Sheriff Arrests Jonathan Arthur Ciener On Fraud Charges
Last week the Brevard County, FL Sheriff's Office raided Jonathan Arthur Ciener, Inc and arrested the owner Jonathan Arthur Ciener on charges of schemes to defraud less than $20,000 (third degree felony). JAC is best known for his .22 LR AR-15 conversion kits.
Ciener has an awful reputation. He has had almost 70 complaints filed against his company with the BBB. A disgruntled customer even developed a website dedicated to warning people not to do business with him.
Ciener's early M16 belt fed conversion kit.
[ Many thanks to Claes for the tip. ]
Buy quality and service rather than the lowest price…
after two years of complaining to everyone possible including
every postmaster, florida law enforecement, and shitty rag
Shotgun News i finally got my refund check from ceiner. he is
charged with “under $20,000″ when he didn’t deliver hundreds of thousands
of dollars of .22 conversions.
he won’t do a day in jail. they would rather lock people up for
recreational drugs to “make us all safe”.
roger in wilmington, nc
That is intense about the amount of complaints this company had with the BBB. For fun I typed in Taurus, (I had a bad experience and filed a complaint with BBB), just to see how many they may have…. Drumroll please 89 complaints! I just wish there were more sites such as the one created against Ciener, that would warn us of these types of problems. Glad they busted him!
Apples to oranges, man. Taurus probably has more customers than Ciener ever did, so for them 89 complaints arent as telling.
Fair point. After I posted on here, I realized my mistake, and did a couple of quick searches with some companies that came to mind. So let us then compare apples to apples.
BBB Grade # of Complaints
Taurus= F 89
Kahr = B 5
Century Arms= B 2
Browning= A+ 3
Smith and Wesson= A+ 24
My point is, I just wish facts like these were easier to find through quick search options, this would help all of us make better purchasing decisions in regards to firearms or firearm accessories.
This is why Chinese goods are everywhete-everyone wants to pay less for more and then complain when it isn’t as good as more expensive items
Buy quality and service rather than the lowest price…
@counsel: Your statement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering the context of the story. This is a situation where you have an American making low quality products and selling them cheaply, precisely your accusation against the Chinese.
I have no issue with you wanting to buy domestic but American products are not inherently of high quality and Chinese is not inherently low quality.
I’m going to have to agree with Bob. Perhaps it doesn’t apply so much with Chinese, but many amazing products come from Europe, Asia, and even the Middle East and Africa. Denel in South Africa produces some very high-quality weapons (unfortunately, not for import to us), Caracal in the UAE make fine striker fired pistols that have been met with rave reviews by those who have shot them, SIG and Sphinx in Switzerland both make handguns of legendary quality, Rock Island Armory in the Philippines is famous for putting together extremely reliable GI style 1911s, Imbel FALs from Brazil are considered to be some of the better FALs that were produced, the list goes on.
I personally think that buying exclusively American is both nationalistic and harmful to our economic system. Capitalism is supposed to work because consumers only purchase the best products for the price. By buying subpar American goods (like the ones put out by Ceiner), you support inferior businesses.
He only takes in money, NEVER RETURNS MONEY. Even if there is a long waiting period YOU COULD NOT CANCEL AND GET A REFUND ON A KIT NOT EVEN MADE YET! Happend to my son. They didn’t send the kit after 4 weeks. I called and no refund. My son deployed..Yes I did inform JAC during phone call…kit arrived MONTHS LATER.
The kit did work when received, but JAC deserves the boning! Good riddance.
It sure took long enough. The man is a scumbag of the highest degree.
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Well play with fire and the government will sting you and burn you. Like the GPMG M-16 version but prefer a heavier barrel for it.
The boycott site some have some unusual logic. He says that Ciener only takes checks/money orders to prevent charge backs on credit card transactions. And later on says that you should complain to his retails such as MidwayUSA or Brownells. He chooses to ignore the fact that you could always order it from the retailers who have their own satisfaction guarantees, and do take credit cards which you could perform a charge back on.
The problem is that not all of his product can be purchased through retailers. That’s how I bought one. His business practices are awful. He’ll only work with checks by mail (which opened him to mail fraud) and we wouldn’t give a refund unless you paid him with another check. If you even asked for status you had to pay him with a check–and he provided a threatening statement to anyone doings that if they rocked the boat that they could be put to the end of the line. In the end, he said he had a long lead time of 4-8 weeks and in reality it would stretch to up to a year. On top of this there were people that never even received their order. That’s mail fraud for you.
MidwayUSA has removed all of JAC’s items….. they no longer reference his company. I don’t know about Brownells though….
Yeah, I’ve always heard he was bad, so I’ve never bought anything from him. He was one of the first to offer these conversions on a broad basis, but there are so many others now. Still, I was always a little tempted by his 22 kit for standard AKs.
Does anyone else still make a 22 kit for the 92FS? Beretta discontinued theirs a while back.
Okay i’m kinda new to the great world of firearms. Who is this guy? A lil bit of background would be really nice here.
Ceiner made mostly .22 LR conversion kits for popular rifles and handguns such as Berettas, Hi-Powers, AK-47s, AR-15s and Mini-14s. The kits were not the greatest quality but they were fairly inexpensive. The problem was that Ceiner could not consistently put out a functioning kit and took a very long time on deliveries.
He did not hand out refunds no matter what and often kept customers waiting for weeks or months for their kits or for repairs. He dodged phone calls and was confrontational when you could reach him. He also engaged in some actions of dubious legality (besides the fraud mentioned) such as compelling others to illegally ship firearms through the postal service. All in all, he was a sub-par craftsman, a terrible businessman, and an all around jerk to his customers.
It sounds like he got his just desserts.
He does have the worst customer support, and thats what kept me from buying anything else from him. I went in person since I live “close” to his office, and purchased a platinum cup conversion for my p14-45, they fit it, and test fired, and I’ve had ZERO problems with it in the past 12 or 13 years.
Its a shame it worked out this way, but even their phone msg was insulting to callers.
How was their phone message insulting to callers?
One cannot become screwed by a contract unless one signs it.
That was Ciener’s problem. He had a promised delivery date in his order form. He received funds from people and and was up to a year late (or just never delivered).
Karma
jon ceiner was screwed by midway.
lower per unit profit but expected higher unit sales that didn’t pan out.
still contractually obligated to provide the units to midway and his company went into a death spiral using money paid NOW to pay for past orders expecting future orders to pay for current ones.
It’s not Midway’s fault. That was just poor negotiating on Ciener’s part. He should have gone into such a business relationship knowing what his manufacturing capacity and costs were. He was obviously a very poor business person, even if he was an ingenious engineer.
You’re right about how he operated, though. Most of the people that were defrauded were from people that ordered products other than what he was supplying to Midway. He used that money to keep his company afloat, I guess. That, or he was just completely inept at keeping his customer orders straight and planning production. (probably both)
About time. They should get him on some weapons charges too. Apparently, he tried to get customers to mail him broken kits for pistols (which had serial numbers and were legally firearms) through the USPS without declaring them as firearms in order to get out of paying for quite so much shipping.
People like this jerk need to be brought up on fraud charges more often.
Now we just need to take down a few other choice fraudsters. People like Ceiner are a shame to gun owners and businessmen everywhere.
you mean he was breaking the law to save people money?
Why, that FIEND!
No. He was trying to save money for himself at the expense of his customers. And he wasn’t just breaking the law, he was trying to get others to do so. What he was doing was not some harmless misdemeanor, it was a dangerous felony that could have landed other people in jail.
Hopefully the people who got ripped off actually get their money and parts back.