January 22, 2022 response

Dr. Piazza,

I have been a member of Front Sight for many years. In fact, you sent me a personalized invitation to join Front Sight back in 1996. I have attended five Front Sight classes. Each time, I enjoyed myself and found the information helpful and the instructors wonderful. I’ve also tried to get others interested in becoming members of Front Sight and sent you money a couple of times for your ongoing litigation because I value the service and positive image that Front Sight provides to the shooting community.

I was about to schedule my next visit when I received yesterday’s e-mail(s) from you about restructuring Front Sight. I am writing to inform you that unless you reverse yourself on this restructuring, you have seen the last of me and my support. The order of my commentary follows the order of your e-mail of Saturday, January 22, 2022. I will be as civil as I can, although you are forewarned that your actions to turn Front Sight into a timeshare have really set me off.

I will quote your initial letter about the restructuring and then respond to each point in turn.

Front Sight is RESTRUCTURING Our Policies, Procedures, and Fees

Let’s start at the beginning, which in this case means getting some precise definitions of what we are discussing. Who is Front Sight? I think a lot of Front Sight members and others believe they know what Front Sight is, but I would like a substantive and detailed answer. There seem to be multiple Front Sight entities, and I would like to know which Front Sight we are talking about here.

I would like to know about the corporate status, the corporate structure, the corporate assets, the corporate liabilities, and whether there are any leases, sub-leases, liens, or other encumbrances on what members such as myself view as Front Sight.

By extension, then I want to know which Front Sight is in peril, which Front Sight we are supposed to be saving, which Front Sight members belong to, etc. If the situation is as dire as you say, we certainly cannot afford any confusion on these important points. Thus, we also need to know about Jennifer Piazza’s role in all of this, as well as details about your VNV Dynasty Trust I and VNV Dynasty Trust II.

NOTE: Time Sensitive Deadlines for Your Response and Participation to Maintain Your Membership.

In the same vein as my previous question, I would like to know which Front Sight entity or entities have memberships such as the ones I have. In other words, I want to make certain that no one has set up Front Sight entities in such a way that one entity has all the assets and another one has all the liabilities, as this arrangement makes it easy to declare the one with all the liabilities to be bankrupt while preserving all the assets in another similarly-named entity.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT letter I have written to members in the history of Front Sight. It is also, ultimately, the most positive letter I have ever written as it sets in motion the changes, through Front Sight restructuring our policies, procedures, and fees, that will ensure Front Sight’s successful operation and expansion for generations to come, long after you and I are gone.

Based on your previous assurances that Front Sight was going to continue after you and I are gone, you will forgive me for not taking your word about Front Sight’s future under this new regime. I have communicated with several Front Sight members since you announced the restructuring and not one of them expressed a positive reaction to your announcement. My guess is that if you lose a significant portion of your existing membership base and stop getting new memberships because of this announcement, things will quickly become untenable at Front Sight.

You may be a new member or you may have been with us for years, but I want to remind you that way back in August of 2018, I was forced to file a lawsuit to protect you and Front Sight when we were conned out of more than $500,000 by an attorney who initially posed as a legitimate businessman in 2012, with experience in raising construction funds for established and rapidly-growing projects in rural areas. […]

Please stop claiming that you filed this lawsuit to protect me. You are the one who got Front Sight and its members into this mess. As the saying goes, you can’t cheat an honest man.

Also, you have immediately called into question your honesty and integrity by failing to mention that this so-called con man loaned you / Front Sight $6,000,000.

As if that was not enough, the timing of this restructuring seems suspicious given the fact that you sent it out less than one month after being hit with two liens on Front Sight properties (this one and this one). Care to comment?

From the time I filed the lawsuit to protect Front Sight and your membership from being stolen in a fraudulent foreclosure attempt by unscrupulous, lying con men, I have encouraged EVERY member to step up and fight shoulder-to-shoulder with me […]

First, the so-called con man isn’t taking (or even threatening) my Front Sight memberships: You are. Second, you typically reach out to me more than once a day asking for money on one pretext or another, so the fact that you had a new pretext to ask for money was far from novel. It wasn’t even alarming: It seemed like business as usual. Nevertheless, as I once had to deal with 30+ high-stakes lawsuits involving a con man the likes of which few have ever seen or could even imagine, I supported you, as you requested.

