Whitley’s Day In Court
Posted by Mark Nelson on 23rd February 2010 | Permanent Link
Philip James Whitley raised over $5 million dollars in funding for his company, NearZero, promising revolutionary data compression results. After stringing along investors for the better part of a decade, Whitley is facing his day in court before the Serious Fraud Office of New Zealand.
It’s a long story, both familiar and sad, of people cashing in their life savings to make a fortune on a revolutionary technology. A technology that Whitley still claims exists, but so far has been unable to produce. (In fact he claims he destroyed it intentionally.)
Sachin wrote about it here a couple of years ago. You can now get an update from the papers in New Zealand.
Testimony in the trial had Whitely proclaiming he was “richer than Bill Gates.” Turns out that now he is now bankrupt and facing possible jail time, but he had a good ride while it lasted. Failure to map an adequate exit strategy seems to have been his biggest weakness.