Resonator guitarists victimised

Thanks to Martin Styles (banjo-player with Dark Road in Cork) for the news that one Raymond Boze ('Matt Roe') has been convicted in Texas for an extensive and varied series of frauds targeting resonator guitar players. The full story, which Martin found on the internet bluegrass magazine Cybergrass, is here.

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Colin Henry reports from Belfast:

This was quite an audacious scam. Boze set up the resonatorguitarist.com web site a few years ago and all the reso heads, including myself, subscribed (for free) and I think we all thought it was a great site and that the guy seemed a great guy, setting up workshops that took place and giving information. He also started offering custom guitars. Fortunately I never actually sent any money but many did, and some lost quite a bit on the scam guitars. I seem to remember that it was a thread on the Jerry Douglas BB that began the suspicion when it was discovered that he had been giving different stories to different people. He had one story where he claimed to be on the way to deliver six guitars to people but had a crash and the guitars were destroyed. I think it slowly dawned on people that he was a charlatan. Unfortunately it has made people very suspicious of what are usually quite genuine situations.