InvestigaTech

The Internet is truly a marvelous thing. Where else will you find people willing to step up and look into matters that others readily cannot, and then broadcast their findings to the world? Of course, not every such source on the Internet is reliable, but occasionally you run into a true gem.

One such gem appears to have visited the Yahoo! REFR board in early 2004. A person posting under the alias "investigating101" spent about three months looking into various SPD licensee companies. One of this person's first targets was InspecTech Aero Services.

The initial interest in InspecTech stemmed from their claims that SPD had full FAA approval for installation in aircraft, something no other similar technology could claim. The truth of the matter, in brief, was that while there was some amount of FAA approval (specfically regarding flammability), it was far from a complete enough approval for it to have the green light for installation in commercial aircraft. Indeed, InspecTech's own massive list of "engineered" aircraft proved something of tip-off, as approval for that large a number of aircraft is a very lengthy and complex process, far more than a tiny company like InspecTech could be expected to complete on its own.

After revealing that as a preliminary report and viewing the hostile reactions of the promoters/longs on the message board, investigating101 (hereafter, "101") decided to go into further in-depth with the investigation. On March 24, 2004, 101 revealed the findings of a personal trip to InspecTech's Fort Lauderdale offices.

First, 101 visited the phone directory-listed location of InspecTech on SW 34th Street, and found it vacant, but with evidence in the form of marked parking spaces that this had once been InspecTech's offices.

Then, 101 travelled to the SW 9th Ave. location given on the InspecTech website, a few hundred yards away from the 34th St. building. There, 101 found that, contrary to what one would have expected from the website pictures and overall self-description, InspecTech was located inside the headquarters of National Jets, an airplane rental company which had been featured in several prior InspecTech and REFR press releases as being the customer for a retrofitting of SPD into one of their Lear air ambulances.

And indeed, not so much inside the headquarters, as in a seperate building marked "National Jets Parts Delivery". After confirming with the receptionist in the main building that there was an "InspecTech" inside there, 101 paid a visit to the parts building. (I should make a note here, for would-be amateur sleuths, that I personally do not endorse making personal visits to the headquarters of suspected scams. One can never be certain what awaits people who scamsters suspect may be getting too close to the truth.)

At any rate 101 asked the person who answered the door at the parts warehouse about InspecTech. That person replied, "if you are looking for Jimmy then you need to call him on the phone first, this is a secure area." Further questioning revealed that, far from the public showroom 101 was expecting, InspecTech simply consisted of a single office on the upstairs level of the parts warehouse. Any meetings with "Jimmy" (clearly referring to James Lang) would have to take place in the main National Jets building, either in the meeting rooms or the lobby.

This is what REFR promoters were expecting the world to believe was the source Airbus and Boeing were going to for electronic window shades on their new aircraft.

One thing of note is that 101 did not uncover any relationship between National Jets and InspecTech, apart from their shared office space and a demonstration flight made in the summer of 2002 (the one referred to by Asensio as a "silly circus"). However, later events showed that there was in fact a very strong connection indeed, as we will see in the conclusion to this series.