The Jury found against Linspire's former CEO Kevin Carmony and former CFO Chad Olson on multiple counts of Fraud, Conspiracy, and Fiduciary Duty. They concluded that both had conspired to take thousands of dollars from Linspire Inc while leaving the company.

Here's the story. Linspire (formerly known as Lindows) was a Linux software company I founded. The goal was to make Linux user friendly and compete with Microsoft on the desktop. We definitely helped make Linux more usable on the desktop bringing innovations to the market like one click software installs over the net (one of the first app stores) and the squiggly line you see under misspellings in your browser. Yet we didn't make a dent in Microsoft's dominance. It recently came to light that Microsoft had entire teams of people organized to thwart us at every step. Microsoft was an extremely tough competitor - there's a reason they've been twice convicted of anti-trust violations.

Eventually I turned the CEO position over to Kevin Carmony, the long time President. I think he was a capable CEO. However near the end of his tenure things changed. He wanted to give his long time friend Chad Olson hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company's account. Kevin admitted to the jury that he tried to blackmail me to get what he wanted—he said that if I didn't agree to fire him and Chad and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance, that "bad things would happen." He wasn't kidding. After that, Kevin covertly wired money to Chad keeping it secret from the Chairman of the Board. Emails later revealed he told Chad to "play dumb". He later said it was a severance fee as part of a firing, but revealingly Chad continued to come to work even after his supposed firing. He even met with me and did company duties while supposedly fired. A week later Chad and Kevin both stopped coming to work never explaining in writing or in person why hundreds of thousands of dollars was missing from the company's account.

They refused to return the money to the company so the company was forced to file a lawsuit against them. The legal process turned up loads of damning evidence as well as an ongoing scheme by Kevin Carmony to disparage me all over the net. In an attempt to hide his and Chad's own illegal acts he criticizes me incessantly posting in the comments field of every digital mention. Kevin was forced to admit under oath that he posted lies to web pages and forums, sometimes posting anonymously or posing as other people (even a woman) to make it appear there's lots of people behind his antics. He's become a digital stalker and demonstrated the kind of mental imbalance that concerns me (I once had to call the FBI on a stalker who was arrested and deported so I hope it doesn't get to that.) He changed my Wikipedia page so many times that he was blocked from future edits and contributed to Wikipedia actually changing their policies on edits to pages of living people.

After a 2 week trial a 12 person jury ruled Kevin and Chad are liable for fraud, conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty and other counts. You can see Chad's jury verdict form and Kevin's jury verdict form and the Judge's final ruling. Definitely I put too much trust in Kevin and Chad because they presented themselves as very devout and honest Mormons. It's doubtful the court's ruling will stop Kevin's digital jihad against me. I do hope that people realize anyone can claim anything on the net - even if its deceptive lies with phony quotes. That's the downside to freedom of speech. Hopefully people put more weight in the findings of an objective jury that determined Chad Olson and Kevin Carmony are fraudsters and not to be believed or trusted and should return money to the company.

--MR
michael@michaelrobertson.com