ISO Certificate Mill Operator Guberman Dodges Arrest in Wiretapping Scandal

As you may know (or not), certificate mill operator Daryl Guberman faced a criminal investigation into illegal wiretapping when he recorded a phone call I made to one of his Board of Advisors, and then published the recording, all without the knowledge or permission of either party.

A while back I was researching the validity of Guberman’s alleged “Board of Advisors,” which so far we have discovered includes dead veterans, stock photos of models, and at least one photo of a woman taken from a Russian dating website. In short, most of his “Board” members don’t exist, which is probably moot, since it appears the companies he claims to operate were never formally registered anyway, meaning they don’t exist either.

One of the Board members listed is Kelly Rak, of Laurel Wire in Plainville Connecticut. I called Rak to ask if she knew she was listed by Guberman, and to my surprise she confirmed this. Midway through the call, however, Guberman began talking; apparently, through a weird coincidence, Guberman was sitting in her office at the time I called in. Guberman began his usual defamatory rants, prompting me to hang up. That’s when things got weirder: Guberman then published a recording of the call, in violation of Connecticut law.

Connecticut is a “two party consent” state, meaning that you cannot record a phone call without the consent of all parties; most states only require one-party consent. If only one person is unaware of the recording, Connecticut treats it as a civil violation. Where it gets strange is that when I wrote to Rak afterward, she insisted she, too, was not aware that Guberman had recorded it, which would mean that Guberman’s violation was criminal.

It seemed slam-dunk, but the Plainville Police Dept. struggled to find a criminal angle to bite into. Upon their investigation, they learned that Rak put the call on speakerphone, bringing Guberman into the call as a party, even though she did so without telling me. At that point, Guberman pulled out his cell phone and began recording the call, but did not tell Rak. My attorneys nevertheless view that as criminal, since Guberman was recording the call without telling either party, but the Plainville PD takes the position that because Rak put the call on speaker, she was granting consent for Guberman to be a party on the call, and thus it was legal for him to record a call for which he was a party. The fact that Kelly Rak didn’t tell me doesn’t — in their view — make Guberman’s call a criminal offense, it just means that Rak is sort of a raging asshole. But since she’s on the Board of Advisors for a company that victimizes dead veterans in order to sell unaccredited “veteran-owned business” certificates, that part is a foregone conclusion, I suppose.

Being a raging asshole is not illegal in Connecticut, so Rak and Guberman can soldier on in that department, but the Plainville PD did confirm that Guberman violated the civil statute, and have told me then intend to update their police report to indicate this, making things very, very difficult for both Guberman and Rak. Now we can use the official police report to support our case, and the court tends to view the police report with serious gravitas.

The fact that Rak has not made any attempt since to get Guberman to stop republishing the recording, while falsely claiming I “threatened his client” (I contact Rak as a Board member, not a client), means she will also be held liable for the surrounding defamation angle.

So while Guberman may have dodged a second arrest on his record (the first being that pesky DUI), he and Rak have provided Oxebridge with an entire civil case, wrapped up in a neat bow.

Laurel Wire has received at least two “certificates” from Guberman, one being for ISO 9001 and the other as a “Certified Woman-Owned Business”; the latter appears to just be a JPG put on Laurel Wire’s website, since there’s no such thing as CWOB certification. Guberman’s ISO 9001 certs allege to be accredited by ABAC, but that is just a website operated by Guberman and his various partners, which also appears not to exist

In a related matter, ANSI’s chief counsel has still not come forward to distance that organization from Guberman’s dubious claim that the US TAG to TC 176 hired him as their legal representative for .. well, something or other involved in harassing me. I’m still not buying the idea that ANSI put itself at such tremendous legal risk to involve itself with a guy like Guberman, but we can only operate with the facts we have. Now we are pursuing the possibility of obtaining the appropriate records on the matter via a pre-trial subpoena, which is tricky (subpoenas are typically granted after a suit is filed), but not impossible. Guberman filed up to 50 fraudulent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices indicating, under penalty of perjury, that he represented various ANSI figures, in an attempt to have the Oxebridge website shut down; if that matter goes through, Guberman and his various partners could find themselves on the losing side of a over $1 million in fines.

But the ANSI angle really starts to get interesting, since a picture is forming that both ASQ and ANSI are colluding with some pretty nasty characters in an overall strategy to shut down Oxebridge’s reporting. Fortunately for all involved, they really suck at it.