Florida Atty Gen.: Miami guy sells fake course, PADI cards

[redacted]

All that's required to train divers and issue cards is some water to teach in and a card printer.

And then, if they are generally accepted by dive ops, they will have value. If it were EAN, you wouldn't even need water.

 

[demed]

What does it explain specifically?

Say I'm well connected and live in Somalia. I teach a very comprehensive SCUBA class that covers all the required OW material, as well as a bunch of non-OW material like rock bottom, and produce very safe, competent divers, and issue counterfeit PADI cards.

How is the quality of the training connected to whether or not PADI got paid for anything?


flots.

Hypotheticals for hypotheticals:
- you are well connected, you emigrate from Somalia and make a decent living elsewhere
- the Islamic courts cut your head because you are spreading un-Islamic precepts in conjunction with an evil western corruptor of Somalian minds
- nobody knows PADI in Somalia and customers flock to the nearest CMAS affiliated shop
- he got stiffed by his instructor who gave him a false instructor card based on Orange county programs from the 60s


On a more serious note, why would a prepared, competent, professional individual, who has spent years training, who has spent years building a training curriculum, who is tremendously competitive on the market want to steal someone else IP for no gain when would have access to a large number of agencies, including PADI itself?

 

[Pinecube]

I did not see where it stated he was incapable of teaching or that his teaching standards were less than anyone elses.

While I love the defense of PADI, Where in the documentation provided did you find an accusation of endangering the students or providing bogus training??

He may be a great diver and perfectly qualified to teach, having never met the guy, I wouldn't know. The problem is that he was not certified through PADI to teach a PADI course with PADI material, issuing a PADI certification.

Putting the PADI stuff aside; even if his own certification training was just as good as anyone else's, he was still lying when he said it was recognized worldwide.



Edit: About the bogus training: It doesn't seem to go into detail too much about what training was provided to which card the customer got. They said that some people got the PADI card and some got the OEI card, some got less training dives, some got more, but doesn't seem to say which training got which card.

Though I would be pretty worried if, after finding out my PADI card was not valid, I was given a completely different certification (OEI card) because the "it would cost too much to replace" the PADI card.

 

[demed]

While I love the defense of PADI, Where in the documentation provided did you find an accusation of endangering the students or providing bogus training??

according to your line of thinking, why would somebody good enough to teach for any agency would need to steal someone else's IP what that is available to anyone meeting requirements that the individual should already possess?

 

[flots am]

On a more serious note, why would a prepared, competent, professional individual, who has spent years training, who has spent years building a training curriculum, who is tremendously competitive on the market want to steal someone else IP for no gain when would have access to a large number of agencies, including PADI itself?

No special reason, except that you sounded like you were trying to tie the quality of the training to whether or not fraud was involved.

My point is that it's entirely possible to teach an excellent class and produce safe divers, regardless of agency affiliation (or lack of), or authenticity of the cards or whether there was any sort of copyright/tm violation. FWIW, the opposite is true too. It's possible to produce terrible, unsafe divers with perfect paperwork.

---------- Post added February 16th, 2015 at 02:37 PM ----------

Though I would be pretty worried if, after finding out my PADI card was not valid, I was given a completely different certification (OEI card) because the "it would cost too much to replace" the PADI card.

At this point, I'm not sure I'd care what kind of card I got.

I only go to places that check my c-card once or twice a year. The rest of my diving is local, however no matter what card I produce, the first dive is always a "checkout" dive for the group, even if not stated as such, and after that, they leave me alone.

On random occasions, I've produced various cards from pro, to tech, to OW, and once even pulled out a "SCUBA Rangers" card. The SR card produced a little smile from the DM, but they all wanted to go "diving with us" for the first dive, then left us alone for the others. My most-important, most-validated card says "Visa". That one has to be legit.

flots.

 

[SubAquatix]

according to your line of thinking, why would somebody good enough to teach for any agency would need to steal someone else's IP what that is available to anyone meeting requirements that the individual should already possess?

.

Not sure how you determine a line of thinking from a question, but hey, I'll play!!!

