I picked up a rumor that it was a "Scientolgy" backed organization. I have been unable to confirm or deny. Their advertising is absolutley over the top. But his idea of a "town" dedicated and filled with gun owning, carring, and trained people doesn't seem like that bad an idea. Crime rate would be low.
People who bought into the idea of the ''town" sued because Piazza kept on promising and didn't do a thing...well, that's not true, he would actually hire guys to go out and dig so it would LOOK like there was work being done to the casual observer.
He got threatened with fraud charges and sued. He lost, and had to pay people back. Later on he started saying he couldn't make the payments without going into bankruptcy (the idea being, he wanted the lawsuit winners to agree to less vs him go bankrupt and them get nothing) but at the same time all his adverts for membership were bragging about how his enrollment was swelling like crazy and he was making money hand-over-foot using that as proof that people MUST be getting good training for so many to come. The people who won the lawsuit used those adverts and other info to discredit his claims in front of the original judge.
His other big 'claim to fame' is if you sign up for a life membership at the cost of $10,000 he gives you 10 $1000 training certificates to give out to friends, (2 guys for 2 days, or 1 guy for 4 days) so in theory the training is free. He also donates these certificates to charity auctions and takes the face value as a tax writeoff. You can buy these certificates on Ebay for $150.
Finally, his instruction and instructors seem hit-or-miss. Seems like about 80% get good instructors but 20% get really poor instructors. In the same vein, I have had a people cite the instructor-student ratio seemed to be so far out of whack, some going to far as to say it was bordering on unsafe, and in a class where you could get a truely truely novice shooter, either you were always worried about what the novice was doing next to you unsupervised, OR the 14 other people stood around at watched the novice get 80% of the instructors time.
I think if someone lived in the area, it would definitely be worth their time to get an ebay certificate and some training, but don't go beyond that.
(at least not without shelling out some serious cash and attending training at some other training location like Gunsite or Thunder Ranch, etc)
Second, as most guys get one certificate and go down for 2 days with a buddy, using the certificate for 1 guy 4 days generally means the last 2 days have fewer people, the novices are gone, etc. So if going with a buddy spring for 2 certificates not 2 on 1 certificate. BUT...recently I have heard of guys who did this and after 2 days were simply put back in with a class of brand new folks, rather than taking everyone who had 2 days done 2 days to go and putting them all in one class.
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