Hello, fighting game community. I feel this warning message is long overdue. If I posted this earlier it could have saved a lot of people trouble, so I apologize that this came out so late. :\ This is a very long message so if you don’t want to read all the details, scroll down to the emboldened “short version” or the “very short version”. Throughout this post I will refer to people by their first initial because I’m not sure if they want to be mentioned here.
Long story: Two years ago around this time of year Kevin Park (NOT SACRAMENTO KEVIN PARK), a guy whom I considered one of my close friends at the time, borrowed $400 from me. I forget his exact reasons, but he was going through financial problems and I lent him the money because 1. he had a decent job, and 2. he was a good friend whom I thought I could trust. He promised to pay me back before Evo, which was fine. A couple weeks before Evo came I reminded him about it, he said “Sure, sure I can pay you back, no problem”. A few days before Evo came, he gave the same story. After Evo I told him to just make sure he paid me back before school started (he went to Pepperdine in SoCal, so if he left for SoCal it’d be really hard to contact him). He said okay. Once again, same story.
I was patient with this because (I would like to think) I’m a good friend, and I trust my friends. He came back up for winter break and still didn’t pay me back, not even a dollar. I was annoyed at this because I always saw him at the arcade spending hella money, going out to eat all the time, etc. so I complained about it to my friend K. His response surprised me – K said Kevin borrowed $350 from him and it was the same story as mine. K and I both go to SVGL and that’s how we met Kevin Park. Bad news, right? It gets worse.
Another good friend of mine (and Kevin’s at the time), A, works for a certain electronics company. Kevin asked A if he could purchase a $900 laptop through A because of A’s employee discount. A agreed and paid for the laptop and had it shipped to Kevin since he was in SoCal at the time. I’m not sure what their exact terms for the payment were, but Kevin had promised to pay A back, and hasn’t paid him a penny. This was about a year ago and this happened to A because he didn’t know about what happened with me and K months before.
There are other known instances of Kevin borrowing around $100~200 sums from others, so many I can’t even list them all here.
You might think, “Okay you guys are stupid for letting him borrow that much money, I’d never do that not even for a friend, why do I care?”
But it isn?t only limited to ?borrowing? from friends. Kevin has begun to take money directly from people’s wallets. Friends who go to SVGL who I have warned about this person think to themselves “Okay, as long as I don’t let him borrow money I’m safe”. Well after having him over to session at their house, money is mysteriously missing from their wallets. In one case, my friend E realized he had $40 missing from his wallet, as well as his mom’s wallet completely missing without a trace. Another friend had a clean $100 bill missing.
Because of this, recently a lot of the people mentioned above, the mom whose wallet got stolen, and I visited his house to talk to his parents about it. They took our name and numbers down but haven’t called us back - so they basically don’t give a fuck and don’t plan on doing shit.
Let it be known that I?ve confronted Kevin Park numerous times about the money. Each time he just turns around and immediately leaves without uttering a word. He won?t discuss anything with any of us, and at this point he tries to go to SVGL at odd times in order not to be spotted by anyone he owes money to.
**Short story: So basically Kevin Park (not Sacramento Kevin Park) has stolen an estimated sum of $2400+ from my friends and me, every single one of them are people he met at SVGL. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a scrub 3S player as well as a IIDX player. He used to go to AI, SVGL and other arcades just like all of us, that’s how we all met and became friends. Once he exhausted my friendship, he moved onto the next person and got money from them, too. He?s even stooped to stealing from ?friends? wallets recently. I’m not saying this to “start shit” or ruin his life. I’m posting it because it feels like every week I hear about some new person from our arcade falling for the Kevin Park scam and I feel like if I had come forward and said something earlier, they would have known better (even though I keep thinking I’ve told hella people already, some just don’t listen too -________-). I also posted this in bemanistyle forums because Kevin Park also plays music games and is known in that crowd, as well as in SoCal forums since he went to AI and other places down there; hopefully none of those guys got hit too. Jason (SVGL manager) has banned Kevin Park and is just waiting for someone to get him pictures, which will happen by the end of the week. But please, please still be on the lookout for this. **
The very short story: Kevin Park is a leech/thief; stay away from him.
Also if you have any suggestions for how I or any of the others can deal with this situation please PM me or post.
Again, anyone who didn’t know about this before and got hit, I’m really sorry for not getting it out as I’m pretty certain I was the first person it happened to. I was patient and didn’t want to get the word out because I had faith he would still pay me back, and when he didn’t I thought he would learn from his mistake. Unfortunately, I think the only thing he learned is how easy it is to make friends and systematically steal from them.
Thank you for the specific advice!