The saga of Pay By Touch is well-known to Valleywag readers, but the San Francisco Chronicle provides a useful recap. Rogers ran afoul of the law in Minnesota, where he worked at various startups, and then moved to San Francisco, where he charmed investors, including the ultrawealthy Getty family and a group backed by supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, out of $340 million. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's dad, an advisor to the Gettys, invested $50,000 and served on Pay by Touch's board until last year.

Investment bankers at UBS never bothered to dig into his past when peddling his company to would-be backers; if they had, they'd have learned that Rogers's former girlfriends had placed two restraining orders on him in Minnesota. One accused him of slamming her head against a car window; he trashed the other's house, and was ordered to pay $35,000 in restitution for the damage. He'd also been arrested on narcotics charges. But he somehow escaped serious charges for all of these incidents.

According to charges laid out by investors and ex-employees, Rogers was seriously coked up. The allegations include Rogers offering a board member cocaine; ordering a female employee to submit a false expense report to pay for drugs; and going through a failed intervention in a Las Vegas hotel room reportedly orchestrated by a board member.

So where's Rogers today? The Chronicle reached him by phone, where he said he was living in Southern California and working on a new startup. He filed for personal bankruptcy a year ago; in court documents, he told a judge he needed $1,000 a month just for clothes.

In fact, Valleywag has learned, Rogers is living in an upscale apartment complex in Beverly Hills called Blü, where rents range from $3,300 to $12,900 a month. (Residents there are called the "lucky fü.") and he's driving a $90,000 Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV. Who knows where he gets the money? His company is bankrupt; he's bankrupt; and 750 people are out of their jobs. But John Rogers is still at large, living large.

(Mug shot by Minnesota police)

The Chapter 11 filing was brought on by high feed costs, a surfeit of chicken on the market, and weak demand. Weak demand? Chicken is about the cheapest animal protein one can get on supermarket shelves, so this either spells an outbreak of mass vegetarianism or a desperate lurch toward rice and beans.

For that, we can blame people who have turned away from rice and beans: The rising middle classes of India, China, and other developing countries have increased their consumption of meat, which requires large amounts of grain to produce. The high price of oil and fertilizer used to farm grain have added to the cost. A recent drop in commodity prices hasn't been enough to help. Next thing we know, we'll be fighting chickens for feed.

(Photo by J.A.T. Vierkant)

A decade ago, Carl looked like the more successful brother, having sold eGroups, a company he cofounded, to Yahoo for $432 million. But Carl's efforts to repeat his success, and come anywhere close to Larry's, have made him a buffoon. Zvue shut down its San Francisco Web operations in July, leaving its collection of funny-if-you're-15-years-old websites to Eric Bauman, the creator of eBaum's World. Bauman is also owed millions by Zvue, for fare like "Ass Cream Vendor."

Solidus Networks, which does business as Pay By Touch, sold its two "noncore assets," and plans to auction the main business, the biometrics payment business, on March 14. One subsidiary, which Pay By Touch purchased for $82 million, sold for just $4.2 million. The other, bought for $30 million, went for $600,000. Now all that's left are questions.

It's already sold off the database, market research, and enterprise group. All it's got left is PC Magazine, its game group (which recently restructured itself, merging print and online, to the mass confusion of all), ExtremeTech, and the DigitalLife conference. Young insists the company's making great progress. Why doesn't he just file for Chapter 7, the liquidation kind of bankruptcy? That seems easier.

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