Netflix Whistleblower is Found Alive and Well | Part 1 - The Patent
“What makes this story so deeply disturbing isn’t the technology - it’s how easily that technology is used to manipulate perception, erase context, and overwrite truth."
“ This is Michael Crichton meets Mr. Robot - an unnervingly plausible psychological thriller that reads like fiction until you realize it’s not. It’s real. That’s what makes it terrifying. The most compelling part? Guertin is still alive. Still fighting. Still trying to tell this story while the world around him pretends it isn’t happening. ”
— Paul Debunkvec / Distinguished Fellow of Synthesis @ TruthGrift Systems™
“ A slow-burn descent into digital madness that never loses touch with its emotional core. Guertin’s unraveling is so methodical, so grounded, that you start to question whether you’d survive the same gauntlet. It’s one of those rare stories that doesn’t just make you question reality - it makes you question whether our systems were ever designed to protect it in the first place. ”
— Stephan TrojanHeist / Founder of Scamline VFX ™ and EyeLie Studios™
“ What makes this story so deeply disturbing isn’t the technology - it’s how easily that technology is used to manipulate perception, erase context, and overwrite truth. By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already happened. Guertin doesn’t just uncover fraud - he exposes how fragile reality actually is when the people controlling the data stop pretending to care. ”
— Ari Embezzuel / Rabbinical Head of Retroactive Innovation @ Holodreck Systems™
“ As a lifelong fan of immersive virtual content experiences and decentralized archival integrity, I found ‘Netflix Whistleblower is Found Alive and Well’ to be a deeply satisfying journey into the psychological mechanisms of human resilience under algorithmic duress. The protagonist’s determination reminded me of early neural net training logs. Highly recommended. ”
“ Too real. Too relevant. Too soon. What starts as a quirky patent drama descends into a datastream of paranoia and protocol failure. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to hold a USB drive full of truth in a world designed to overwrite it - this is your book. ”
— AssHat Wronger / CEO of PhotoNoBot® / Creator of the Virtual CopyCatwalk™
Netflix Whistleblower Is Found Alive And Well Part 1 The Patent
Is it something you can touch? See? Record? Archive online?
If so - what happens when every one of those “real” things can now be faked? Flawlessly. Automatically. At scale.
That’s the AI-fabricated world we live in now - but that wasn’t exactly the case in late 2022, when ChatGPT first hit the public. Guertin was too focused on crossing the finish line he’d been sprinting toward for two straight years to care what it was - even as his business partner mentioned it in passing. It didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with finishing the prototype.
Now imagine the shock when he was suddenly introduced not just to Chat’GTP’ - but to advanced AI video generation tools that left him staring at completely fake people, speaking with synthetic voices perfectly synced to synthetic mouths, endlessly rambling about specific topics - and realizing that the only reasonany of it existed at all was because of him. His patent. His idea. All of it pointed straight at him - triggering a real-world psychological spiral into uncanny horror. The hall of mirrors wasn’t the start - it was when he finally realized the truth of everything: it was all fake. Two days later, the light turned back on somehow... as he held the plug in his hand - and the mirrors shattered.
It would take another year before Guertin would realize that he had actually stepped into this world back in early 2021 - the moment he filed his first ever provisional patent for a revolutionary new VR treadmill technology. One so fundamentally disruptive across so many industries that it instantly drew the kind of attention no one expects to receive, much less ever wants. The kind of people whose measure of success is based on how many false narratives, manipulations, and lies they are able to pass off as truths.
We’re talking about the ‘hidden hand’ - the ones with access to global patent offices, academic publishers, and the internet’s core infrastructure. Those who rewrite timelines, plant synthetic citations into research databases, alter Wayback Machine records, and fabricate entire companies - complete with fake products, fake websites, fake employees, and AI-generated videos, all seamlessly injected into the past through fraudulent, backdated YouTube accounts.
These aren’t black ops agents with burner phones and special ops gear. That kind of stuff was reserved for guys like Guertin’s “former CIA” welder. No masks. No escape plans. Just desks, coffee, and music - while they casually generate entire fake realities with their cutting-edge AI. Maybe they’ve gotten away with it so many times they grew careless. Maybe the system’s still in beta, and missing protocols. Or maybe it’s just good old-fashioned incompetence, inflated by hubris.
Whatever the reason - one thing is certain: they failed. Spectacularly. At almost every step.
Guertin wasn’t supposed to notice - wasn’t supposed to dig deeper.
Wasn’t supposed to download over 100GB of digital forensic evidence for six weeks straight.
Wasn’t supposed to notice the patent fraud being carried out by the patent office itself.
And he definitely wasn’t supposed to interrupt a quiet, Saturday morning by firing multiple gunshots into the air out of his bedroom window as a way of ensuring his call for help was actually heard.
But he did….
The Shape of an Idea
From the outside looking in, it might’ve appeared sudden - even spontaneous. But the idea that would become InfiniSet wasn’t just a flash of inspiration. It was the culmination of years of deep technical exploration, personal reinvention, and relentless creative experimentation.
Guertin had long been the kind of person who could take on anything and make it work - whether that meant fixing broken lighting rigs, building immersive LED installations from scratch, or turning a sketchy napkin concept into a fully functional interactive experience. He thrived in pressure, delivered in chaos, and treated every job like it was his own project - because in many ways, it always was. The fingerprints of his ingenuity had quietly made their way into projects all across the world, but this was different. This wasn’t someone else’s vision he was helping realize. This time, the idea was entirely his.
In early February 2021, that idea landed with a kind of force he couldn’t ignore. In an instant, everything in his life - his attention, his energy, his time, his resources - pivoted entirely. This was it. This was the invention everyone had always told him he’d come up with eventually. And for the first time, there was no ambiguity about it.