[…] by financially participating in special offers that provided a HUGE Exchange in Abundance for your participation. […]

I don’t think Exchange in Abundance means what you think it means. What I sent you was money that had value. What you gave me was either a different name for that which I previously had bought from you or paper assets that we now see are worth even less than I long suspected they were, as you can make them disappear to suit your whims.

[…] I repeatedly explained that if all members were to participate, even at the minimal level, we could defeat all of our enemies and complete the project.

I participated and you neither defeated our enemies nor completed the project.

I’m not asking you to do anything heroic. I have always done that for you. I have always placed my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor on the line for you and Front Sight. You know this to be true, and I will continue to do so.

With all due respect, I don’t know anything about your heroism, your fortune, your sacred honor, what you will or won’t do in the future, or your veracity. A man is judged by his actions, so although you protest that you are honorable, when you act dishonorably you must expect to be judged by your actions.

Then, at Thanksgiving, I provided the GREATEST Year-End Holiday Gift I had ever provided in Front Sight’s 25-Year History by consolidating the numerous Front Sight memberships we have offered over the years into four membership levels, and UPGRADING EVERY MEMBER into a much higher-level membership than they previously had paid for, and I even added extremely-valuable and repeatedly-requested courses to EVERY Membership level.

I then UPGRADED EVERY To Be Determined Membership available for sale or transfer in EVERY member’s account to the higher membership level I had just upgraded their personal membership.

This represented tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, in value provided free of charge for EVERY MEMBER, and was yet another amazing Exchange in Abundance as I have done SO MANY TIMES for our members during the first 25 years of Front Sight’s operation.

I started with a lifetime Protector membership, which gave me everything I ever wanted from Front Sight. Even so, over the years I upgraded to Diamond, Guardian, Ambassador, President, Warrior, etc., rarely getting any tangible benefits for myself over what I would have received with my original lifetime membership. Some of the tangible benefits you promised never materialized (lockers, personalized brick, knife, shooting googles), while others were either of marginal use (hats) or poor quality (hearing protectors). I’ll grant you that the range bag is useful, but that hardly represents tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.

The fact remains, though, that pretending to credit my Front Sight account with items that were in reality of no additional value to me does not represent generosity, let alone abundance. Just the opposite. By artificially inflating the number of memberships in my account, you in effect lowered the value of every other comparable membership.

I then sent out emails EVERY DAY counting down the LAST 10 DAYS for EVERY Member to participate in FINISHING THE FIGHT against our enemies, by participating in ONE of three options: A simple donation to the fight, OR joining the Front Sight Warrior group and receiving spectacular value and guns and gear bonuses […]

See above for a reality check on just how spectacular your bonuses were in the real world. Also, for years you have been sending out e-mails that make some offer for the last minutes, or somesuch. Typically, you extend those last-minute offers for days or weeks and then come up with some excuse to extend the last-minute offer after its stated expiration.

So, what happened? […] We DID NOT Have Enough Front Sight Members Participate to Finish The Fight.

What did you expect? You typically send multiple e-mails seemingly every day, each trying to cajole money from your base. In this case, instead of offering them some real benefit for sending you money, you asked for support because you fell victim to your greed and/or gullibility.

I care about the Town of Pahrump […]

This is a side issue, but you should share some of your concern for Pahrump with your Director of Training Brad Ackman, who seems to think that the citizens of Pahrump are inbred lowlifes because they have chosen to live in Pahrump instead of the exclusive areas he prefers, and don’t have rich friends as he does.

I DEEPLY care about the Front Sight Members WHO DID step up and participate to the highest levels they could to Finish The Fight against the enemies attempting to steal Front Sight.

It’s difficult to believe that you care about me, let alone deeply, when you are taking from me that which — according to you — I have earned over the years of my association with Front Sight.

