Ferrari-Crashing Gizmondo Head Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison

OMG! Conspiracies!

@Con Seannery:
Absolutely

@NurseDave: He has a Furrari Enzo (Nickname for his cat)

Part of the Italian Mafia. (Well, he has The Godfather on DVD)

He threatens to make cartoons of Best Buy employees.

I want to start a #legalthreat trend on twitter now.

I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL HELP YOU CLIP YOUR BUSHES.

@strider_mt2k:
It's like 2001 all over again.

crsh1976

@NurseDave:

Brian Lam, stand and be recognized!

(wait, is Editor the same thing? perhaps not)

What the heck...GET HIM!

SO much history here on the tech blogs.

The best reading has been here and over at Engadget over the years.

GOOD TIMES, PEOPLE!

@Mike Zuniga: Same here, man. Same here.

Con Seannery

18 months? That's the same amount of time the Ghostbusters were going to spend in prison in Ghostbusters II.

Coincidence? I think not.

user_21938

If you crash an Enzo, AND create and produce the gizmondo...well you are one big dumbass...So, does surprise buttsecks will be enough punishment for realising such a device? EDIT: YAY WE HAVE AN EDIT BUTTON, AND IT WORKS!

It's funny, reading about this guy a few years back is what made me find Gizmodo (I mistyped Gizmondo into Google).

Ah, memories.

Haha, when I saw it on Kotaku I also thought it said Gizmodo. ;D

ircmaster

"which threats are legal?"
ex. "i'm going to hug you to death when you get back."

oh, wait.

endless06

How does someone who is affiliated with the mafia end up running a gaming website?

Intelext

Dammit! That really sucks that the head of Gizmondo is going to jail. I loved getting on and reading their stories.

Or wait, is that called Gizmodo?

@Avizzv92: NVM misread the context of your questions, I thought you were talking about Gizmondo's head.

Avizzv92

@NurseDave:
I believe he "did" drive a Ferrari Enzo wrecked it... and now he wont be driving anything. He appears to be swedish. The threats I do not know...

Avizzv92

Isn't the term for this "schadenfreude"? ;)

Not that it's not richly deserved...

Synthfilker

Anyone who crashes a Ferrari should be sentenced to death.

first you buy a really nice car, then you don't know how to drive it. Since you can't drive for shit you crash the damn car, so that means all the money you spent on the car could have gone to charity for all the good it is doing you now.

Bastard coulda been savin starving chinese people but is instead in Jail.

@darkstar: I concur. And hey, some of us un-starred commenters have useful, decent things to say. Change kills, guys. Just look at Chris Pirillo. Next they (The Gizmodo guys) will want us to pay and subscribe.

which threats are legal?

Those made by the government?

digitalmorphine

Sit you stupid dog or I'll ship you to a third world country!
If looks could kill I would use them to kill you!
If you are lying to me may god strike you dead!
I put a gypsy curse on you!

Ya know.... legal threats

fluf

aren't threats a sort of gray area? I mean if only words are exchanged and there is no actual sign that the threats are ever going to be acted out...has he really done anything legitimate harm? while some amount of punishment is justified in the case of threats (as is being done here) its also not something hugely bad/wrong.


know what i can't believe though? how long this guy has successfully evaded prison.

@deathshadow391: So lets have the article about the head of Gizmodo to show how the two are different. What type of Ferrari does he drive? Which county's mafia is he a part of? And what type of threats does he make? The people demand to know!

NurseDave

You have got to admit... As heinous as that Ferarri crash was, it WAS pretty cool. The name-stealing, however, was not.

Gizmodo isn't related to Gizmondo? Pfft, I'm outta here. Later dudes, S you in your A's, don't wear a C, and J all over your B's.

reynwrap582

Are Gizmondo and Gizmodo related at all or is it just a gizmo coincidence? Also, I really don't like how it's harder to read the comments. Although star commenters do have better things to say on a whole, I'd much rather read the whole list of comments old-new in the order in which they were posted. 20 normal comments are better than 4 star comments.

The Gizmondo is what brought me to Gizmodo.

@deathshadow391:
Haha I did too. I had to re-read it a few times.

moonlightseal

I'm gonna leave another pointless comment. Don't tempt me! I'll do it!

kahri

for a second I thought it was the head of Gizmodo!

deathshadow391

For the record, Brian Lam is just as bad as driving. But no when cares if a Toyota Avalon winds up wrapped around a lamppost.

Also, Blam is smart enough to know how to threaten people within the bounds of the law.

"Sure is a nice commenting account you got here. It'd be a shame if a BanHammer were to fall on it."

He is from NJ after all.

Many threats are "legal" -

"He threatened to leave the party"
"He threatened to sue me."
"He threatened to punch me on the nose" could be legal - self-defence for example.

&c.

VAR1016

There is a divine god!

@NurseDave:

You demanded:

Brian Lam, head of Gizmodo (the failed tech blog that couldn't even plagiarize the name of Gizmondo correctly), was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison for robbery, attempted blackmail and making illegal threats (which threats are legal?).

Lam, whose story reaches Mark Sanford levels of ridiculous, is famous for crashing a rare Volkswagen, escaping at least one prison sentence, possibly having a movie made about him, leading some sort of mafia in the U.S.A in the 1990s and making a blog nobody ever wanted, ever. Referred to in his native English as "nerd Brian," because he's a nerd, Brian will serve 18 months in prison for his multitude of mafia and gadget-related crimes. Brian is a hilarious dirtbag the likes of which we rarely see in the tech world and he'll be missed, at least theoretically, maybe.


I <3 Brian Lam and Gizmodo.

iEro-Sennin

@Mike Zuniga: Yeah, I was going to say... I don't think he plagiarized Gizmodo...

Threats to exercise a legal right are always legal ("I'm gonna sue you for shafting me").

Oh, that was a rhetorical question wasn't it? Sorry, I'm drinking for the last time till the bar exam.

Does anyone have a type AB+ liver I could borrow after my post-bar shitfaced-ness?

Hmm now my brain is thinking of legal threats... something you can legally do or say that is threatening to someone else... "I'll tell you wife you are cheating on her"...

@GlenTen: WOW THAT GUY IS A CHARACTER!

Eriksson had somehow managed to import $3.8 million in cars he didn't own into post-9/11 America.

When does the movie come out?

@Mike Zuniga: Same thing here too.

Kittenparade

I think a legal thread would be something a long the lines of..

One of these days.. IM GONNA GIVE YOU WHAT YOU DESERVE!...That money you lent me.

Kakkoister

@strider_mt2k: Word is, he's the only soul that has an inverse star, allowing his comments to be invisible.

@user_21938: Someone watched TV Saturday (woo Ghostbusters!, not so much #2)

@strider_mt2k:

Wired.com did a great article on this a while back. Its a good read for those unfamiliar with the story: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/gizmondo.html

I always have to do a double take when I read stories about gizmondo. It always looks like gizmodo at first.

drywaller79

You know what kinds of threats are legal, Mr. Nosowitz? The kind where I threaten to smother you with hugs and gummy bears.