Rick Eddleman pleads guilty to embezzling over $1.5 Million from Decipher

I don’t know how many of you, dear readers, play table-top role-playing games, or collectible card games. However, you’ve probably heard of Decipher, who put out the first Star Wars CCG, and the last Star Trek and Lord of the Rings role-playing games – both of the latter had problems getting books out for both of them, Lord of the Rings due to licensing issues restricting them to the films and not to Tolkein’s later material, and Star Trek due to lack of funds.

Well, we now know why the lack of funds happened – The Virginan-Pilot is reporting that former Decipher VP of Finance Rick Eddleman has plead guilty to embezzling over $1.5 million from the company. The embezzlement was not caught until 2000. Thus far they’ve only recovered $50,000 from Eddleman’s 401K – about 1/30th of the amount stolen.

$1.5 million might not seem like a lot, but the tabletop role-playing game industry is not in fact a lucrative business, and it’s reasonable to say that nobody ever got rich working in the RPG industry. Famous, yes, but not rich.