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Report: #57371

Complaint Review: Lasershield - Carlsbad California

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  • Lasershield 5931 Sea Lion Place, Suite 114, Carlsbad, California U.S.A.

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Lasershield has been raising money for 5 years for individual investors, claiming to have a product that will make millions for the investors. The founder, Anthony Dohrmann, has been living off the investors money. Everything he has told shareholders has been a lie. The company has yet to produce a product.

Everytime you ask about the status of the company, you are told everything is fine. The company won't release any financial statements. I can't verify Mr. Dohrmann's background....he claims to be an expert in security but there is no company that can verify this. Investors have put over 5 million into the company, and have gotten nothing. Beware...this is a scam.

Howie
NY, New York
U.S.A.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 05/17/2003 07:22 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/lasershield/carlsbad-california-92008/lasershield-systems-inc-fraudulent-investor-ripoff-business-carlsbad-california-57371. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
0Author
7Consumer
2Employee/Owner

#9 UPDATE Employee

MORE TO THE REST OF THE STORY

AUTHOR: AD - (United States of America)

POSTED: Sunday, November 29, 2009
Phone the managing director of Chicago Investment Group, LLC. Ask the actual bankers what happened and how they feel about the CEO, the state of the company, etc.

Comments such as these always appear when a large amount of layoffs or terminations occur. I let go of "more" than half the company during the turn around. Resentments make me unpopular.

The board of directors has always been comprised of actual investors and experts, and currently is operated by the largest investors and creditors who brought me back as CEO. The company grew until I left, shrank when I was gone, and is growing again with my return. Those are the facts.

Board members have operated large international companies. The board is not comprised of friends, but those with the most to win and lose. I was not involved with the selection of the controlling board members. I had never socialized or conducted business formally with the members who control 2/3 of the vote.

Unwinding a former acquisition was a project I worked on with the investment bankers for a month and a half before I publicly returned. "Fell through" aren't the words I'd use to accurately describe the front or back end of that transaction.

The business model has obviously been proven considering LaserShield is one of only 5, out of about 13,000 companies, that provides service to customers in all 50 states. It has qualified repeatedly in the top 100 largest alarm companies by both size and revenue. It continues to conduct business with some of the biggest retailers in the world.

The failing economy caused CompUSA and Circuit City to collapse. They were two of LaserShield's national accounts and the programs were extremely successful for us. The results of our performance at the first led to the deal with the latter. A direct dealer program and other channels were established under my direction, prior to my original departure from the company, to successfully replace these retailers. Retail has been a shaky place to be for many electronic manufacturers. The decision was prudent.

Until LSI terminated the banking relationship, later reconstituted, the bankers "were" raising capital for the business. They infused capital into the business upon my return, and because of my return. The ship is gaining speed.

In the first 24 months of the opening launch of LaserShield under my direction, the Company sold tens of thousands of security systems into the market place. These allegations don't make sense, unless coming from disgruntled people who unfortunately are not part of the go forward plan.

Our first mission as a company is to provide an extraordinary customer experience for our clients. We have developed a high quality product line and an unmatched infrastructure to deliver an optimum level of protection and support. We provide security service for people across America who normally could not afford, nor qualify for a security system, yet many upscale homes and offices now protect themselves with LaserShield as well.

We have intervened into numerous actual crimes in progress and our customers are grateful. Every aspect of our business objectives function beautifully in the real world. Our systems are stylish, affordable, and they pack a punch against crime. We make no excuses to our customers and work hard to satisfy their expectations.

Our monitoring facility provides services for over 1300 companies. In the first 180 days of our launch we rose from the bottom to the 2nd largest monthly provider of new emergency response customers. More importantly for customers, we have one of the lowest false alarm rates of our peers. Our system and service is reliable. Our methods are unique to any other processes used by other companies.

Our second mission is to provide a positive and lucrative experience for our stockholders. We do this by providing accurate record keeping, open communication, and focusing primarily on our first mission to our customers. Our stockholders invested in a product and service that really helps people. They want to protect the highest number of people possible, which in turn promises to provide reasonable financial upside as a byproduct.

