The ongoing saga of Red took a turn for the surreal recently, with news that a group of thieves had smashed a window at the company’s Lake Forest, Calif. offices and stolen prototypes of the Red One camera along with computers and hard drives.According to company founder Jim Jannard the perpetrators knew exactly what to look for. “Brand new computers were left alone. Only prototypes, computers in use, and drives (along with [an Assimilate] Scratch system) were taken,” he said.The company is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. His comments immediately raised the specter of corporate espionage among Red’s cult following, and the even more outrageous suggestion that it might be a publicity stunt among Red’s detractors.“There were a few that were saying this might be some sort of odd publicity stunt, and that’s the wrong thing to drive up my alley today, because I was here to see all the mess and I guarantee you this was no publicity stunt,” said Ted Schilowitz, whose title at Red is Leader of the Rebellion. “I was so aggravated by some of the comments. We have more interest and more excitement about our product than we can already handle on its own. We don’t need to drum up any more this way.”Local police report that they have no leads, and few clues. “We do have other businesses [in the area] where computers and that type of stuff was burglarized, so we don’t know if this was just a random hit and these people don’t even know what they’ve got, or if it’s something else—somebody from the industry that knew something. We really don’t know,” said Investigator Brian Sims of the Lake Forest Police Department.At press time (over a week after the incident), Sims reported that he was still waiting for an itemized list from Red of exactly what was taken.
Written by Scott Lehane
