It’s been a tough month or two for the certificate mill operators. Since getting confronted for their activities on LinkedIn, we’ve seen QualityMasters’ Mike Kuklewski accuse the entire ISO 9001 forum of censorship, and claim it was like a “crucifixion,” while Pakistan Registration Services’ Zafar Chaudry likened criticism to a “crusade”, G-PMC’s Daryl Guberman claimed accreditation is anti-semitic, and Del Straight… well if you find red goo in your internet tubes, it’s because he exploded.

Injecting himself into a discussion about Guberman, Del Straight — he who runs unaccredited cert mill “QSRD” – first took a position against the certificate mills, and argued for a solution. From 4/12/2013, 10:40 AM:

Has anyone ever seen a NADCAP certification from an unaccredited registrar? If you haven’t there is a good reason, its illegal. Seems to me the problem could be fixed by following the NADCAP model. One registrar-no confusion. The US alone currently has 72 ANAB approved ISO 9001 registrars. Do we really need 72 registrars?… Under a NADCAP model, unaccredited registrars would cease to exist.

The very next day, 4/12/2013, I reminded the participants that Del Straight was, himself, an unaccredited certificate mill operator that had previously argued against what he perceived was an ANAB monopoly. I asked for evidence of his “Raytheon Presidential Letter of Commendation” and his alleged “RAB/QSA Lead Auditor Certification,” both of which he claims on his website. His tone changed, needless to say, and he actually threatened to sue:

When hiding in another country it is easy to fire off lies and half truths. Let me know when you get back. There are process servers waiting. If you would actually read the posts, you will find that I am posting in opposition to unaccredited registrations. I owe you no proofs. After all, who are you to me anyway? In fact, who are you? If anyone wants the real truth, feel free to email me personally.

Later, he also took time to explain how he perceives his role when issuing unaccredited certificates, like this one, complete with bogus RABQSA logo.

I am an internal auditor not a registrar. I comply with ISO 9001 because I am only auditing the clients compliance. I am not auditing my own work. Because I require strict adherence to ISO 9001 and I consider customer requirements and expectations, I write more nonconformances than most 3rd party auditors in less time.

Despite having said he was not auditing his own work, he contradicted himself in the very next sentence:

I have an advantage because when I find nonconformity, I can suggest solutions.

Every one of my customers is aware that I am a first party auditor. I make no claims otherwise and it states such on my website. I explain that thoroughly and they sign a document acknowledging that fact.

When fellow cert mill operator Zafar Chaudry came to Del’s defense, asking that the thread be closed, Del agreed:

@ Zafar Thank you! I am out!

The “Out!” is a Del Straight common exit phrase, one he used in a private email to me the last time he “quit” LinkedIn on 2/7/2013. This becomes important later, so stick with me.

Del only remained “outed” (so to speak) for an hour, when he returned to ask me what the definition of “first party auditing” was, something he just said he not only knew, but had his clients sign contracts regarding. (Needless to day, his actual auditing is 2nd party, not first.)

A half hour later, after confronted with the fake ISO 9001 certificate which used the RABQSA logo, Del offered up a curious denial:

Let me also go on the record as stating that I never put an RAB logo on any certification. Once a client placed an ANAB logo on one of my certs. When ANAB made me aware of it, I took legal action to have the cert removed from the internet and discontinued serving that client. The one cert with the RAB logo is probably the same. jpegs of logos are readily available on the internet. Anyone could cut and paste. If I were going to use a logo, wouldn’t I put it on all certs instead of just one?

Well, anyone could cut and paste, but it would take a lot of work to find out the exact Omnex training certificate number owned by Del Straight and enter it onto the image as well.

(The other logo is for bogus “accreditation body” US Accreditation Services.)

Del had forgotten that in a previous post during his Jan – Feb activity on LinkedIn, he had admitted that RABQSA had threatened him with legal action after discovering the use of their logo. (RABQSA has been contacted for comment, and their response will be added later.) But Del’s denial of actual, physical evidence was only beginning.

Again ignoring his own usage of a bogus “USAS” accreditation mark above his own signature, Del commented on Daryl Guberman’s equally bogus claim of accreditation:

As far as Mr. Guberman is concerned, I do not know him so I cannot judge him. For all I know he could be a competent auditor. He could also be a fraud. However, his claim to be accredited is unfounded and calls his integrity into question.

By 6:30 AM the next day, Del was again ready to quit, after being pummeled with questions from not only me, but others, accusing us of lying, and simultaneously arguing against the accredited certificates he had previously defended.

