Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 26, 2023 4:24 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

“I don’t know if they sold off their products before closing down. One presumes that they did, or will.

Depends on who “owned their products”…

Quadream, my never have “owned” only leasesed or held a licence to sell or manufacture.

Also the use may have been as a “Directors loan” into the company, where the director can take it back at any time or an acceptable replacment…

But depending on where the company actually is, the directors are alowed to sell off any and all assets at any price they can get to try to get the company out of debt.

There is also the case of putting up such assets as surety against a loan.

But my bet is that behind this company you will find a Venture Capitalist who was sinking in money to “pump it up” to then sell it off at an artificially high price.

It is a game we’ve seen more and more of lately. In essence it’s a form of con, or “pump and dump” only technically legal due to the fact what is being sold is the whole company or controling stake thus the buyer has to do “due diligence” of various forms.

It’s effectively the same con trick those selling a plot of land with a non residential delapidated building only fit for demolition on it pull. Such a building is a liability and significantly devalues the sale price of the plot of land. However send in a bunch of contractors to slap plaster and paint on it, and shazam it’s nolonger a liability but an asset that takes the value of the plot up by way more than the cost of “Slapping lipstick on the pig”.

Thus I suspect Quadream has been “killed” due to “bad publicity” killing it’s “primed price”. But as the assets of such a company are not tangible physical objects just something you could put on a memory stick in your pocket…

Which brings us around to why Israel as a base. Well there are various reasons some I’ve had personal experience of.

I’ve had three of my designs stolen by supposadly different Israeli companies, who then were selling in competition by pretending to be an “agent”. Thus their “cheap knock offs” caused not just potential and actual harm to those they sold to. But also harm to the company of a life long friend I’d put the designs into.

We’d worked out that the same “Directing mind” was behind it, we even tracked down who was manufacturing for them in China, but we could not get past the “Official Israeli Protection” racket that the “Directing mind” was using as part of a “curtain to hide behind”…

As some may know China now runs it’s own “Steal IP and sell it” racket and getting past the “Official Chinese Protection” is effrctively impossible. Even when you do find out “the who” and they are acting from a non Chinese state, you don’t get much luck. In the most recent case of IP theft of what I’d designed, we reported “the who” as “An economic agent of a hostile foreign power” to the UK authorities but as the then Chancellor George “gidiot / white lines” Osborne was a “China fan buoy” you can guess how far that investigation has gone…

For those in the US looking for a legal safe haven for misbehaving, Delaware is not the only place on the surface of the world you can use the UK via LLC and Israel will do just as well and give “a fine layer of gloss” over the likes of China and similar.

To many of the less than honest “It’s the new long con of the Global Supply Chain”.