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I had to lookup FoldAR to see what it is.
FoldAR - Folding AR-15 Upper and Double Fold AR |
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What exactly have you won? View Quote -Have the hottest and most loving wife of anyone on this forum. -Got F&D owners out of my life. -Got all my intellectual property rights back. -Have a nice machine shop where I love working. -Have a great product that people love. That doesn't mean its an easy life. But it's what I wanted. |
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Corky, that .338LM Magnum Action looks sweet! Hope you can salvage and revive the design, maybe in a 20" or 22" .300WM, too? Like a Jr Barret M82 M109.
Good luck! |
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@enov8ive I dont know anything about the background for all of this but you came up with 1 hell of a cool product. I would love to check 1 out. Are there any local shops that may have 1. I am in Montgomery county but I drive through the Henderson area a few times a week
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Well, I guess everything... -Have the hottest and most loving wife of anyone on this forum. -Got F&D owners out of my life. -Got all my intellectual property rights back. -Have a nice machine shop where I love working. -Have a great product that people love. That doesn't mean its an easy life. But it's what I wanted. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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What exactly have you won? -Have the hottest and most loving wife of anyone on this forum. -Got F&D owners out of my life. -Got all my intellectual property rights back. -Have a nice machine shop where I love working. -Have a great product that people love. That doesn't mean its an easy life. But it's what I wanted. |
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Corky, that .338LM Magnum Action looks sweet! Hope you can salvage and revive the design, maybe in a 20" or 22" .300WM, too? Like a Jr Barret M82 M109. Good luck! View Quote |
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@enov8ive I dont know anything about the background for all of this but you came up with 1 hell of a cool product. I would love to check 1 out. Are there any local shops that may have 1. I am in Montgomery county but I drive through the Henderson area a few times a week View Quote |
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Hmm. Sounds like an infringement on the right the keep and bear arms to me.
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Is this the place run by the headcase who came here and trash talked LaRue?
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No idea who they are, but my first question is if the ATF found actual machine guns, or did they find items they "classified" as machine guns? Just remember that bumpstocks and boot laces can also be considered machine guns. View Quote For what it's worth, fuck the gayTF. |
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Quoted: Well here's the facts Lebowski (whom refuses to show his identity). 1) I never made fun of Larue's facilities. I simply stated that I have been in there twice. He did have crappy machines, but I don't remember ever publicly stating that. Larue then wanted to make a public argument about it saying that I wasn't signed into his logbook and therefore I was lying about entering his facilities (which I lived literally 3 miles down the road and had several friends working there). Back then there was a dozen ways to enter his facilities legally without signing his visitor logbooks (i.e. employees AND reps who didn't care about his silly visitor logbook which wasnt used by half the people who visited anyways). FoldAR is able to produce up to 1,500 folding uppers per month. We don't run max capacity... yet. And, no, our facility is not as big as Larue's... but it does have potential to become much bigger. Last I saw from Afmers, Larue manufactured less than 2000 firearms annually. 2) It was a decision made by Brian Shirley and Stephen Prentice of F&D to sue LWRC. I was thrown into the mix because of the topic of the suit, which was inventorship of LWRC's product. That suit was resolved to my pleasure, as previously stated. At one short period, I did represent myself. 3) I didn't sue my business partners (Shirley and Prentice), they sued me immediately upon my discovering that the FFL they acquired was fraudulent, and then my decision to immediately remove all of my personally owned manufacturing equipment from the F&D facilities. Their purpose for suing me was to prohibit me from reporting the fraud to the ATF (acquired a no-evidence TRO), which worked for them for the most-part, and the ATF was not able to investigate the matter. Their act of suing me did -of course- result in counterclaims. They did not prevail in their objectives of forcing me to return the equipment, forcing me out of the company, or winning any award against me whatsoever. Refusing to stay attached to them as a business partner, I sold my ownership in F&D to them and started my own company with my equipment as a result, whereas I continued manufacturing their parts independently, and then invented and started producing the folding AR. Of course all of these events were both dramatic and somewhat traumatic in a sense, but... ...still winning... View Quote |
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Yeah you can stop by our shop sometime. I will PM you. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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@enov8ive I dont know anything about the background for all of this but you came up with 1 hell of a cool product. I would love to check 1 out. Are there any local shops that may have 1. I am in Montgomery county but I drive through the Henderson area a few times a week Honestly, the rifle looked fantastic. The issue was with the idiot front man. Hope it works out for you. Where is your shop located? |