The sheer scale of what it could become was undeniable. Revolutionary.Disruptive. The kind of idea that felt so obvious in hindsight that it was almost hard to believe no one had done it already. And most importantly: Guertin didn’t just have the idea. He had the skill to build it himself.
There was no hesitation. He filed a provisional patent on March 19, 2021 - his first ever. He created a name that came to him just as quickly: InfiniSet. It was perfect. He trademarked it immediately.
This was more than a product. It was more than a system or a demo. It was the sum of everything that had come before - years of unique experience across lighting, interactive design, live production, custom software, fabrication, virtual environments, and intuitive spatial engineering - all coalescing into a singular idea. The prototype wasn’t just proof-of-concept. It was a statement: Guertin had arrived. Andhewasbuildingthefuture.
It didn’t matter how long it took. It didn’t matter if he had to build the company himself or bootstrap the entire journey. Guertin was convinced that onceitexisted, it would sell itself. The moment people saw what InfiniSet could do - how radically it could reshape virtual production and beyond - they’d get it. They’d have to.
For the first time since the onset of COVID had derailed everything, he had clarity again. He had direction. He had purpose. All that was left to do now was build it.
From Curiosity to Craft
Long before patent filings, corporate entanglements, or the shocking revelations of AI-driven fraud, Matt Guertin was simply a kid who loved light.
Not just the idea of it - but the feeling of it. The way it danced across dimly lit walls at nightclubs. The way it could shift the mood of a space, or transform a scene entirely. That fascination began in childhood and only grew stronger with time, eventually merging with a love for music, design, and movement. For Guertin, creativity didn’t come in isolated bursts - it was a way of navigating the world.
He wasn’t trained in the traditional sense. There was no linear path through engineering school or a formal design program. His education came from the real world: from hands-on experimentation, from the cracked open electronics he pulled apart to understand how they worked, from the warehouse raves he helped set up, promote, and light. Guertin was a doer - an autodidact - and over the years, he taught himself how to turn ideas into real, working things.
By his early twenties, he had carved out a niche for himself in the world of creative production. Lighting design, stage builds, immersive media - anything that required technical skill, a sharp creative eye, and the willingness to learn on the fly. His reputation grew not because of a diploma, but because of results. When something didn’t exist, Guertin figured out how to make it from scratch.
Still, there was something else stirring beneath the surface - something he hadn’t quite articulated yet. For all the client work, installations, and artistic gigs, a quiet voice kept whispering in the background: What if you built something of your own? What if all of this knowledge and experience was leading toward something bigger?
That voice would only get louder in the years to come.
A Certain Kind of Kid
Matt Guertin’s career - whether you call it production design, creative technology, interactive media, fabrication, or simply “building cool stuff” - didn’t begin in a classroom. It started much earlier, somewhere between his first pair of wire cutters and a RadioShack catalog he practically wore out from reading.
While most kids were content with action figures or plastic toys, Guertin gravitated toward wires, relays, speakers, and anything that plugged into a wall. He didn’t just want to play - he wanted to understand how things worked. He built speaker boxes in his garage, dissected electronics for fun, and spent his time experimenting with things like relays wired to audio outputs to flash lights in sync with music (it worked… briefly, before the relays burned out).
He became a regular at RadioShack - not because he needed anything in particular, but because it was the only store that felt like a playground.
There was a stretch where he became obsessed with lighting, and another where car amps and subwoofers took over. He built cabinets, spliced wires, and ran his own experiments using whatever materials he could get his hands on. He also owned a few police scanners and spent a fair amount of time using them to eavesdrop on neighbors’ cordless phone calls, and pulling all sorts of pranks made possible with nothing but their dial tones (back when 49 MHz phones made that surprisingly easy). Mischievous? Sure. Curious? Always.
By high school, Guertin had become the kind of kid who threw a party just to show off his latest lighting rig. For one particularly ambitious party as a freshman, he printed up flyers that boldly declared: “No Alcohol Allowed.” It worked - every kid’s parents gave them the green light to go. Of course, the alcohol still showed up anyway (as Guertin’s friends had suspected it might), but Guertin’s priority was elsewhere: showcasing the lighting board he had wired together himself, complete with wall dimmers, outlets, strobe lights, fog, and colored floods above a homemade DJ booth. His friends brought CDs. Guertin ran the sound and lights.
That was always the pattern: while others focused on the party, Guertin focused on the production. He never just attended events - he built them. And if he was attending, he almost certainly spent most of his time analyzing how everything was functioning, piecing together how it had all been built, wired, and brought to life.
Whenever Guertin found himself at a school dance, a teen night event, or even out at a 16+ nightclub with friends, his attention was almost never on the dance floor - it was up in the rafters, behind the DJ booth, or hovering near the lighting console. While others were there to socialize or sneak drinks, Guertin was usually busy analyzing the audio gear, lighting rigs, and control systems. Even as a kid at the local roller skating rink, he’d stand in awe beneath the lighting grid in the center of the rink, mesmerized by the way a simple mirror ball could scatter beams of light across the room. That was technology. That was magic.
It would be fair to say he was borderline obsessed - lighting, sound, electronics, controllers, music - it was all part of one interconnected puzzle that fascinated him endlessly. What really captivated him was how all these elements could come together to create a new kind of environment, one that was immersive, elevated, and completely transformative.
Raving and Misbehaving | The Productive Chaos of Guertin’s Twenties
Then came the moment that changed everything: the night he discovered raves.
