Is LensHD a scam?

We wrote about LensHD last year and the campaign looked like decent back then. However, a reader who backed the campaign contacted us because the campaign had yet to deliver after over a year.

The campaign raised almost USD 370,000 but a year later, nothing has been produced. LensCleaner has yet to deliver the LensHD and the campaign has been deactivated by Kickstarter. We have seen campaigns deactivated before but Kickstarter does not give an explanation for these kind of deactivations. So we won’t know whether it is because Kickstarter deemed the campaign fraudulent.

Missing LensHD creator

Campaign creator Paul Joseph Mccracken has ghosted the backers. The campaign page presented him as the founder of LensCleaner The last update on the Kickstarter campaign was posted in April, that’s almost half a year ago. There has been no communication with the backers since.

The LensHD’s domain is still parked on GoDaddy but the website is down. The creator linked to his Facebook profile on his Kickstarter profile, but Facebook profile has also been deactivated.

Association with Cardlax

The LensCleaner team stated on their campaign page that they were part of the Cardlax team:

After initially taking part in the Cardlax Team, we all broke off for a new adventure. Although we had some great time and experience back, but is time for us to walk our own path. Also, even though we are a new team, but we know each other for quite some time, didn’t take us long to get used to the new environment.

The Cardlax AirPods cleaner and Cardlax 2.0 massager are also turning out to be scams with backers not receiving the products. Their website is also down.

It is interesting to note that while the LensCleaner team claim to have broke off from Cardlax, their Kickstarter campaign still uses the Cardlax email address as their point of contact:

Q: What is the best way to contact you?

😎 A: Reach out to us by emailing to: lenshd@cardlax.net, or Kickstarter DM. We are happy to answer all your concerns. 🙂

Accelerated by Haxson

The LensHD campaign page states that it is accelerated by Haxson. Sounds familiar? Well, we wrote about the Haxson Smart AirFan before and the red flags convinced us that it was likely a scam campaign.

Guess what? The Haxson Smart AirFan did not deliver the products and is also turning out to be a scam.

This really looks bad on Haxson. Two scam campaigns associated with their accelerator program makes us wonder if they are instilling the right values in the startups they mentor, or if they are really so bad at it that the startups can’t even bring their products to the market.

Due diligence

These series of scams from a related group of people, or even the same group of people for all we know, show that it is important for backers to do their due diligence before backing a campaign.

We Bears actually feels strongly that the platform should also offer more protection for backers and conduct more stringent reviews before allow campaigns on Kickstarter. We understand that they want to keep the platform open and encourage people to try to bring their dreams to reality. But we disagree that this comes at a cost of making it relatively easy for scammers to raise funds and not have to be accountable for running away with the money.

We are so passionate about fighting the scams on Kickstarter because we love how it brought many great products to life. This passion is what pushed us to create this website. Kickstarter is an amazing community of backers who are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a small startup or individual who dreams big. It is sad to see the trust being eroded by a group of bad actors.

It is time we took action. If you feel as strongly as we do, sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. We will be sending emails with some ideas we have to bring about change.