What looks wrong
A nano drone in the promo video that follows a mountain bike and takes its own selfies.
What’s actually going on
Torquing Group raised more than £2.3 million on Kickstarter in 2014 for the Zano. It went into liquidation in November 2015 after delivering a tiny fraction of the units, and almost none to Kickstarter backers. Kickstarter hired journalist Mark Harris. His report found a serious attempt that was out of its depth, plus promotional video that, he wrote, had convincing evidence of being faked.
Zano was sold as a flying camera that fit in a palm and could fly itself. The Kickstarter video did the hard work: cliffs, bikes, swarming. More than 12,000 backers put up more than £2.3 million. Ship date: six months.
By the time Torquing entered creditors' voluntary liquidation in November 2015, the company had burned the campaign money and more. Public reporting, including Harris, said roughly 600 drones went out in total and only four of those to Kickstarter backers. Early units missed advertised functions. Backers said the thing they held was not the thing in the video.
Kickstarter paying for an independent investigation was unusual and, for this magazine, useful. Harris concluded the team mounted a real attempt and did not have the manufacturing skill the campaign implied. He also wrote that there was convincing evidence the demo footage was faked. That last point is the vote: a hardware grave is sad, a video that cannot be trusted is a claim.
Source: Mark Harris investigation for Kickstarter, January 2016 (Medium). We quote the public record. A settlement is not always an admission.