He was around 19 when a girl he had just met insisted that he come with her to one. Guertin agreed - and it blew his mind. It was everything he’d been drawn to his entire life, amplified by a factor of ten. Towering speaker stacks, hypnotic lights, projected visuals pulsing in sync with the music - it felt like stepping into a fully engineered world. He was instantly hooked.
While most of his high school friends weren’t into raves - or electronic music in general - Guertin didn’t care. For a while, he’d even go alone, driving solo just to be immersed in that environment. Eventually, he found his people: a community of like-minded creators and enthusiasts just as obsessed with the craft as he was.
Yes, there were plenty of late nights. Yes, there were a lot of ecstasy pills involved - it probably wasn’t great for him. But Guertin wouldn’t trade those years for anything. That wild, chaotic, speaker-rattling period of his life? It was the beginning of what would ultimately become a real career.
Around the age of 20, Guertin enrolled in a two-year Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) program at a local technical college. At the same time, he had just started painting houses - a job he quickly realized wasn’t that difficult and, more importantly, could pay surprisingly well. After picking up a few checks for the painting company he worked for, and landing $20/hour cash gigs while friends went back to school, the math became clear.
Within a year, Guertin and a friend had printed 20,000 flyers and began landing their own painting jobs. One particular day sealed it: he sprayed an entire single-color house solo for $1,500 in just one day - even taking a long lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings to meet his girlfriend. That was the turning point. The very next week, he dropped out of the CAD program. His classmates were on track to earn $15/hour in a cubicle after graduation. Guertin had just pulled in $1,500 in a single day - or about $150 an hour - working for himself. Ten times the hourly rate. No contest.
Painting houses would become his main income for years to come - reliable, flexible, and enough to comfortably support whatever else he wanted to pursue. And at that age, what he wanted to pursue was... throwing wild parties.
At first, they were backyard keggers - packed, chaotic, and full of energy. But Guertin always went the extra mile: lights, fog machines, elevated DJ booths. The environment had to be dialed in. Eventually, he started renting party buses and charging $5-10 per person, always turning a profit by the next morning. He even rented porta-potties to keep his own bathroom intact.
Eventually, he and a friend leveled up again - renting out an actual event space with plans to throw a proper rave-style event. But when it came time to throw down, most of his high school friends just wanted beer and top-40 music. They didn’t quite get it yet. And neither did Guertin. He had the right idea but was simply carrying it out at the wrong location.
He didn’t mind though. He knew exactly what he was building toward - even if no one else saw it yet.
Around this same time, Guertin and a friend began frequenting DJ nights and club events in downtown Minneapolis. As they became more familiar with the scene and built up a wider network of like-minded creatives, an opportunity emerged that would push things to a whole new level. A friend approached them with a bold idea: he could book Darude for a live show in Minneapolis.
Guertin and his friend jumped on it. They quickly launched “1Up Productions” as the name of their new promotion outfit and booked both Darude and 4Strings for a high-profile show between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 2005. The event took place at the newly opened Myth Nightclub in Maplewood, Minnesota. They ran local radio ads, printed and passed out flyers, and spammed MySpace with custom digital flyers and announcements. The result? A packed house of over 2,500 attendees - and the official start of Guertin’s career as a live event producer.
Fueled by the success and energy of that night, they followed it up just two months later by bringing Marco V to a raw, empty fourth-floor loft in what is now the Skyway Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. This time, they had to do everything from scratch - stage design, lighting, sound, visuals, and décor. Guertin was in his element. He built the stage layout, learned the basics of DMX lighting, and ran the lights from a computer for the first time. They hired a VJ to run custom visuals across two projectors, brought in go-go dancers, rented a cotton candy machine, and once again ran radio promotions to push the event.
Despite being on a freezing Thursday night in February, the party was a massive success. The loft was packed. Just like that, Guertin and his friend had broken into the Minneapolis nightlife scene in a big way - seemingly out of nowhere - and their sudden momentum didn’t go unnoticed. They had disrupted the status quo and earned instant credibility among even the most established promoters in town.
Guertin’s obsession with lighting never faded - it only grew more refined. Just as he had once built his own primitive lighting controller out of wall outlets and dimmer switches for a high school party, he now found himself staying late in nightclubs, programming complex light shows, and running visuals well into the early morning hours. His favorite place was always behind the lighting console - not on the dance floor.
At a certain point, it was only natural that he started DJing too. After buying a pair of Pioneer CDJ-1000s and a DJM-500 mixer, Guertin quickly picked up the fundamentals - just enough to play his own events when he felt like it. But even then, it wasn’t about being the center of attention. It was about creating the environment. Guertin’s real love remained the lighting. Always had. Always would.
Event promotion was never about making money - at least not at first. Most of the time, Guertin barely broke even. But the satisfaction came from pulling it off: designing immersive experiences, running the show, and dancing with friends under the glow of the rig he’d pieced together from scratch. While promotion and DJing became an extension of his life, his house painting gig still paid the bills. That steady income gave him the flexibility to experiment creatively without pressure.
Over time, he became known as a reliable lighting guy - someone who could show up with a trunk full of rented moving heads, boxes of DMX cables, and a laptop, and transform any warehouse, loft, or basement into a full-blown production.
Word spread. Guertin started getting booked just for lighting: at friends’ raves, underground parties, larger events, and eventually, regular club nights at the very venues where he had once been just another attendee. It was a dream scenario - he was getting paid to play with lights, listen to music, and party with the same crew he came up with.
