Reposted with some massive additions from the comments section from people who worked with Ross Rojek. And since the article still gets hits months after originally posted, obviously there is still interest in this case.

Ross Rojek, formerly of Another Universe, formerly of Comics and Comix, formerly the guy who served four years of a nearly 7 year sentence for screwing a bunch of investors who were fooled into believing he had created some kind of cool facial recognition technology that was going to keep the world safe from Al Queda, was released on September 18, 2008 from Sacramento Community Corrections.

If you are one of the many self publishers who shipped Rojek product for which you were not paid (including me), don’t expect him to be making good on those debts any time soon, felonious scoundrel that he is.

Rojek apologized to those people hurt by his actions on his personal web page. But that’s down, now. I’ll bet it was heartfelt. At least, heartfelt to people who fall for sappy crap.

Here’s an early Comics Journal article on Rojek’s arrest.

Ross got into an interesting bit of trouble over dvd’s of My So Called Life.

Here’s a website which once had pages and pages of jokes excoriating Rojek, and now you can get them in handy downloadable format! 73 pages of Rojek memories!

Somewhere on the internet, Rojek’s ex went public and ballistic at the same time, and if I could find that, I’d post it, too.

Rojek isn’t mental, or misunderstood, he’s yet another creep with no moral compass.

Just my opinion.

But then, he ripped me off, so I’m entitled to not feel a lot of sympathy for the guy. And while it may seem as if we are piling on here, in my experience, people like this don’t go away. The public needs to be aware of scammers and how to spot them.

Additions from those who experienced the wonder that is Rojek below the fold:

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He pled guilty to fraud and spent four years in the hoosegow, but Ross Rojek is back. And he’s now running a book review newspaper in Sacramento California.

This chirpy article reads like a press release, is written by a Rojek freelancer, and makes no mention of Rojek’s felonious past.

Crazy? Perhaps. As Rojek reached out to publishing companies in search of books to review, one publicist bellowed, “What idiot starts a book review in this economy?” The idiot savants went on to publish 115 reviews in that first September 2008 issue. Today, the company boasts 100 book reviewers, and this month they started their second publication, San Francisco Book Review.

Here’s a blog post about the big fat fraud for your perusing pleasure. Several former Rojek associates came forward to discuss their dealings with the facial recognition scammer whose So Called Life left fans and pros wondering what happened to their money and what happened to their lunchboxes.

Meanwhile, Ross is still ripping everyone off. Including Jason, who had done something like $80k in billable hours consulting for him. After months and months of delays, Ross started mailing out the DVD box set, but without the lunchbox, saying that he’d have to ship it seperately once they were manufactured. At one point, Another Universe declared bankruptcy and sold all of its assets to another company, of which Ross Rojek was the sole owner.

At The Sacramento Book Review website where Rojek now does his business, the biography of Himself:

After making some poor decisions and becoming involved with a shady set of telemarketer organizations, in April 2004, he was arrested for his part in a telemarketing fraud. He plead guilty to two counts of fraud, and served just under four years in federal prison camps. During this time, he went back to school and started writing book reviews for the local community college school paper. His experiences in finding new books to read for himself and other inmates in his job as prison librarian, lead him to develop his “dream” book review.

Ross’s story is proof that you can dust yourself off after falling down and begin anew.

I’m verklempt.

c

PS; Just got an email from a sensible person who wants to know if Rojek will be channeling some of his profits into paying people he ripped off.

What a faboo idea! I also await my check.