In meeting the goals of both our missions our employees become the pivotal component to all that we do. The best of the best remain during economic downsizing and restructuring, while others are not part of the plan. That makes us sad. Yet we work to provide them with good references and to empower them to move forward.

We have expanded our line through an OEM partnership that provides fire, carbon monoxide protection, medical alert services, etc., all delivered with the same proven commitments we've made as a company since the beginning. This expands our customer demographic and I believe makes us stronger as a company.

The customers are behind us and recommending others, the smartest and wealthiest stockholders representing the majority of all of LaserShield's capital are behind us (and me), and in that we come to the old cliche- you can't make a good omelet without breaking a few eggs.

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#8 General Comment

The Rest Of The Story

AUTHOR: Uncle Eddy From Way Back - (United States of America)

POSTED: Sunday, November 29, 2009

"The truth behind this story is that the investment group told Anthony Dohrmann that they would no longer do business with him and refused to raise any more money for LaserShield. Dohrmann's personal friends run the Board of Directors and put him in place because he offered to run the company on what would make it cash solvent. The Next Alarm deal fell through a month and a half before he returned. He fired over half the company to bring the company in a new direction (although he had already exhausted over $38 MM of investments to achieve only 6,000 accounts). The "new direction" is only an attempt to create false hopes for those that work there and the business partnerships that are left. His business models didn't work, and still do not. The ship is sinking fast."

 

Why on earth would you want other people's reponses to be removed?  Just as you have a side to "your" story, others have one as well and they should be allowed to voice them accordingly.  The above paragraph was found at the following location:

http://www.topix.net/forum/source/las-cruces-sun-news/TDGDECO409J0JHRK9

 

 

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#7 UPDATE Employee

Investors & Brokers Reunite with Founder

AUTHOR: AD - (United States of America)

POSTED: Saturday, November 14, 2009

July 28th, 2009,  the Board of Directors of LaserShield, comprised of large stockholders in the business, voted Anthony Dohrmann (author of this response) as the returning Chief Executive Officer of the Company. This resulted after a collaboration with an established licensed broker dealer of 25 years who represents 391 LaserShield stockholders. My CFO was brought back too after he also left several months after my original absence from the business.  


The reinstatement occurred because the management who took the helm after my departure were not able to successfully manage and grow the business to the expectation of over $35M in founding stockholders. The consequences of the collapse of Circuit City and CompUSA (LaserShield's two largest national accounts) put hardship on the business. A process and decision for proceeding "with our without" brick and mortar retail needed to be considered. Our company appears to be more resilient than some of the retailers that sell our products and services.

We decided to expand on our more stable dealer base and I produced a go forward business plan unanimously accepted by investment bankers, stockholders, the BOD, and large creditors. 

LaserShield still maintains relations and sells through select Home Depot stores, Fry's Electronics and others. Our etailing business includes Sam's Club, Walmart and Home Depot. Two of our partners represent the #1 and #2 retailers in America. We have 264 licensed dealers. We service subscribers in all 50 states and we add boat loads of happy customers every month year after year. We've experienced bloggers who question the absence of more complaints from a company with such broad reach. We do such a good job it's suspicious.  

You don't see that problem with ADT. I'm an experienced guy. I'm a hard working guy. I have my stockholders best interest at heart. I admit my mistake in dropping the additional "a" in GAAP. I "personally" believe the discrepancy of a minor typo on a none commercial website response highly inconclusive in regards to LaserShield book keeping, the qualifications of our staff, and my own competency. The author of the previous rebuttal, who so graciously pointed out his own error regarding his response, initially listed himself as a former employee which could be mistakenly interpreted as a fact if readers do not press on to see the additional correction. I do not qualify the authors error as a testament to this individuals accounting competency or character.

Yes, auditors can be and have been duped. Yet LaserShield certainly had little insight to what the auditors were going to test, and to which level they would pursue certain areas. Our business completes thousands of transactions each month, yet it isn't that complicated. We don't leverage our account base and the way we book revenue is straight forward because we don't sell our subscriber paper and we don't enlist the use of underwriters in that capacity. Therefore nobody really has a motive to manipulate amortization schedules and financial statements. We're not pursuing endless private capital and loans like other large players are required to do in our industry. We operate on our own cash flow today. 