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Maybe you’re not running at max capacity because you created a product that the market didn’t ask for? Let me know when you can match an ALG ACT of Larue MBT for less than $80... Also, my wife is probably a lil better looking than yours. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted: Well here's the facts Lebowski (whom refuses to show his identity). 1) I never made fun of Larue's facilities. I simply stated that I have been in there twice. He did have crappy machines, but I don't remember ever publicly stating that. Larue then wanted to make a public argument about it saying that I wasn't signed into his logbook and therefore I was lying about entering his facilities (which I lived literally 3 miles down the road and had several friends working there). Back then there was a dozen ways to enter his facilities legally without signing his visitor logbooks (i.e. employees AND reps who didn't care about his silly visitor logbook which wasnt used by half the people who visited anyways). FoldAR is able to produce up to 1,500 folding uppers per month. We don't run max capacity... yet. And, no, our facility is not as big as Larue's... but it does have potential to become much bigger. Last I saw from Afmers, Larue manufactured less than 2000 firearms annually. 2) It was a decision made by Brian Shirley and Stephen Prentice of F&D to sue LWRC. I was thrown into the mix because of the topic of the suit, which was inventorship of LWRC's product. That suit was resolved to my pleasure, as previously stated. At one short period, I did represent myself. 3) I didn't sue my business partners (Shirley and Prentice), they sued me immediately upon my discovering that the FFL they acquired was fraudulent, and then my decision to immediately remove all of my personally owned manufacturing equipment from the F&D facilities. Their purpose for suing me was to prohibit me from reporting the fraud to the ATF (acquired a no-evidence TRO), which worked for them for the most-part, and the ATF was not able to investigate the matter. Their act of suing me did -of course- result in counterclaims. They did not prevail in their objectives of forcing me to return the equipment, forcing me out of the company, or winning any award against me whatsoever. Refusing to stay attached to them as a business partner, I sold my ownership in F&D to them and started my own company with my equipment as a result, whereas I continued manufacturing their parts independently, and then invented and started producing the folding AR. Of course all of these events were both dramatic and somewhat traumatic in a sense, but... ...still winning... |
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Maybe you’re not running at max capacity because you created a product that the market didn’t ask for? Let me know when you can match an ALG ACT of Larue MBT for less than $80... Also, my wife is probably a lil better looking than yours. View Quote A $80 drop in trigger for the CZ Scorpion Evo, comparable to the MBT I'd hit that up. |
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Sounds like infringement View Quote The license required F&D to manufacture and sell at least $500,000 worth of the product per month. Allowed 9 months for F&D to gear up production. During this time, F&D requested that FoldAR("ETM") to design and produce approx 250 pre-production units from billet, which ETM did. This is what F&D called the XAR Invicta product. About 5 months in, F&D agreed that it would be better for ETM to take over the manufacturing portion of some of the components (upper and forearm) primarily because F&D was unable to hire the appropriate personnel and equipment for manufacturing these parts. Aside from the sales requirement, within the license, F&D also agreed to do two very important things: 1) fund development and construction of manufacturing fixtures and 2) submit a purchase order to ETM to produce the upper and forearm parts. F&D failed to do both of these things, even while ETM allowed additional time. The license also required F&D to keep confidential all of ETM's property relating to the license, and to refrain from making copies of the provided material, including the pre-production units. While ETM was performing its services for F&D and gearing up to mass produce the folding uppers and forearms, F&D secretly hired a third party to make copies of the models and drawings and then to have someone else manufacture all these items. These activities were kept secret until more recently discovered in litigation. It was found that a very extensive team had been put together for the purpose of wiping ETM out, but only after agreement had been made with ETM and only after ETM had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on specialized manufacturing equipment and many hundreds of hours in development time and effort. Once F&D had its team set up, F&D stopped making its required payments to ETM as was otherwise required under the license. F&D's (Brian Shirley's) provided excuse for stopping payments was that it was nearly impossible to even "give-away" the pre-production folding firearms and therefore was parring back its efforts under the license. What I didnt know was, at the same time he made this statement, he secretly submitted an order for 6,000 sets of uppers and forearms with this third party manufacturing team. Then, in December 2017, it was discovered that F&D's owners had acquired a $1mil loan from a local bank. The astonishing part was that they had secretly used my patent on the folding firearm as collateral for the bank loan. I reported this to the FBI in Oklahoma City, and very soon after, the bank released the patent as collateral. The bank should have prevented this from the outset, but they were long-time good buddies with the oil-man owner of F&D and ignored their lawful duties under common banking regulations. For numerous reasons, including the bank fraud discovery, I terminated the folding firearm license with F&D in January 2018. Per the license, F&D was required to immediately stop manufacturing, advertising, and selling the folding firearm product. Then F&D demanded that ETM turn over its manufacturing operations to F&D... which has no basis in the license. However, from there on out, F&D completely ignored the fact that a license even existed and defiantly continued to advertise and sell without regard to termination. F&D was counting on me being unable to afford litigation to stop them, given the new debt I had acquired for the production build up and also receiving no more income from the license. This was a bad assumption made by F&D, as several law firms wanted to take the case on contingency in light of the blatant and criminal bank fraud issue. As litigation proceeded, they didn't remove the XAR Invicta product from their website until 18 months later, recently in June 2019. Today they are still advertising the product on their multiple social media platforms, though it is known that the F&D employees have very rarely gone in to work at the facilities for the last ~22 months. The license states that the XAR and Invicta trademarks had to be assigned to ETM upon license termination, along with the return of essentially any form of property which relates to the folding firearm. Nothing has been assigned or returned to date. In May 2018 the F&D LLC was involuntarily terminated by the Texas Secretary of State, it was finally reinstated last month. So all that false advertising and infringement done between May2018 thru Sep2019 (~16 months), had been done so with personal liability, i.e. no corporate liability protection. There were also 3 other agreements F&D breached with ETM, as subject of the court case to be finally resolved within the coming weeks. Then the ATF calls me last week asking me what I know