I have no choice but to make important and needed changes to Front Sight’s policies, procedures, and fees, to ensure Front Sight’s successful operation for generations to come. In essence, I have RESTRUCTURED Front Sight’s policies, procedures, and fees. You read that correctly. Front Sight is RESTRUCTURED.

(Am I correct in assuming that you are using the word restructured because Hillary Clinton already ruined the reset button concept, and Build Back Better was taken by the Biden administration?)

Before we get into the new structure, let’s recap just one of the promised benefits from memberships you have offered over the years (taken verbatim from FrontSight.com): Course attendance.

• The Front Sight All-Inclusive Diamond Membership […] ALLOWS YOU TO ATTEND ANY COURSE HELD AT FRONT SIGHT, NEVADA FREE OF CHARGE, AND AS OFTEN AS YOU WISH AND AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WISH …
• The Front Sight All-Inclusive Ambassador Membership […] ALLOWS YOU TO ATTEND ANY COURSE HELD AT ANY FRONT SIGHT LOCATION INCLUDING NEVADA, ALASKA, AND ANY OTHER FACILITIES OR LOCATIONS WE CREATE IN THE FUTURE. ATTEND AS OFTEN AS YOU WISH AND AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WISH FREE OF CHARGE …
• As Commander of Front Sight Lifetime Member you can attend ANY and ALL Front Sight Courses Free of Charge at ANY and ALL Front Sight facilities now and any facilities we develop or purchase in the future.
• As a Front Sight Founder Lifetime Member you can attend ANY and ALL regularly scheduled Front Sight Courses Free of Charge at ANY and ALL Front Sight facilities now and any facilities we develop or purchase in the future …
• [Front Sight Legacy membership] Attend the following courses free of charge as many times as you wish and as often as you wish.
• Here’s What You Get With the Patriot Front Sight Membership: Attend the following Front Sight Nevada courses free of charge and as often as you wish and as many times as you wish.
• As President of Front Sight Lifetime Member you can attend ANY and ALL regularly scheduled Front Sight Courses Free of Charge at ANY and ALL Front Sight facilities now and any facilities we develop or purchase in the future.
• [Order of Knights of Front Sight] Attend ANY and ALL regularly scheduled Front Sight Courses Free of Charge at ANY and ALL Front Sight facilities now and any facilities we develop or purchase in the future.

On the multi-course membership page that contains links to the current memberships, visitors are told that these memberships provide fabulous features and benefits of a Front Sight Membership, of which the free course attendance is just one of many listed. Your restructuring eliminates virtually every one of these fabulous features and benefits including the free course attendance. Is that how you show you care?

(The free-of-charge course attendance was never actually free of charge. Not only was there the fee for the Front Sight background check, but Front Sight also does not provide free ammunition. Yet, ammunition is one of only two absolute requirements of live fire firearms training, the other being the gun. It may be only a small lie, but after a while, all those small lies add up.)

I currently have something like 200 memberships in my account in addition to the useless Ammo Club (I can buy ammo elsewhere for less), guns-at-cost (I can buy guns elsewhere for less), and the train-at-home video. The courses are of most interest to me, although you have also canceled free stays in the hotel (if it is ever built), etc. (see below for other membership benefits that have evaporated like the morning dew). As far as I am concerned, this bait-and-switch represents a breach of contract, and as such is fertile soil in which to grow a class-action lawsuit against you and Front Sight.

Criminal Exchange is the lowest level of exchange. This is when you give something and you get nothing in return. Criminal Exchange is what happened to Front Sight when dealing with the lying con men who diverted the money we gave them to secure our funding, did not fulfill their promised funding, and when confronted, filed a fraudulent foreclosure action to try to steal the property.