Your arguments would have weight, if they were not based on a lie. There are hundreds of businesses worldwide that make inferior products under the flag of an accredited registration. Anyone living in the real world knows this for a fact. Want to get concerned? How about companies with accredited registrations using counterfeit parts in aircraft, weapons and medical devices? When have you seen an accredited registration auditor actually get concerned with the clients product?

With regard to me, he went on to again throw hints of a pending lawsuit, and then quit for the second time in two days:

According to you it is OK to post lies, slander and things for which you could be sued, as long as you live outside the jurisdiction of the legal authorities.

I am done with this banter.

“Being done” only took a second, because he continued, now reversing his opinion of accreditation yet again:

If a NADCAP model were adapted, there would be no unaccredited registrations. If QMS audits were conducted in the same manner as a NADCAP audit of a processer [sic], a certificate would mean a quality product was made by the certified company. From this point forward, this is the only post subject, I will respond to.                    

That wasn’t the only post subject he would respond to.  Taking a few days off, he returned on 4/15/2013 to raise another question, taking a third position on accreditation:

Shouldn’t we be focused on the auditors Mr. Guberman uses not his certificates. Who are they? What experience do they have?

As food for thought, if you were looking to hire an auditor which would be the most important criteria? Accreditation or Experience? If you say both, is there a point where experience negates accreditation? Unless things have changed, to qualify for application as an ASQ certified Quality Engineer you needed an associate’s degree. However, the degree requirement could be negated by X number of years experience.

 

Alas, someone took him up on his earlier challenge, and emailed him personally regarding his alleged Raytheon Presidential Letter of Commendation. Del’s reply was then posted:

 

Straight forward answer. It was given to me and members of my team over 30 years ago. As a young Quality Engineer with Raytheon ESD in Goleta, California. I discovered a design flaw in circuit boards being used in Radar Jamming Devices for aircraft. It involved using solder as a mechanical bond (you should never do that in a vibratory environment.) I also proposed an economical solution and recommended recall and retrofit. I presented a lengthy report with diagrams, case studies, etc. Unfortunately, the chief design engineer refused to act on the suggestion. (A 25 year old kid wasn’t going to tell him how to design). Months later the field failures began. They implemented my solution. Gave me a letter and fired the engineer. The letter was signed by the President of Raytheon Corporate. The letter is both a commendation to me and an embarrassment to Raytheon. I was politely asked to remove the copy from my website and did so and I certainly wouldn’t give it to anyone in this forum.

When asked again to produce a copy, he refused. When asked if he could simply name the “President” that signed it, Del responded:

I can give you the why but not the who. The letter included dates. The date of my report and the dates the field failures began. One was a year after the other. That is as much as I can say.

He never gave any dates, but since Raytheon has not had a “president” since 1975, Del Straight would have been in his teens or, at most, 21 years old at the time this was allegedly issued.

Things got a little more bizarre — if you can imagine that — when Del not only claimed that “IOS” was a perfectly legitimate name for ISO, and that I should go after unaccredited certificate mills like 9000World.com . the only problem is that 9000World.com is a consulting website, not a registrar, and is already ISO 9001 certified themselves. In his defense, he merely blamed 9000World, saying  “their website misled me.”

After reviewing Oxebridge’s new list of users of unaccredited certificates, he again hinted at legal action:

@ Chris Unless you want other process servers looking for you, you might want to revisit your list of companies that use unaccredited registration.

By this time Del had provided additional information to another poster, via private email, which they immediately shared:

What Chris does not tell anyone is that I give my audit clients those certs at no charge. Because that is what they are worth. It gives them an opportunity to quote on work that requires a cert to quote. The cert I give has a 1 year expiration date on it. Once my client gets work, I stay on as the internal auditor and direct them toward an accredited source. This gives them the opportunity to actually get work before they take on the major expense of an accredited source. 

If you feel as Chris does, that it makes me a villain or criminal so be it. Every client is aware of this going in both verbally and in writing and they sign the document. I am on site when they get their accredited audit and am available when they get a customer audit. I guarantee in writing that they will pass both. If they are given a nonconformance by any source, I help them make correction and answer the CAR at no charge. I stick with them thru final approval.”

I do all of this for about $800 per year. (The cost of my annual audit).

That is what I do. It works for me. It works for my customers. It works for their customers (because even they now what is going on). Unlike the picture Chris paints and will continue to paint, no one is being deceived.”