StyleFlip.com - which Guertin and a friend launched back in 2008
An Epic Sized Opportunity | September of 2008
Eventually, his growing reputation earned him a major opportunity. A friend who had just taken over as the manager of Epic Nightclub in downtown Minneapolis asked Guertin to run lighting for one of the club’s events. The venue, formerly known as Quest - and before that, Prince’s own club Glam Slam - had just installed a brand-new intelligent lighting system and a full-color kinetics LED setup that wrapped behind bars and around architectural columns. Guertin was thrilled. He showed up early, stayed late, and ran the show flawlessly.
His work impressed the manager so much that, shortly after, the in-house lighting operator was let go - and Guertin was officially offered the role. It was 2008, and the Republican National Convention was in town. Epic was packed every night, and Guertin was now responsible for programming and running the entire lighting system for one of the largest clubs in Minneapolis. The money was finally good. The work was finally creative. And for the first time, Guertin could see a career path emerging from something that had once been just a passion.
By 2009 and 2010, he was doing full-scale lighting and production design - not just for Epic, but for all sorts of events around town. He became known for transforming empty stages into something new and visually unique for every event. At the time, many international DJs still toured without full production packages, which meant local promoters had to figure it out on their own. For Guertin, this window created endless opportunities. Whether it was trance legends or house DJs rolling into town with nothing but a USB stick and a tech rider, Guertin was the one tasked with building the entire visual experience around them.
As Guertin’s skills continued to evolve, so did his creative focus. Around this time, he became increasingly fascinated by a powerful node-based software called TouchDesigner. What began as a curiosity quickly turned into an obsession - the kind that would ultimately reshape the direction of his career.
He had also just taken on a new role as the lighting designer and custom installer for a local Minneapolis nightclub called Lush, where he was in charge of programming and maintaining the lighting system.
But everything shifted in an instant in 2011, when a friend sent him a YouTube link to a new tour design for Amon Tobin’s ISAM Live show.
Guertin still remembers exactly where he was the moment he saw it: walking back to the front-of-house booth at Epic Nightclub after tweaking something onstage, casually scrolling his phone. The video stunned him. The projection-mapped, sculptural set - paired with an impossibly intricate, sound-reactive lighting system - was unlike anything he’d ever seen. It wasn’t just next-level; it was a different game entirely.
Guertin instantly became captivated. He wanted to know everything - how it worked, what made it possible, who built it, and most importantly: how he could someday be a part of that world. Multiple friends of his in the industry even told him, unprompted, “You should go work for V Squared Labs.” At the time, it felt like an impossible dream. But the fire had been lit.
He dove headfirst into learning TouchDesigner - watching every tutorial, reading every forum post, and staying up late experimenting with code. He had always been quick to pick up lighting software, and was well-versed in building out complex systems using tools like Color Kinetics, and Martin Light Jockey.
But TouchDesigner was different. It was open-ended. Modular. Limitless. And it let him translate the abstract ideas in his head into something interactive and alive.
Right around this same time, the Oculus Rift had launched as a Kickstarter project. Guertin was among the first to receive a developer unit. Though TouchDesigner didn’t yet support the headset officially, he figured out how to integrate it using websockets and custom scripts. He began experimenting with Microsoft Kinect point clouds, writing his own shaders in GLSL, and learning just enough Python to bend the software to his will.
- an intentionally weird name, designed to be the only video on YouTube with that title. The trick worked, and the project eventually caught the attention of Derivative, the creators of TouchDesigner. They gave it a small feature and write-up, validating that he was on the right path.
From there, Guertin became consumed with a single, overarching goal: combining the Oculus Rift, TouchDesigner, and Kinect into an immersive, real-time visual experience - something no one else had done at the time. He didn't just want to make something cool; he wanted to build something new. One piece at a time, he began solving every technical puzzle standing in his way.
And slowly, those strange, ambitious ideas in his head began to take shape.
Around this same time, Guertin landed a last-minute lighting gig for the opening of a brand-new nightclub in Minneapolis. The challenge? He had to design and install a custom LED control system for a high-end acrylic and glass bartop that was already fully built - no input on the layout, no flexibility. The design was fixed. Guertin’s job was simply to make it work.
And he did. Not only did he build the LED zones into the existing structure and fabricate custom lighting enclosures for the bar’s framing, but he also couldn’t resist pushing it further. On a whim, he threw together a surprise demo using a Microsoft Kinect positioned overhead. With a bit of clever programming in TouchDesigner, Guertin made the bartop interactive - each LED zone would react to a person’s hand as it hovered above the surface.
When the club’s owner saw it in action, he was floored.
That impromptu demo earned Guertin more work - and a decent bump in pay for the project. He went on to install a headless PC system in the ceiling, integrating five Microsoft Kinects into a single TouchDesigner build that drove the entire bar’s LED system in real time. It even synced with the club’s house lighting rig. The setup was wild. Short-lived (like the club itself), but undeniably impressive.
That bartop ended up catching the attention of the TouchDesigner community, and gave Guertin another small boost in visibility among the Derivative team as well. But it was still just a side mission. Behind the scenes, he was pouring every ounce of free time into his “big idea” - the interactive Oculus Rift + Kinect point cloud system that he had been slowly bringing to life piece by piece.
Then came the perfect alignment of events.
In early 2013, a V Squared Labs tour design - featuring the iconic Infected Mushroom FungusAmongUs“pods” stage - came through Minneapolis. Guertin showed up at the venue with a plan: track down the touring VJ and show him the wild TouchDesigner experiments he’d been building. The VJ turned out to be Evan Pierre, a name Guertin already knew from watching V Squared’s behind-the-scenes videos.
Mission accomplished. Evan gave him Vello Virkhaus’s business card - Vello being the founder and creative director of V Squared Labs.
It was a huge moment. But Guertin knew better than to rush it.