Aside from the fact that criminal exchange sounds similar to what you are attempting to do to Front Sight members, please define what you mean by the property. If I remember correctly, you have repeatedly stated that Front Sight Nevada sits on 550 acres. However, property records show that it is only 77 acres. And when you talk about the property, what other assets are you including and what assets are you leaving out? Are you talking about the 1 Front Sight Rd, Pahrump, NV 89061 (APN 045-481-06) property, the 12501 S Hafen Ranch Rd, Pahrump, NV 89041 (APN 045-481-05) property, neither, both, or something else entirely? Also, why did you transfer ownership of the property at South Hafen Ranch Rd from Front Sight Management Inc. to Front Sight Management LLC, both of which are shown at your PO Box 1780, Windsor, CA 95492 address?

As of today’s date, these are the changes in Front Sight policies, procedures, and finances.

1. A new section is now on your Front Sight Account page labeled F$ Bucks. Each Front Sight Buck has the value of $1 (one dollar). […]

Another paper asset that is probably worth less than nothing now, and which you can depreciate at will, as you have just done with the other paper assets you gave us in abundance.

2. All Front Sight memberships are now willable. […]

Considering that members would be willing an obligation to support Front Sight financially along with each membership, this benefit is clouded at best.

3. Front Sight memberships can now be sold or transferred to ANY individual, even existing members. The restriction of no advertising in any public media remains in effect, but you can now sell or transfer YOUR membership or any of your To Be Determined Memberships to anyone, including existing Front Sight Members. This is an Exchange in Abundance as you were never able to do this in the past.

Little-to-no benefit here as this was always the case. I’ve made such transfers myself in the past. If it refreshes your memory, Front Sight used to charge a $100 transfer fee. The member could pay it, the recipient could pay it, or we could opt to have Front Sight pay it. Ring a bell?

4. All Front Sight memberships now have access to PRIVATE TRAINING. […]

Subject to your other restrictions, which — as in the case of the willable memberships — incur liabilities before they can be used, which didn’t use to be the case always.

6. Front Sight refunded into your F$ Bucks account any Front Sight Credit Multiplier purchases you made […]

More gibberish about paper assets. Each of your statements about refunds, double refunds, and conversions must be given the same weight as your previous statements about what you were giving members, as we now know you can depreciate and/or eliminate them whenever you want. You say you are giving them to members, but in reality, you are doing no such thing. What you are giving in abundance are smoke and mirrors.

Front Sight then determined what the Top 20 members with the most credits/patronage points had paid to accumulate the most credits. […]

A transparent attempt to make this patently unfair action seem fair.

As an ADDITIONAL Exchange in Abundance, Front Sight placed one additional Front Sight Coin in EVERY member’s account, above and beyond what they may have paid. […]

More gibberish about paper assets.

The Front Sight Members Co-Op is closed. […]

The Champion Club is closed. […]

Private Training for non-members is now $3,000 per day, per person. […]

The Front Sight Alaska facility will no longer operate.

Due to the difficulty in scheduling and staffing them, and the increased potential liability of running them, the following courses will no longer be offered at Front Sight: […]

Due to the ongoing difficulty in securing guns at any price, Guns at Cost program is closed. […]

Ammo Club program is closed. […] This change in policy will have a very positive effect in lowering the overall prices we charge for ammo for all members and students, as the increased volume will give us better purchasing power and reduce the overall price we must charge. […]

The following Membership Benefits are no longer valid: Free Hotel Stays; First In-First Out Privileges; Membership Pro Shop Discounts; Annual Secrets of the Ultra Successful Seminar, and Annual Advisory Board Meeting and Training. […]

Due to the difficulty in securing the level of quality we required in some of these items, shields, swords, books, manuals, DVDs and guns offered as free bonuses through the Knights membership will not be delivered. […]

All membership transfers now require a one-time, $1,000 transfer fee paid in cash, check, credit card, or available F$ Bucks in a member’s account.

This seems to be a pretty comprehensive listing of the fabulous features and benefits of a Front Sight Membership you for years said you had conferred upon us.

Regarding gun availability, if you had sent out this e-mail three weeks ago, I would have agreed. Now, however, some manufacturers are getting caught up on their backlogs, and gun inventories are again rising. For example, for many months my local gun shop was lucky to have more than one or two Glocks on hand. It was a banner day when they had a dozen from which to choose. Last week, though, they had more than 70 Glocks on hand, and this week they have more than 80.