about F&D's NFA items. They said they were in Seminole, OK and about to enter the F&D facilities. I told them that I had machined some machine gun lowers in April 2016 for F&D at their facilities, with their equipment, and under F&D's license and Class 2 SOT. Once completed (took me less than 1 day at their facilities), I handed them over to Brian Shirley and directed him to file the proper ATF forms within 24 hours. I never followed up with F&D to see if they had registered them, as it was out of my hands at that point. The next day the ATF stated that Brian Shirley was charged with violating the National Firearms Act, that he was required to resign from F&D, that F&D would unlikely being able to acquire a new FFL. I've been dealing with these guys for the better part of 7 years now, and have been at the brunt end of their control tactics. They have suckered me in, and when I tried to leave, they held me down with various legal/contractual strong-arming. However, my decisions to deal with them all these years is on me, and that's what I get. Throughout the years I received multiple physical death threats from Shirley, interference with my marriage, illegally cutting off power to my residence, risking my FFL standing, and numerous other issues stemming from Shirley's conduct. They have even posted numerous online postings under my name/handle in the past which had degraded my reputation in some communities. But I knew if I stuck in there and continued doing the right thing, and not trying to screw anyone over, it would pan out in the end. The fallout of all this, and the continued interference F&D caused, has resulted in ETM not being able to timely pay certain vendors the past year, has drastically cut into our ability to produce enough product for demand, and effects our ability to market the folding firearm accordingly. With resolution quickly coming to a head, we will be able to get caught up with everyone and start producing a lot more product, and with the awesome improvements recently released. So to any business owner considering investment partners, here are my words of advice: -Look at the success (or lack thereof) of the potential investor in his other businesses. Visit these businesses and look at how they run things. -Don't allow an investor to set up a shell company to serve as the investor/partner. Make him invest in his personal capacity. -Ask for (and require) the potential investor to submit personal financial statement and tax returns, and to disclose all important financial related information. -Don't give up any management control unless that investor is accepting the risk and assuming the liability, and has a history of success in similar startups. -Investor "Success" doesn't mean running the founders out after the founder has risked everything and has set up the business for potential success (see movie "Horrible Bosses 2"). -Investor "Success" means their verifiable achievements in making the founder become more profitable and more productive (see TV series "The Profit"). That investor should have a real exit strategy made in writing. -A bad (but smart) investor will use the business and control funds and operations of the business in a way to bankrupt the business (and you) in order to acquire full ownership when the wheels start rolling or light is seen at the end of the tunnel. They will try to put the blame squarely in your lap, when it was their concealed intent all along. I now see this as a common strategy for unscrupulous investors and they should be avoided at all costs by employing the above advice. |
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All the explanations are great....
All I care about is actual support for those of us that spent thousands on the rifles.... |
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I have to be honest. I had literally never heard of them prior to this thread. View Quote Quoted:
No clue who that is. View Quote |
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Seems like a bunch of purse swinging between no name firearm manufacturers that I don’t care about and don’t want any products from. Carry on.
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Quoted: The risk of purchasing from unknowns/small time nobodies. View Quote Everyone starts somewhere. They built a hell of a nice rifle.. accurate... seems the problem wasn't their product, but the people. |
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Quoted: The risk of purchasing from unknowns/small time nobodies. View Quote Everyone starts somewhere. They built a hell of a nice rifle.. accurate... seems the problem wasn't their product, but the people. |
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Years ago, they were not nobodies. If you shot long range AR's, or played in those circles, they were not unknowns. Everyone starts somewhere. They built a hell of a nice rifle.. accurate... seems the problem wasn't their product, but the people. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted: The risk of purchasing from unknowns/small time nobodies. Everyone starts somewhere. They built a hell of a nice rifle.. accurate... seems the problem wasn't their product, but the people. |
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If you mean they trolled the shit out of internet forums, yes, they were well known. Not because they won or their rifle was winning the shit out of matches or anything like that. View Quote The leaders of many companies are aholes... doesn't mean their rank and file suck at their jobs, or their product sucked. |
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Have you fired one? I have.. its a great rifle. Funny you mention internet trolls... The leaders of many companies are aholes... doesn't mean their rank and file suck at their jobs, or their product sucked. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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If you mean they trolled the shit out of internet forums, yes, they were well known. Not because they won or their rifle was winning the shit out of matches or anything like that. The leaders of many companies are aholes... doesn't mean their rank and file suck at their jobs, or their product sucked. And speaking of internet trolls, the community definitely isn't and didn't forget the shit they pulled on the hide and here. That'll never go away. And with what the op shared here (if true), it sounds like a real shit organization ran by a criminal. Glad I didn't spend my money on one. |
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Been asking that question for over 5 years now. Apparently just used primarily as a fun-toy tax write-off for oil-man owner. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Blows my mind how someone can build a company making a top notch, high end manufactured product... then let it crash. Come on Powerball |
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