I reiterate- it's 10 years later, 391 investors, and thousands of customers under management for years across 50 U.S. states. We've evolved through start up teams, growth teams, and have had as many as 70 employees. We aren't perfect, but we strive to be in our service offering to customers. We're in security. We protect people from wrong doing. Sometimes third parties react from jealousy, lack of experience, lack of immediate gratification, loss of income, doubt during tough times, absent facts, and so on. That's okay. It makes us work harder to prove ourselves and ultimately that works out for the benefit of those that really matter in the long run.

I apologize to those that suffered earlier fear storms when we were in the development stage and it appeared we'd never get there. I feel for the people who felt they provided good service, yet were ultimately let go for one reason or another. It wasn't personal. I have sat on numerous other boards, launched other companies, and have no real complaints other than LaserShield. That's because in our quest to offer the highest quality of service and to pursue big dreams, we have accomplished enough to be noticed and scrutinized. We have also had to make tough choices which caused certain people offense. For those that regret their former statements or wished they could pull them down, unfortunately this website publishes a policy to "never" remove former reports, Luckily there are rooms for updates which allows for open discussions. 

At the end of the day we're a great company with a terrific and loyal team, and we deliver exceptional products and services. We have released two new products both in areas of intrusion and medical since my return to the Company.

BUY LaserShield. You'll be glad you did. 

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#6 Consumer Suggestion

Oops

AUTHOR: Alias - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Saturday, June 27, 2009

Sorry, for some reason I filed my last post under "ex employee" which I am not, sorry for the confusion.

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#5 Consumer Suggestion

Just a observer

AUTHOR: Ex-employee - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Saturday, June 27, 2009

I happened across this because I was interested in buying a LaserShield system and though I would respond.

For the ex CEO of the company, you should know its GAAP not gap. Secondly, I too have about 25 years of accounting experience with companies ranging from global pharmaceutical companies, to regional CPA firms. In all of that experience, companies would NEVER allow anyone who is not CPA certified to prepare financial statements, EVER.

Lastly, auditors can only confirm management assertions. Information can be hidden with relative ease if you know ahead of time where the auditors may be looking. Having your financial statements audited does not confirm legitimate business practices (I.E. Enron), so I find many flaws in your argument.

Just an observation.

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#4 UPDATE EX-employee responds

Claim by Disgruntled Employees- Unfounded.

AUTHOR: Founder - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Thursday, February 19, 2009

LaserShield has been developed into a significant brand nationwide. The Founder does not own a boat or "boats". This description of lavish lifestyle is unwarranted and the Former CEO lived on a modest salary and during tough times worked for the company for free, while extending substantial personal credit and personal liabilities to the business. The company has developed amazing hardware, and distribution with Hughes Satellite, Circuit City, CompUSA, Home Depot, Tiger Direct, Crutchfield, Fry's Electronics, ADI/Honeywell, and others.

There are alot of investors and most have a long standing relationship with the former CEO of this company, as well as with him in former businesses. If investors had a problem you'd see more complaints than from "howie", a disgruntled contractor who lost a $300,000 corporate identify and branding job to a superior contractor nearly 6 years ago, and a second, terminated and "sued" employee, who filed their comments over half a decade after the first.

Doesn't make much sense.

The party who wrote the last piece was terminated for cause, including transmitting confidential information to competitors. There is a law suit filed against the party and the law firm will be notified of this posted set of allegations which can cause harm to the company and the reputation of its former CEO.

The Company has operated with a CFO who has experience operating a large international company, as well as leading an accounting team for a public company. The business I founded also has been operated with a controller with 30 years of professional accounting experience. Two year financial audits were completed, resulting in a "non qualified" opinion letter, indicating that the business is compliant in all material ways with GAP. The auditors are a reputable firm and independent. With the need to access growth capital and credit facilities in a downed market it is common to note this business and many others as "a going concern".

