Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[ChuckFinley305]

Exactly right! When the boating market crashed in 2008 only the premier builders survived because they made products people wanted and had properly run businesses that were able to weather the storm. One off custom yacht builders like Harry were a dime a dozen and were the first to go under. All those "ingenious" inventions Harry came up with in the last 50 years were no longer relevant and were no longer supplying him with a stream of income.

Looking at the Schoell Marine website you will see that it looks like it was last updated in the late 90's. All of the items boasted about are no longer being built. The Pulse Drive - out of business, The DDC hull - Not currently built by anyone.. all the business contacts listed have gone under...

The boat market meltdown in 2008 is likely the point where Cyclone went from being a sincere but ignorant and incompetent inventor to being a stock market fraud.

I think you are partially right! Harry had enough foresight to see the pending collapse coming and knew it would lead to Schoell Marine's demise, so he concocted the Cyclone idea. An idea so grand he believed it would make him wealthy! His plan was to design several engines, get patents, make some models and sell the company off to a huge corporate conglomerate and retire a multimillionaire. The problem was that no companies were willing to cough up the money to purchase those ingenious ideas. Instead they wanted to see proof that the concept really was everything Harry claimed it would be. That is when the fraud started! They built a few engines, signed several more deals before anything was completed or tested. When it came time for testing I think they realized they had a lemon. Instead of calling it quits back in 2010ish, they were drunk on the investors money and couldn't bring themselves to let go, mostly because of Harry's ego.... So they doubled down and decided to hire their lawyer as CEO because he had a path that would keep the investor money flowing which lead to the toxic debt deals. Nelson was smart enough to set himself up with a spin off company and to exit Cyclone at the perfect time. He then did a rinse and repeat with Q2P.

So yes, the sincere but ignorant and incompetent inventor/businessman did turn into a fraudster, but I think that wasn't the plan from the start. I don't give them that much credit, the basically stumbled upon a means to commit fraud and weren't dignified enough to resist.