woof!
Bronze Member
- Dec 12, 2010
- 1,185
- 413
- Detector(s) used
- BS detector
- Primary Interest:
- Other
Looks like H3Tec is getting out of the business of marketing their LRL's to the treasure hunting market. The whole story has been extraordinarily well documented in this forum and in the Geotech forum. Not only can Chuckie not hide from H3Tec, he can't hide from the Internet either.
Chuckie's excesses galvanized the anti-fraudster community to focus not only on the fraudulent nature of the product, but on the issue of how to prosecute it and get LRL fraudsters locked up behind bars. Prosecutors who choose to try to nail LRL fraudsters will no longer have to go it alone in unfamiliar turf. They've got friends who can educate them on how LRL fraudsters will try to continue the fraud right there in the courtroom, and how to put a stop to it.
Thanks to TNet and Google, Chuckie's no longer a significant player in the treasure hunting LRL market. Any attempt at a comeback is just too big a risk for him, better to plow oilfields.
So who's next? This gets funny. The small potatoes fraudsters who prey on small time gullibillies rarely lead to situations that come to the attention of a prosecutor who wishes to devote time and expense to prosecute this unfamiliar (to the prosecutor) area. For example, SHARK! seems to have flown under the prosecutorial radar. I have long been on record as being filled with more amusement than with righteous indignation at the Thomas Gravitator, which is after all worth its weight in gold [to Thomas] just as the advertisement says. But as Art probably remembers, I draw the line at selling LRL's under false pretenses (the only kind of pretense available) to public service agencies such as police and fire personnel or to the military. Lives are at stake and the people who will be using the apparats are being lied to as to how the apparats work and what they can and cannot do. This means that the damn gizmos will not be effective in that kind of use even if the same apparats would do 1% better than stupid guesswork in treasure hunting. For the same reasons I regard it as reprehensible to sell LRL's to the military, I encourage selling them to the Taliban. At list price.
As it turns out, Mr. Alfilani (I think I spelled his name right, sorry if I didn't) has his foot in both worlds. I've had no personal contact with Mr. Alfilani and have no personal beef with him. I've even used his Gravitator ad as an example of superb ("Camel quality") advertising. To my knowledge he doesn't do stupid stuff like pick fights with people in the metal detector industry, an industry without which his products are almost worthless. I suppose that he and I could sit down together for dinner, and have some great off-the-record conversation. Just my guess although I've never actually tried it.
But there's that public service and military stuff. Wrong product for that market, it rips off the taxpayer and to the extent that unwitting government employees rely on it, it puts human life at risk and allows contraband to pass unimpeded. It's criminal activity and it should be prosecuted. By its very nature the criminal activity almost always crosses State lines, making it a Federal offense. If you have followed the Chuckie saga, you've seen how tempted Chuckie was by the potential military market and how opposition to his fraud jumped on that. We "get it". It isn't about our opinions regarding the merit or otherwise of any particular war, has nothing to do with partisan politics, it's our anger at utterly cynical disregard for the value of human life.
With Chuckie more or less transferred out to the oilfields and much better tools available to LRL prosecutors than in the past, I suppose that Alfilani's products which are marketed to public security (and military?) are the next smoking guns to go after. Let Mr. Alfilani get back to the business of cleaning out the wallets of civilian gullibillies who wanted to be lied to and were willing to pay for the privilege no questions asked.
--Toto
Chuckie's excesses galvanized the anti-fraudster community to focus not only on the fraudulent nature of the product, but on the issue of how to prosecute it and get LRL fraudsters locked up behind bars. Prosecutors who choose to try to nail LRL fraudsters will no longer have to go it alone in unfamiliar turf. They've got friends who can educate them on how LRL fraudsters will try to continue the fraud right there in the courtroom, and how to put a stop to it.
Thanks to TNet and Google, Chuckie's no longer a significant player in the treasure hunting LRL market. Any attempt at a comeback is just too big a risk for him, better to plow oilfields.
So who's next? This gets funny. The small potatoes fraudsters who prey on small time gullibillies rarely lead to situations that come to the attention of a prosecutor who wishes to devote time and expense to prosecute this unfamiliar (to the prosecutor) area. For example, SHARK! seems to have flown under the prosecutorial radar. I have long been on record as being filled with more amusement than with righteous indignation at the Thomas Gravitator, which is after all worth its weight in gold [to Thomas] just as the advertisement says. But as Art probably remembers, I draw the line at selling LRL's under false pretenses (the only kind of pretense available) to public service agencies such as police and fire personnel or to the military. Lives are at stake and the people who will be using the apparats are being lied to as to how the apparats work and what they can and cannot do. This means that the damn gizmos will not be effective in that kind of use even if the same apparats would do 1% better than stupid guesswork in treasure hunting. For the same reasons I regard it as reprehensible to sell LRL's to the military, I encourage selling them to the Taliban. At list price.
As it turns out, Mr. Alfilani (I think I spelled his name right, sorry if I didn't) has his foot in both worlds. I've had no personal contact with Mr. Alfilani and have no personal beef with him. I've even used his Gravitator ad as an example of superb ("Camel quality") advertising. To my knowledge he doesn't do stupid stuff like pick fights with people in the metal detector industry, an industry without which his products are almost worthless. I suppose that he and I could sit down together for dinner, and have some great off-the-record conversation. Just my guess although I've never actually tried it.
But there's that public service and military stuff. Wrong product for that market, it rips off the taxpayer and to the extent that unwitting government employees rely on it, it puts human life at risk and allows contraband to pass unimpeded. It's criminal activity and it should be prosecuted. By its very nature the criminal activity almost always crosses State lines, making it a Federal offense. If you have followed the Chuckie saga, you've seen how tempted Chuckie was by the potential military market and how opposition to his fraud jumped on that. We "get it". It isn't about our opinions regarding the merit or otherwise of any particular war, has nothing to do with partisan politics, it's our anger at utterly cynical disregard for the value of human life.
With Chuckie more or less transferred out to the oilfields and much better tools available to LRL prosecutors than in the past, I suppose that Alfilani's products which are marketed to public security (and military?) are the next smoking guns to go after. Let Mr. Alfilani get back to the business of cleaning out the wallets of civilian gullibillies who wanted to be lied to and were willing to pay for the privilege no questions asked.
--Toto