IP?? Half the "IP" (and by "IP" I am assuming you mean intellectual property) has been reworded public domain, available for download, frequently from another certifying agency. Then I get the whole "but it's copyrighted material". Lets go do a look up and see how many have actually gone through the copyright process. As a general reference, I'd say pick up OW books from each agency and lets compare for differences. We continue to hear how existing agencies meet some oversight requirements for training. If so, how different can they be? Specific here say accusations from PSI-PCI stating the new VIP course from SDI is PSI IP. Of course, that was the rumor mill, but strong enough to lead to a smoke and fire scenario. Then when SDI said, go ahead, take us to court (rumor mill, once again) the public accusations dried up.

So the question about IP certainly can be questioned, now I guess it's a matter of determining his teaching capability. Kind of a shot in the dark here, but hey, that's arm chair legal. These are easy stones to toss. First, are only certified instructors good enough to teach? Not withstanding the obvious, sure, how about some cases? Lets see, most military divers, and a large number of commercial, dive without the standard certification process found in the recreational certification agencies. Many promote to instructor from within. Be curious to see the safety comparisons between the well certifying agencies and the private sector ones.

But then again, I'd be willing to be you knew all of this and just wanna sit there and poke the fire. Of course, that all speculative BS, kind of like your question, in the first place. LOL

 

[demed]

.

Not sure how you determine a line of thinking from a question, but hey, I'll play!!!

IP?? Half the "IP" (and by "IP" I am assuming you mean intellectual property) has been reworded public domain, available for download, frequently from another certifying agency. Then I get the whole "but it's copyrighted material". Lets go do a look up and see how many have actually gone through the copyright process. As a general reference, I'd say pick up OW books from each agency and lets compare for differences. We continue to hear how existing agencies meet some oversight requirements for training. If so, how different can they be? Specific here say accusations from PSI-PCI stating the new VIP course from SDI is PSI IP. Of course, that was the rumor mill, but strong enough to lead to a smoke and fire scenario. Then when SDI said, go ahead, take us to court (rumor mill, once again) the public accusations dried up.

So the question about IP certainly can be questioned, now I guess it's a matter of determining his teaching capability. Kind of a shot in the dark here, but hey, that's arm chair legal. These are easy stones to toss. First, are only certified instructors good enough to teach? Not withstanding the obvious, sure, how about some cases? Lets see, most military divers, and a large number of commercial, dive without the standard certification process found in the recreational certification agencies. Many promote to instructor from within. Be curious to see the safety comparisons between the well certifying agencies and the private sector ones.

But then again, I'd be willing to be you knew all of this and just wanna sit there and poke the fire. Of course, that all speculative BS, kind of like your question, in the first place. LOL

You have a pretty limited concept of IP as you seem concerned mostly with copyright, and you are also implying that PADI plagiarizes others' materials and\or public domain materials. I was not aware that there was dive training material in the public domain but i'll take your word for it. I'm not going to step into the PSI\SDI even thought it's interesting how the integrity agency has decided to make a play for what was an agency neutral activity.
There is other IP involved, improper use of brand and trademarks for example.
In any case, you have not answered the key question: why would a professional decide to steal others' property when this is available to the same professional? If someone takes shortcuts like stealing, how could be a credible educator?

 

[Rich Keller]

sorry, i have better choices when it comes to fiction.

Like writing fiction it seems. I understand that you would not want facts to get in the way of a good rant.

 

[NC Air Hog]

So this guy decides to hand out fake PADI certs, gets caught, keeps his own training agency going, will likely be told to pay the money back and at the end of the day not actually have to do anything. While I do not agree, or condone at all, with what this individual has done; I say that we all just give him a slight bit of respect for being quite ballsy if nothing else.

As far as intellectual property goes, who the hell cares??? Everyone knows that everything in the dive industry is stolen, reformatted and resold. I mean, how many ways can you take your mask off and put it back on?

 

[demed]

So this guy decides to hand out fake PADI certs, gets caught, keeps his own training agency going, will likely be told to pay the money back and at the end of the day not actually have to do anything. While I do not agree, or condone at all, with what this individual has done; I say that we all just give him a slight bit of respect for being quite ballsy if nothing else.

As far as intellectual property goes, who the hell cares??? Everyone knows that everything in the dive industry is stolen, reformatted and resold. I mean, how many ways can you take your mask off and put it back on?

respect for the ballsy people that come to your store, steal a bunch of gear and walk away, or for the guys that sell stolen and counterfeit gear under your name