Regarding the Ammo Club, one of my local gun shops moves a lot less ammo than Front Sight does, and yet its prices are much lower. Front Sight could lower ammo prices considerably and still only be at parity with ammo from other sources, so please don’t pretend you’re doing everyone a favor with your ammo prices.

The following fees, that have always existed over the last 25 years in order to operate, grow, and develop Front Sight, but were absorbed or paid by me, must now be paid by members and students. […]

This gets to the heart of the problem that has existed with Front Sight since the beginning. Your business plan seemed to be to get people to become members on the all-they-can-eat plan, and then try to convince them to use Front Sight resources as often as they could with little-to-no additional revenue to Front Sight. How was that ever going to be a sustainable business model? How could Front Sight ever be more than a Ponzi scheme, given this approach? For what it’s worth, my support of Front Sight has always been with one eye on the very real possibility that it could auger in at any moment because of the nonsensical way you were funding it.

Starting February 15, 2022, every student or member attending a course […] must either show proof of a minimum of $100,000 in personal liability insurance to cover them against damages they cause to other persons or property while engaged in the handling, carrying, and shooting of firearms, and training with firearms from the sling, holster and concealed holster while on Front Sight property, OR purchase said liability insurance covering Front Sight, and naming the student or member as an additional insured, from a vendor of Front Sight’s choosing, at a cost of $25 per day. […]

Starting IMMEDIATELY, every student or member enrolling in a course, prior to enrollment acceptance must pay a $25 per day Facility Fee for the number of days of their course. […]

Starting IMMEDIATELY, every student or member attending a course, prior to enrollment acceptance must pay a $25 per day Staff Support Fee for the number of days of their course. […]

[…] we now reserve the right to close off enrollments on specific courses and course dates based on facility and staff availability.

If these costs truly were part of running Front Sight every day since opening, why in the world did you not charge enough initially to offset them? Either you were lying then or you are lying now.

By the way, during my last visit in September, there was an announcement in no uncertain terms that we were not to tip the Front Sight staff, as Front Sight’s position was that our membership fee covered all costs. Was that announcement a lie, or are you lying about this now?

What do these changes mean for YOU in terms of costs?

Go to this Front Sight page NOW and pay your monthly or annual Membership Maintenance Fee. The cost is $50 per month or an annual payment of $500 per year. […] If you DO NOT pay your Membership Maintenance Fee by MIDNIGHT, February 28, 2022, your membership, and any and all F$ Bucks, FS Coins, TBD Memberships, and Certificates in your account will be forfeited.

This may come as a shock to you, but for $500 or $600 annually, plus insurance fees, facility fees, staff support fees, increased ammo costs (by having to use only ammo purchased through Front Sight), travel fees, lodging fees, and the costs of meals outside of the home, I can get pretty great training from any of three sources in my area. I don’t need Front Sight. I’m lucky when I can afford to attend a Front Sight class once every two years, though, so I’d be paying double in annual membership dues per course. In other words, I could attend one course every two years with Front Sight, or two courses per year locally and have money left over. That’s the same number of training days per year, with a lot less dislocation of my schedule and a lot fewer e-mails from Front Sight to wade through each day.

For the last 25 years, you have enjoyed such fabulous Exchange in Abundance that you were able to train without the above fees. Make no mistake, those costs are real and always existed at Front Sight, but I have always absorbed or paid them on your behalf. I really believed, and expected EVERY Member would reciprocate the Exchange in Abundance I have provided them over the last 25 years, by stepping up at my request to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me to Finish The Fight against our enemies attempting to steal Front Sight.

Either you are lying, or this latest legal disaster is the fig leaf of your plan to subvert Front Sight. How could you expect members to support you in litigation that none of us could have anticipated when we bought memberships? And why would the made-up-value paper goods you supposedly gave us be an argument for holding these paper assets hostage unless we give you more money?

You might not initially like the idea of paying a monthly membership maintenance fee or $150 in fees for a Two Day Course or $300 in fees for a Four Day Course, but a simple search of other firearms training facilities, not even close in comparison to the world-class facilities, course offerings, and stellar instructional staff you enjoy at Front Sight, reveals that Front Sight is still an unbelievable BARGAIN.