The business has downsized staff on two occassions, due to the collapse of two national retailers for unrelated reasons. That is typical of the market downturn and widely reported in the press. There is no history of staing in all "the most expensive hotels". The company conducts consistent and repeated business and travel in virtually all 50 states, as well as Canada and Mexico. The company used to operate a 1974, 35 year old small prop aircaft transporting cargo and a small group of people to tradeshows and events. It no longer does.

Any competent reader can see in remarks like "when you make a mistake it's constantly thrown in your face" that it is from somebody taking privelage to run a smear campaign because they've suffered an unfortunate loss of income, and the realization they had been caught engaging in questionable activities.

Although I am no longer with the company, and new management was installed last year, I take offense to the reckless endangerment of the good will and well being of the company I founded in 1999, as well as my own reputation. Being that I have left the company I still wish for the investors to enjoy a good brand name and hope for a prosperous future.

The internet makes for a good circulation of informative information. It also makes for a wide open forum for unstable, unreasonable or uninformed opinions to make their way without regulation into the public.

Just read the blogs on Ford Motor Company and 1,000 other crazy allegations and conspiracies.

Dear J & M - I understand you're upset, but what you did that led to the seperation was harmful to the business. If you believed the allegations you've made on the web to be true you would have taken a significantly different path. This is an emotional response. Lets move on.

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#3 UPDATE EX-employee responds

Fraud is an Understatement

AUTHOR: Ex-employee - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Wednesday, December 24, 2008

I used to work at this company, and the owner acts like he is a Multi-millionaire living off of investors money. He buys airplanes, boats, and when he travels he stays at the most expensive hotels and buys drinks for himself, his airplane pilot, and his administrative assistant that everyone knows he is hooking up with. He is arrogant, and his little "scare tactics" and constant "temper tantrums" made me not respect him one bit.

All these lavish expenses, yet he continually lays people off every pay day in order to make his payroll. While some people work long hard hours, making $10 an hour, he pays people $40,000 a year plus who do absolutely nothing, other than making reservations and writing emails. He has executives, all of which have redundant titles, they have no sense of responsibility and continually pawn things off on other people.

His financial statements are a joke as well. They are prepared by a CFO and a controller whom neither of which are CPA's, or have any advanced certifications other than a bachelors degree. Every week they have meetings to see how they can make their books look better, re-arranging expenses on a whim, doing whatever sort of accounting they see is fit at the current moment. And when you point out a mistake to them, you end up getting told that it is not your business and dont worry about it. When you make a mistake, it is constantly thrown in your face. The only good thing is that they FINALLY had financial statements auditing this past year. And when the auditor issued a "going concern" the controller said "on that is standard, they do that on every audit." What a moron!

Bottom line, do not invest in this company, and if you do, please, ask for proof of company expenses when traveling. Checks used, or credit card expenses (actual charges, no report). You will see what this guy blows your hard earned investment on, an extravagant life that he can not afford on his own.

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#2 REBUTTAL Owner of company

Continuing with full integrity... as always.

AUTHOR: Anthony - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Monday, November 01, 2004

It has been long over a year since lasershield was first introduced to the market place. After 5 years of development, FCC compliance, and a major strategic arrangment with Rapid Response monitoring, who at great personal expense, spent three long years developing an IT platform to deliver a seamless integration from manufacturing, to supply chain managment, to alarm monitoring, to user interface, and to technical and customer support. News links on major stations are on our website can be found where the "does it works guy" chooses a volunteer unfamiliar with the product to sample for a week. The end result? "The product as represented meets all of its claims". As we schedule to release nationally to retail after successful tests at CompUSA, numerous resellers from Hawaii to New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia, and Florida continue to launch and build new markets.

Of one individual who attempted to leverage a small investment for a $300,000 branding contract in exchange, which was denied, (who also requested finanacial records we offered for her to review at our place of business- she declined. We offered to cover the cost for any independant accountant to conduct a review in our office and submit her a report. She declined.) We have no scorned investors, except for this one attempting to get a super high paying job with the company. We have had disgruntled employees fired who couldn't meet the tasks required. Buy they moved on with their lives.