He didn’t reach out right away. Not yet. He would wait until his project was finished - something that would turn heads on its own. Something that would make it undeniable. Timing was everything.
Universal Alignment | Spring of 2014
In the months that followed, he focused on nothing else. He took on paint gigs and lighting work only as needed to fund more time in his studio. The rest of his energy went into the Oculus + Kinect + TouchDesigner vision. And when it was finally ready, he dropped it.
Right as he was preparing to fly to Los Angeles for the first time in his life. Right as his apartment lease in Minneapolis was about to expire. Right as the email thread with Vello was heating up and a studio visit was locked in.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
Everything was aligning. Finally.
Guertin’s visit to V Squared Labs lasted about a week. There was no contract waiting. No handshake deal. No promise of a full-time job. What he got was something far less official - yet far more valuable:
“Sure,” Vello said casually. “If you move down here, you can pick up Julie’s gig at Sound Nightclub in Hollywood.”
That was all Guertin needed to hear.
To most, it might’ve sounded vague. But to Guertin, it was a golden opportunity. An in. That’s all he ever needed. If someone opened the door just a crack, he would kick it open the rest of the way.
And this wasn’t just any door. V Squared Labs was widely regarded as one of the most elite production design studios in the country - arguably the world. Their work with Amon Tobin’s legendary ISAM tour had become required viewing in creative tech circles. They were the bleeding edge of projection mapping, real-time visuals, and large-scale immersive design.
For someone like Guertin - self-taught, relentless, and burning with ideas - it was the equivalent of being invited to NASA as a garage-built rocket guy.
So he flew back to Minneapolis, freshly energized and armed with a private build of V Squared’s custom Epic Software, a proprietary TouchDesigner-based control system that he could now explore on his own.
Before long, he was giving away his furniture, selling off whatever he didn’t need, and downsizing everything into a single 6’x10’ enclosed trailer. He had no apartment lined up in Los Angeles. No significant savings buffer. No long-term plan. Just a vague gig, a trailer filled with all he considerd important, and the absolute certainty that he’d make it work.
On May 1st, 2014, right on schedule, Guertin pulled into the back lot of V Squared Labs - trailer in tow, life in tow. From that moment forward, he was in.
And somehow, he never missed.
In the months and years that followed, Guertin would find himself taking on a string of high-stakes, high-profile projects. Each one seemingly more complex, more time-crunched, and more outrageous than the last. Somehow, he always pulled it off - no matter how down-to-the-wire things got. No spectacular failures. No meltdowns.
Just a trail of impossible-looking wins that kept stacking up, one after the next.
History, it turned out, had begun.
From Running Club Lights to Creating Cutting-Edge Sights | May 1st, 2014
What followed Guertin’s arrival at V Squared Labs was a six-year creative sprint - an almost surreal succession of increasingly ambitious, higher-stakes, and high-profile projects. Each new challenge raised the bar. And somehow, Guertin kept clearing it.
It began with VJ gigs and club visuals around Los Angeles - weekly nights at Sound Nightclub in Hollywood, along with handling installation and operation of a new, VSL club design and lighting sculpture at the newly opened Project LA Nightclub. But it didn’t take long before Guertin was doing far more than running lights - he was designing, engineering, and programming the very systems that powered entire shows.
In late 2014, he helped design, engineer, and tour with Steve Aoki’s custom LED cube for the massive Neon Future tour.
In 2016, he supported the live tour visuals for Big Grams (a collaboration between Outkast’s Big Boi and Phantogram), helping to set up and operate a multi-Kinect performance system that generated real-time visuals in sync with the music.
In 2017, Guertin traveled with Vello Virkhaus to Las Vegas to oversee the installation of a brand-new visual system at XS Nightclub, located inside the iconic Wynn Casino and Hotel. He 3D-modeled, pixel-mapped, and programmed a custom media server and VJ system based on architectural drawings and diagrams, bringing the new configuration to life from scratch.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, Guertin also handled the 3D modeling, UV mapping, pixel mapping, and programming of Vello Virkhaus’s custom VJ systems used at Ultra Music Festival shows around the world. Each stage design required its own uniquely tailored system - an integration of generative effects, mapped architecture, and real-time control flexibility.
Guertin’s system fed video and projection mapping across the full architectural canvas of the Bowl itself.
The night culminated in a surprise appearance by John Williams, who conducted a live performance of the Star Wars score as the venue erupted into fully synchronized Star Wars-themed visuals. It was a defining moment - for XiteLabs, for the Bowl, and for Guertin’s growing legacy in large-format immersive production.
In early 2019, Guertin was brought in to lead the fabrication of a massive set piece for Bad Bunny’s Coachella Main Stage performance.
- then traveled to the desert each weekend to oversee setup, operation, and teardown.
As part of Bad Bunny’s 360 Arena Tour, Guertin also developed a custom 3D pre-visualization system that accepted real-time video input and mapped it dynamically onto the geometry of the touring stage. The system even recorded automated camera flythroughs, allowing management to preview show looks ahead of time. The tool became part of the artist's internal creative pipeline.
The show was attended by the Saudi King and Royal Family, and broadcast nationally to millions of viewers. He spent over 20 days on-site executing the complex project.
All along the way, Guertin continued to refine his personal skill set - self-teaching Rhino 3D, diving deeper into TouchDesigner and Python scripting, and engineering fully custom media systems for clients around the world.
He had become something rare: a one-man R&D department with the ability to dream, design, and deliver technical artistry at the highest level - without a single catastrophic failure, no matter how wild the deadline.