Bargain or not, you sold us our memberships on the understanding that we could attend courses for free for life. I’d be willing to bet that many of your existing members already made this comparison and opted for a Front Sight membership for just this reason. For you now to say you are reducing the value of Front Sight memberships because you’ve sold too many of them to service, shows just how out of tune you are.

For those who did step up and cared enough about Front Sight to participate in helping fund the litigation costs and Finish The Fight against our enemies, YOU will forever be designated as Front Sight Warriors. […]

With that designation and $3.20, I can buy a latte at Starbucks. Thanks for nothing.

What if you want to sell or give some memberships to friends or family?

Designate the recipient of the membership. Unless you want to pay the membership transfer fee for them with cash or your F$ Bucks, the new member will be responsible for paying the $1,000 membership transfer fee. The new member will create their own MyFrontSight.com account and pay the membership transfer fee, and then begin their own membership maintenance fee and daily training fees, just like every other member.

Translation: Transferring a membership to someone else makes them indebted to Front Sight for membership dues and other fees.

This sounds more like Exchange in Abeyance.

For the last 25 years, Front Sight has actively and aggressively sold memberships and upgrades. Front Sight will no longer be aggressively marketing memberships.

Excuse me for pointing this out, but we heard this before, and then you reversed fields and aggressively offered several more new levels of membership.

[…] You can now sell or transfer your memberships to anyone you want, including existing members. This means you will not be competing with me to sell all the To Be Determined memberships I have given you as Exchange in Abundance bonuses over the years.

Although the restriction of NO ADVERTISING OF MEMBERSHIPS IN ANY PUBLIC MEDIA remains in place, without much effort at all, you should be able to sell a membership or two every year to more than cover the costs associated with your own training at Front Sight. You don’t need to be a master salesman; you just need to bring them to Front Sight using one of the free course certificates you likely have from the numerous Exchange in Abundance bonuses I have given members over the years, or simply explain to your friends, family, and co-workers the incredible training and outstanding training value that Front Sight offers.

I suspect the real reason for the ban on advertising memberships for sale is that while you have claimed that memberships are worth thousands, they routinely sell on the black market for less than $100 (often far less) when they aren’t simply given away because so few persons want them.

The memberships will quite literally sell themselves. I know, I have been doing it for 25 years.

While running Front Sight into the ground. This is not something to brag about.

What if you choose not to participate with Front Sight any longer?

There is nothing you need to do. You do not need to contact us. We will see that your membership maintenance fees were not paid by MIDNIGHT, February 28, 2022, and your membership and all F$ Bucks, FS Coins, TBD Memberships, and Certificates in your membership will be forfeited on March 1, 2022.

Translation: Those fabulous paper assets I said I transferred to you are worth nothing — not even the 1/100th of a cent you get from a supermarket coupon — so that’s exactly what you will receive in exchange for supporting Front Sight for months or years. Sorry, not sorry, sucker!

You have spent years making Front Sight memberships seem too good to be true. I presumed they were when I gave you money, but I tried to give you money in proportion to the value I thought I was getting. Therefore, I don’t feel cheated but I do feel disappointed.

As disappointed as I am, I am not surprised. I always figured that this Ponzi scheme had to end sometime, and for the most part I acted on that assumption.

As for the way forward, if you’re truly having trouble making ends meet now, I imagine you will be closing Front Sight soon as thousands of members abandon you. If I were a cynical person, I would wonder if this isn’t an exit strategy for you. That is, you sense that you have bilked almost as much money as you can from this segment of the population, so under the pretext of trying to make a go of it, you sabotage it sub rosa so you can take your winnings and ride off into the sunset, leaving us members holding the bag and eliminating what could continue to be a fantastic resource for the shooting and patriot community.

In closing, I urge you to renounce this restructuring and hold to the promises you have made for years and which are still made on frontsight.com.

Greg Raven, Apple Valley, CA

See also: Visitor feedback.