02-23-2011, 04:44 PM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 1,901
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Epassporte and Chris Mallick on BoingBoing today
Nuthin we don't already know - just vaguely interesting it made a netkultur site like boingboing.
best line - "in some circles, "Mallick" is now slang for "swindle." "
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/23/post-10.html
Quote:
While away on a trip, Mallick was bombarded with a series of frantic voice mails from the ePassporte offices. Apparently Visa had dissolved their business relationship. Mallick was stunned. His company could not function without the credit-card giant. ePassporte without Visa was like a car without wheels.
"You know when things are so bad they make you laugh?" he says. "I was like, 'You're fucking with me! Okay, is there a tsunami now? What's next?' "
A month later, ePassporte folded. That's when Mallick's problems stopped adding up and started multiplying. The company had roughly 100,000 account holders, and they wanted their money back--now.
Mallick's still around, he just doesn't have all the answers. He can't explain why Visa abruptly terminated its relationship with ePassporte: "I have a lot of ideas about what's going on, but I don't have any facts." He insists the credit-card company is responsible. Visa says it was merely responding to a request from SKNA ( St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank). And SKNA won't comment, pending possible litigation.
"I'm a big believer in conspiracy theories," he says, "and I can't say it out loud, but I know exactly what happened here." And then he says it: SKNA may have screwed him. "It's Gordon Gekko 101--if you want to buy something, you cripple it, break it up, buy the pieces for cheap, and reassemble it later. That's just business. It's not the way I want to do business, but . . ."
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