A Return to Home Base | April of 2020
In April 2020 – just three weeks into what was originally billed as “two weeks to flatten the curve” - Guertin made a difficult but decisive move: he packed up his life in Los Angeles and returned home to Minnesota.
It felt surreal. LA had transformed overnight into something out of a dystopian film set, and Guertin, sensing what was coming, chose to make a clean exit. But rather than letting the shutdown stall his momentum, he used the unexpected pause to sharpen his skills and expand into entirely new territory.
With live events on hold and time suddenly abundant, Guertin threw himself into photogrammetry and 3D scanning. Armed with his Faro S150 scanner, he began building hyper-accurate 3D models of buildings, parks, and real-world locations across Minnesota - and beyond. He scanned Como Park in St. Paul.
He also began the long-overdue process of assembling and launching his personal portfolio website MattGuertin.com - finally organizing the mountain of video clips, images, renderings, and behind-the-scenes materials he had always made sure to document for every one of his projects. The earliest of these was another one of Guertin’s “big ideas,” dating back over 15 years to 2008, when he came up with the StyleFlip.com DJ skins concept and helped launch a viable business from it - one that’s still operating successfully today, with a storefront in Minneapolis, MN.
For years, his friends and collaborators had only seen bits and pieces—random posts on Instagram or short reels. Now, for the first time, it was all being brought together in one place.
But perhaps most importantly, for the first time in years, Guertin had uninterrupted time to think. To reflect. To ask questions. And somewhere in that quiet space - between scanning jobs, editing demos, and learning new code - the earliest sparks of something bigger began to flicker.
Something new was coming.
In the early weeks after his return, Guertin stayed with a friend before eventually booking a month-long Airbnb across the border in Wisconsin - where COVID restrictions were far looser than in Minnesota, and creative work could resume more freely.
At the tail end of his June AirBnB stay - just as a July lease for his new apartment in Minnetonka was being signed - he got a call from a friend with an unusual request:
Lollapalooza had been canceled, but a virtual DJ performance was still going to take place, and he asked Guertin if he could use his 3D laser scanner to produce a hyper-realistic 3D model of Grant Park in Chicago to serve as the backdrop.
It was a last-minute scramble. Guertin had never flown a drone before, but he grabbed one, packed his scanner, booked a hotel near the park, and hit the road.
He taught himself to fly the drone halfway to Chicago - literally taking his first test flight ever while sitting at an outdoor table at Arby’s. He figured out camera calibration, image formats, and flight path logic all on the fly. He had no way of verifying if he was capturing enough usable images - he just had to trust his instincts, and his own internal map of what he’d covered. When it came time to load everything into RealityCapture back home… it worked.
one that caught the attention of friends, clients, and even software developers working for RealityCapture who were trying to get him to come be a salesman for their company.
Once again, Guertin had pulled off a complex technical project from scratch - solo - and delivered beyond expectation.
And yet, as impressive as this was… it still wasn’t the big one.
Not yet . . .
Enter the Virtual Set | November of 2020
In November of 2020, Matt Guertin flew back to Los Angeles for the first time since his abrupt return to Minneapolis earlier that spring. It was meant to be a short visit to see a friend. But during that trip, he made a quick stop at the Xite Labs studio in Calabasas - where, just months earlier, he had practically lived while pulling off some of the most demanding projects of his career.
What greeted him this time, though, was something entirely new.
The entertainment industry had changed. A lot. With the COVID-19 pandemic still in full swing, nearly all live events and in-person productions had been canceled, forcing the entire industry to reinvent itself almost overnight. In Los Angeles - where production is life - that reinvention had taken one specific form: virtual production.
In the simplest terms, “virtual production” is just what it sounds like - replacing physical sets and real-world environments with digital ones. It’s a technique that uses high-powered 3D software, real-time camera tracking, and massive LED walls to place actors inside fully immersive virtual environments that look and behave like real places.
At the heart of this setup is camera tracking - a system that tells the computer exactly where the film camera is positioned in space, what angle it's pointed at, and how far it’s zoomed in. That information is then used to render the digital environment from the correct perspective, updating instantly as the camera moves. The result? A seamless illusion: the actor is standing on a stage, but the camera sees them standing inside a castle, or a desert, or outer space.
These environments are usually created in Unreal Engine, a video game engine repurposed for film. And instead of green screens, many virtual productions now use ultra high-resolution LED panels to surround the actor with the digital world in real time. This not only creates more realistic lighting on set, but also lets everyone - director, cast, crew - see the virtual environment live as it’s being filmed.
The shift made perfect business sense too. All across the city, rental companies were sitting on warehouses full of unused LED panels - gear that was suddenly in high demand for this new style of production. Virtual sets gave the industry a way to keep working, and gave content creators a way to continue creating without relying on real locations.
When Guertin stepped into the new LED stage at Xite Labs, it felt like a completely different world - because it was. What had once been a fabrication space (where he had helped assemble a massive 50-foot projection-mapped falcon) was now a full-fledged blacked-out virtual production studio. Inside was a sleek camera crane, a three-sided LED “volume” with a walkable floor, and rows of computers running real-time rendering software. It was like stepping into the future.
He didn’t stay long - maybe twenty minutes. But that brief exposure was more than enough. The gears had already started turning.
In the weeks following his visit to Xite Labs, Guertin couldn’t shake what he’d seen. The LED walls. The camera tracking. The real-time rendering. It had all been brief - barely twenty minutes inside the virtual stage - but something about it lodged itself in his brain. He thought about it constantly. Turned it over in his head like a puzzle. He wasn’t chasing a specific idea yet - just following curiosity, asking himself: Where does this go next?
