tuned for more comedy brought to you by the ever relenting scamming of Christopher David. At this point, Arcade City is truly the gift that keeps on giving:
#WherestheApp
2023 Update:
I still to this day receive multiple inquiries about Christopher David and his never ending schemes. This article serves as a great indicator of Christopher David’s scamming activities. When he’s actively scamming, due diligence is performed and this article ticks further up the Google search results. It didn't take long for me to find another one of Chris’ victims. Chris took a job with Justin Rezvani of Zion, and proceeded to scam him for a salary and delivered nothing:
Oddly enough, Chris still has his title on Medium as the VP of Engineering of Zion:
It seems like he can never stray too far from his scamming ways.
#WherestheApp
