When the government takes everything without proving anything

Imagine you founded a company with a stop-smoking product that actually works — no nicotine, better than anything on the market. You are the largest investor. You take no salary. You build it into something real, serving 756,000 customers. You are doing exactly what America is supposed to reward.

Then one night, without warning, without a trial, without any finding of wrongdoing, the federal government comes. The government freezes every account you own or are even associated with — personal and business accounts, life insurance, and retirement savings. A court-appointed receiver sells your office furniture. They tell you that you no longer have Fourth Amendment rights. They come for the wedding ring on your wife’s finger.

This attack sounds like some hypothetical scenario. It is my story.

I am writing this so that every American understands just what weaponization by the government really means.

The Federal Trade Commission came for me in 2018 using Section 13(b) of the FTC Act — a provision Congress created for injunctions only, not for seizing assets or freezing accounts. The receiver the agency installed consumed nearly $4 million of my money in fees before anyone proved the FTC did not have legal rights to my assets.

When I went to court and asked for access to my own frozen money just to pay lawyers and keep my home, the government’s response was: You can go live under the freeway for all we care.

While this was happening, inspired by President Trump’s Made in America initiative, I built VPL Medical — the world’s first made-in-USA three-ply surgical face mask manufacturing operation, based in California, where I was born and raised.

This was before COVID. When the pandemic hit, VPL Medical was ready. The Department of Health and Human Services awarded us a $14,500,000 contract to deliver 20,000,000 American-made masks to the Strategic National Stockpile. The factory was going to employ 400 Americans. The country didn’t want masks from China, and we were ready to deliver.

Then the FTC came for VPL Medical, too. The factory went dark for three months while Americans died and hospitals begged for PPE. The FTC’s offer to reopen: Pay the receiver $25,000 per week to run my own company under a law that didn’t authorize the demand. I refused. The receiver’s first act was to cancel the HHS contract. Twenty million American-made masks and 400 American jobs gone.

In April 2021, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in AMG Capital Management v. FTC that the commission had no authority to seek monetary relief. Nine justices. Zero dissents. My civil FTC case collapsed. The district court returned my company to me. Zero dollars — after four years of destruction, a factory closed during a pandemic, a $14.5 million federal contract canceled, and nearly $4 million consumed by a fraudulent receiver.

There is no mechanism to get that back. You win. And you are still destroyed.

My family and I moved to Ireland to take a break. We were through the nightmare and wanted to recover. Or so we thought.

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When I flew home to see my dying father, I was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. The Biden DOJ had indicted me for the same conduct the FTC had litigated for four years and won nothing from — conduct the prior Trump administration’s DOJ had already reviewed and declined to charge.

The Trump administration’s own 2018 “No Piling On” directive explicitly prohibits this practice. The alleged consumer harm: approximately $154, across 756,000 customers who all received their product or a refund. My criminal defense costs: in the millions and climbing.

What is happening in my case now has no precedent in American federal prosecution. The supervising AUSA withdrew in April 2025. No replacement has appeared in 14 months. There is no confirmed U.S. attorney supervising the case. The DOJ unit employing the trial attorney was abolished in September 2025. Thirty-one demands for that authorization have gone unanswered. The prosecution continues anyway.

Six fully briefed motions to dismiss — covering fraud on the court, due process, double jeopardy, evidence suppression, and the “No Piling On” violation — have all been denied by District Court Judge Jesus Bernal, an Obama appointee.

Every player in this case, with the exception of myself, is a Biden or Obama appointee. This is what Biden-Obama weaponization looks like — a rogue agency, an unauthorized prosecution, and politically appointed judges, all targeting an American entrepreneur who built American manufacturing and supported President Trump.

I have filed a restitution claim with the DOJ Anti-Weaponization Fund. I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for what the rule of law promises: that the government must prove its case before it destroys you. Right now, for me, that promise has not been kept. I am writing this so that every American understands just what weaponization by the government really means.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.