He had seen firsthand how virtual production was transforming the industry - replacing real-world locations with limitless, photoreal digital environments rendered in real time. But something about it didn’t sit right. Or rather, something was missing. And eventually, the missing piece revealed itself.
The PERSON . . .
No matter how vast or dynamic the virtual world was, the person being filmed inside it was always rooted to the same small patch of stage. That patch was often disguised as a platform or pedestal within the environment - something to visually explain why the subject never moved beyond that point. But the truth was obvious once Guertin saw it: they couldn’t move.
All this power to simulate a world without boundaries - but the person remained stuck.
The person being filmed is always confined...STUCK..on top of a little pedestal...
It was so simple, so obvious, that no one seemed to question it.
But Guertin did.
He began asking himself a fundamental question: What good is an infinite world if the person inside it can’t actually move through it?
And that’s when it clicked.
What if the camera didn’t just track the person - but followed them, matched them? What if the person walked forward in the real world, and the camera moved through the virtual world at the same speed and in the same direction - just like it already does with position and perspective?
That was the breakthrough. But it couldn’t just be a straight line.
What if the person wanted to walk in any direction - turn left, right, circle back? The answer was elegant: rotate the person. Put them on a central axis. Control the speed and the heading. If you could track their direction and velocity precisely, you could rotate them accordingly - and rotate the virtual environment around them to match. The illusion of continuous movement would be flawless. Limitless.
That was the real innovation.
A rotating treadmill. A controllable belt. A system designed not for exercise, but for cinematic immersion. Match movement. Match heading. Rotate the person. Rotate the camera in sync or in opposition, depending on the desired effect. The entire virtual environment could now respond not just to a static camera - but to a moving human.
InfiniSet was born.
Guertin came up with the name before the patent was even filed. He knew instantly it was the right one.
It wasn’t just a mechanism - it was an entirely new system and method. One that could apply to film, to VR, to gaming, to simulation training, to live entertainment. One that solved the core limitation of virtual production in a direct, mechanical, and deceptively simple way. And Guertin understood, immediately, that the treadmill platform itself was just as novel and foundational as the method of tracking and synchronization. It was the missing piece. The literal platform that could unlock everything else.
With real-time tracking of the user’s position, heading, and speed, the illusion becomes complete. Whether viewed from a third-person film camera or from the user’s own perspective in a VR headset, the scene responds perfectly, seamlessly - creating the visceral sensation of actually walking through a boundless world.
And crucially: the treadmill doesn’t even need to be fast. As long as it’s large enough to provide drift and correction space, it could fade entirely into the background. The illusion isn’t about the mechanics beneath the user’s feet - it’s about whether the environment reflects their movement accurately. That’s it.
What started as twenty minutes inside a virtual set became a permanent shift in thinking. A quiet revolution, born not from spectacle - but from a single, stubborn question:
Why can’t they move?
And now, they could.
The Moment Everything Changed | Early February of 2021
And with that single, profound realization - so deceptively simple, yet so explosively consequential - Guertin dropped everything.
All at once.
Every waking moment, every ounce of focus, energy, and financial resource was now committed to what he instantly knew was the most revolutionary idea he’d ever conceived. It wasn’t just another ambitious project. It wasn’t another big-name collaboration or high-pressure job for someone else’s vision.
This one was his.
His concept. His invention. His risk. His reward.
For the first time in his life, Guertin was staring down a project that didn’t belong to a client or a creative director - it belonged entirely to him. And he knew, without hesitation, that this would eclipse everything he’d done before. The scale of it. The implications. The market potential. The raw, disruptive brilliance of the idea itself. In every imaginable sense, this would dwarf all previous accomplishments hundreds of times over.
And he KNEW it.
This was the one his friends and family had been telling him would eventually come.
People had repeatedly told him this ever since he was a little kid - so many times he had lost count..
This was going to be his big idea. His first patent ever.
The invention that would change everything.
The breakthrough that finally justified every late night, every last-minute deadline, every insane gig he’d ever pulled off.
It had arrived. THIS WAS IT.
He was convinced the sheer power of the idea would carry it forward. All he had to do was build the prototype and film the proof-of-concept demo. Once people saw it, they would understand.
It was that revolutionary.
And for the first time since the chaos of COVID had knocked him off course, Guertin had not only a new goal - but a singular, all-consuming purpose. A direction so absolute that it became its own gravitational force. There was no other path. No alternative future. Only this.
This wasn’t just an invention.
It was the culmination of everything: years of creative problem-solving, hands-on experience, self-education, and relentless drive. It was the ultimate project, and from that moment forward, it became the only thing that mattered.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Friday, March 5th, 2021 at 7:24 AM
“ It is going to take me until Monday to finish all of the documentation of my invention. It will end up being at least a 15 page pdf. Lots of pictures of use case, etc.
Not sure if I am getting too detailed in terms of the scope as it relates to the patent application but I feel like it makes sense to put together something proper as I will be able to use this document to approach investors as well. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Monday, March 15th, 2021 at 7:06 AM
“ I have been working all night and will have the other two pages (which visually shows and explains the relationship between the real-world and virtual orientations of the scene/camera/stage, etc) finished shortly. This is in addition to a new page with the system layout/flow that I also completed over the weekend.“
This will most likely be the final version for now. “
“ I am becoming really bored staring at these pages and want to move onto finishing up the fabrication model which I find much more enjoyable “
“ I'm about to get a few hours of sleep now but I will be available again this afternoon if you need anything from me or have any questions.