The business is proven. It is forging ahead according to plan. We recently aired on QVC in June for all the world to see. The individual in question lives in NY but has chosen a fictitious name for this posting. We only wish we could enforce our consitutional right to face our accuser. Browse the web and you'll find lasershield for sale everywhere both before and after this scathing, empty, unfounded string of false allegations were posted.

This company has undergone full financial audits and operates with integrity and with extreme fiduciary resolve as it continues to increase value for its backers.

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#1 REBUTTAL Owner of company

absent of supportive facts and information, and reads like a woman scorn.

AUTHOR: Anthony - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Friday, November 21, 2003

Anthony Dohrmann managed California Home Security (lic.# 001234) up until the time it was sold to American Home Security, which was sold to Protection One in the early 1990s. The owner of CHS was named Phil Nordella who currently resides in the Valencia, CA. area and practices real estate. Anthony Dohrmann was licensed throughout the 1990s (license # ACE 33526) by the Bureau of Security & Investigative Services, a Consumer Affairs division of California, as a licensed alarm company employee. This same regulatory office issued an Alarm Company Operators license for Anthonys company, Gold Coast Security (lic. # ACO4132) which he later sold to DynaWatch in Maryland.

Although it has been years since Anthony practiced as an insallation and service company, these licenses have not been maintained, but should be simple enough to verify and anyone questioning his previous experience in the alarm industry can request a receipt of the actual sale of his last alarm company.

Additionally, LaserShield Systems, Inc. (www.lasershield.net) is currently selling product in a test market in San Diego, California at both CompUSA and select Ace Hardware Stores. The company has also received a Purchase Order from QVC. All stores & their contact information, and who are carrying the product, can be found at the Lasershield website. The product is scheduled to be on the CompUSA website as well in the first week of December, 2003.

Advertisements can be viewed which indicate which stores carry the product in both the San Diego Union Tribune (see the Nov. 23rd, 2003 version), as well as the North County Times.

The company maintains a residence and two full time product managers in mainland China (location of the mass production facility), as well as an experienced and extensive management team of engineers with prior experience at companies such as Cisco and Netscape. The allegation posted is untrue, ridiculous, and malicious. Clearly a disgruntled previous employee or consultant is likely the culprit here. The company has completed two years of financial audits and received a "non qualified" letter, the most commendable result from a professional accounting firm, indicating we have complied with GAP standards.

All records are available for all our stockholders review at the companies place of business. The company stockholders are incredibly impressed with the companies progress. The company was founded in March of 1994. The company maintains consistent and detailed information to it's stockholders as it has across 4 1/2 years of rigorous and complicated development of hardware, tooling, firmware, and software applications.

Professional Radio Ads running, which advertise the stores with product available, can be heard on KFMB-AM, KFMB-FM, and KYXY-FM.

LaserShield also maintains 7 day per week customer support operators with one of their vendors at Accent facilities. You can phone the numbers and speak to the operators about the product. Contact information can be found at www.lasershield.net at the customer support section. You may also phone Rapid Response Monitoring Services in Syracuse New York to verify our business and progress. They are one of the most respected alarm monitoring companies in the country and have been working with Lasershield for over two years of co development on back end IT systems and infrastructure.

Final verification can be obtained by phoning our alarm trade and regulatory attorney Alan Pepper at Mitchell, Silverberg, and Knupp in Los Angeles at 310-312-3155. General Corporate counsel is Stephen Soden who is available at 619-239-3200. You may also search for the extensive patent list, both awarded, and pending which clearly incidates a substantial amount of engineering and IT development which has required dozens of developers and engineers, as well as leveraging resources from our strategic partnerships.

This report from the mysterious "Howie" is vague, absent of supportive facts and information, and reads like a woman scorn. It is inappropriate to report false allegations against a company that has accomplished so much. We hope to have provided enough "facts" to offset this terrible misrepresentation of both our progress and our integrity. If anyone wishes to receive a demonstration video, or more information please don't hesistate to reach us through our website or visit a local CompUSA or Ace Hardware, which clearly should dispell any rumor.

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