When the point was made that it is the public that is deceived by the false QSRD certificates,  and that collusion between Del and his clients may amount to conspiracy under the US RICO act, Del… well… exploded. The following is a literal cut and paste from the post, unaltered and unedited in any way (from 4/18/2013):

You people have been quite entertaining. You banter with someone that you do not even know nor do you even know if the one doing the writing is who he says he is. You can use any name you want to open a gmail, yahoo or msn account that doesn’t even consider hijacked email accounts. Tie that account to a LinkedIn account and presto chango I am whomever I want to be. I did have Mr. Straight’s permission though.

You have made a cause out of something that is perfectly legal, something that is not even forbidden by the owners of the standard and used words like villain, criminal and snake oil salesman. Yet, you chat regularly with sex offenders, people with multiple DUI convictions even a member of a known domestic terrorist organization and think nothing of it.

You typify the internet “mob mentality” subculture. You have an alpha leader that no one dares contradict. Many try to become the leader’s clone in order to gain acceptance acting and speaking in a manner that they would never do publicly. For now, your alpha leader has made unaccredited registration the most important thing you can work on. Tomorrow?

You have shown what nonverbal communication can do to a society.

Watch for our articles this summer in the Detroit Free Press. We won’t use names but you will recognize each other.

What happened in the above post is remarkable. not only did Del seem to claim his identity was stolen, it was done so with his own permission. Then he called his critics “sex offenders, people with multiple DUI convictions even a member of a known domestic terrorist organization.”

By 4/20/2013, the posts disappeared, deleted by Del, but had been screencapped prior and retained as part of LinkedIn’s real-time email updates of post activity. Del now took to apologies, while nevertheless ramping up the attack on Guberman:

I offer my apologies to Chris, John, Larry and Mary in all seriousness. I felt at the time that you were being ridiculous and apologize for thinking so. The issuing of a certificate without a proper audit should be illegal. It is a swindle. The issuing of a certificate with fake accreditation, as is the case with Mr.Guberman should carry civil penalties.

I will keep future posts professional and not personal. I would hope that you accept my apologies and reciprocate.

Ignoring his own bogus usage of the USAS logo, and as if his meds had just kicked in, he then posted as if nothing had happened:

If a company is fully compliant with ISO 9001 and they receive a proper and independent audit:
Does it matter if the registrar was accredited or not?
How does the accredited registrar make them more compliant?

If a customer does not care about the source of the registration, how are they being cheated?

An additional point, if a company does require accredited registration (not all do) it is an insult to their intelligence to think they could not tell an accredited registration from an unaccredited one. If then they accept the unaccredited one, they are not being cheated. They made an informed choice.

However, when an attempt is made to fake the accreditation by using an ABAB logo (misspelling intentional) they are trying to swindle. If they issue a certification without a proper and independent audit, they are cheating.

Again, the USAS logo on the Del Straight certificate was not mentioned. As if trying to get his boat into the prevailing wind, he instead took to attacking Daryl Guberman  head on, again ignoring the fact that he is earning money for the exact same behavior.

If I may put our differences aside for one moment. On the topic of this discussion, Mr. Guberman does not represent me or my philosophies. He called me last week asking for assistance. I would not provide any because I do not share in his thinking. However, here are some of the Red Flags that I took away from the conversation:

One of his first questions to me was “Who the ____ is Chris Paris?” Followed closely by “What the _____ business does this Mary Winch ________ have calling my endorsements. His language throughout the entire call was crude and laced with expletives. Not only do I find this offensive and unprofessional in a business conversation, I find it odd for a man who claims to be so religious. I am sure there is “Thou Shalt Not” that covers that.

On a related point, mixing religion with business is also is very concerning. For example, he asked if I could provide him with information to “Strengthen the Sling of David”. Does he feel that he has divine backing? Last I looked ANAB was not located in the land of Canaan and Randy Dougherty isn’t that tall.

The call was more of a speech than a conversation. On several occasions he launched into a rant about how the entire ISO system is against him because of his religion and vows to continue the fight in the name of God. He covered everyone from ANAB to NADCAP all of which are plotting against him. By the way, Chris , it seems that you, Mary and I are also now on his list of anti-Semites.

I am not Jewish but I am sure he does not represent Judaism. With the type of twisted, demented religious zealously he displays in conversation, I am Glad he does not live in my neighborhood. Not because I am anti-Semitic. But because I am anti-Nutjob.

If he calls again, it is going to voicemail.

So there you have it. The guy who calls his critics a “mob” that includes “sex offenders” finds Daryl Guberman’s “offensive and unprofessional.”

 

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