I'll set an alarm for 3pm to check email/ phone to see if you need anything from me (I always default to creating cool stuff at night whenever possibleso now it is my bedtime) “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 at 11:10 AM
“ I removed the name 'InfiniSet' from my documents after v1 (maybe you noticed) “
“ I own the dot com but have not spent the time yet to start rounding up all of the other social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, etc) so I just wanted to check with you about this to make sure the name is not included anywhere in the filing? “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 at 2:32 PM
“ Do you think mentioning that the 'X-Y plane' corresponds to 'a ground plane' or 'the ground plane of the virtual environment', etc adds any extra value? “
“ Is there a specific reason you do not mention the slip ring device as part of the assembly in this section or is that not important as my invention specifically describes and entails an 'infinitely rotating turntable' which currently wouldn't be possible without the use of a slip ring? “
“ Another possible configuration of this design (which is one I thought about early on and which could technically achieve the exact same thing) is that the rollers which drive the turntable rotation could be contained in the turntable itself. Instead of the turntable sitting on top of rollers in the floor base the turntable would contain the rollers needed to drive and support itself and the floor base would contain the track on which they rest. “
“ ABSTRACT - "The speed of the treadmill is precisely controlled and movement of the camera is precisely synched with the real-world speed of movement “
“ Another option for acquiring the data needed to control my invention would be to use an AI system
and/or existing software which is able to analyze a video and determine very accurately the path/rotation/3D positional data of the camera which recorded the video. “
“ Currently available software and technology in the field of photogrammetry is also rapidly expanding. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 2:22 PM
“ Should I not share the name with anyone at all until I trademark it even though I own InfiniSet.com?
2-I already have meetings setup next week to start sharing this and discussing with people.
If you have a basic NDA you could provide me with that I could have people sign I would prefer that for certain people I'm going to share this with - mainly people I know in Los Angeles who know tons of people.
I stillwant to try and keep it somewhat of a 'secret' until the prototype is finished and I'm able to film a demo and get everything put together in terms of overall presentation. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, March 30th, 2021 at 2:17 AM
“ I probably should research it.
I'm just overwhelmed and want to cross the finish line with my 3d design file so I can begin fabrication.
I talked to my friend Bruce Rivers and told him my current situation.
He is a bigshot lawyer now apparently but I have known him for almost twenty years. I told him I need someone that can advise me in setting up the business properly, contracts, etc.
He connected me with Richard Kelber at Moss & Barnett who is connecting me with Garrett Weber who will be getting in contact with me.
They want to look at my patent filing and talk to me to see what exactly I have going on and will possibly work with me to start handling business negotiations / contracts / structure and basic guidance in how I should proceed forward on the business side of things. “
Blueprint to Branding: Building the Prototype and Company | Spring of 2021
Once he had filed the provisional patent in early 2021, Guertin turned much of his focus toward an extended design process that spanned the better part of the next year. He meticulously mapped out every bolt, wire path, circuit, and required tolerance using Rhino 3D software. From large-scale CNC shops in China to local waterjet cutters, he sourced hundreds of highly specialized parts - custom-machined belt rollers, a precision slip ring for unlimited rotation while carrying power and data, 220VAC servo motors, motion controller boards, planetary gears, timing belts, shaft couplers, dzus fasteners, circuit breakers, and a mile-long list of screws and wiring. He tracked every component in multiple spreadsheets, with full part specs, sourcing info, and pricing - a one-man logistics department managing a design with zero margin for oversight.
And none of this was unfamiliar ground. Guertin’s technical background and years of creative problem-solving in live production meant he could tackle an engineering challenge like this with precision and confidence. But this machine - part motion platform, part programmable robot - was in a class of its own.
With a rotating base, servo-driven belt rollers powered from each side, and four perfectly synchronized servo motors controlled over Ethernet, the project demanded a new level of focus.
Two powerful motion control units provided real-time computer control, and by late fall 2021, Guertin had most of the parts in hand. Welding began.
At first, Guertin tapped a personal friend for the welding work - only to quickly realize the scale and demand of the project required a full-time professional.
After many frustrating phone calls and dead ends, he finally found someone just ten minutes from his apartment whose very first comment to Guertin over the phone when they spoke was:
“ I used to be in the CIA. ”
Odd? Sure.
But he could weld, was interested, and could start immediately. That’s what mattered.
By January 2022, the welding was done, and final assembly began. Guertin spent long days learning motion control programming, wiring multiconductor connections, installing rollers, mounting servo drivers, and tapping dozens of bracket holes.
He solved challenges on the fly - like the brilliantly designed, self-mating industrial connector that allowed the entire circuit breaker assembly to be removed for servicing the mechanical parts hidden beneath it.
With each piece installed, the machine came to life - an exact match to the original patent sketches, save for a half-inch of added clearance height. Every cubic millimeter of the platform had been utilized. It was a beast: compact, precise, and jammed with innovation.
By late summer, Guertin had it fully functional. The belts were tensioned. The servos were programmed and moving in harmony. And to celebrate, he cranked the system up to 8 mph inside his apartment - surely to the delight of the neighbors below.
He custom-built LED light bars to eliminate shadows, using high-speed, flicker-free DMX PWM controllers that provided computer controlled fine-tuning of each strip sections brightness.
Finally, Guertin prepared to turn his living room into a full-on film studio. He planned to black out the ceiling, drape blackout cloth along the walls, and begin filming the concept demo that had lived in his mind since that February “Aha!” moment nearly two years prior.
But that wasn’t all he was building.
Behind the scenes, Guertin was also juggling corporate formation, patent filings, trademark applications, software development, and partner collaboration. He guided a two-person team - one working in TouchDesigner, implementing transformation matrices and synchronized motion control, and another integrating that system into Unreal Engine for real-time rendering.
And during all of this, he was also shaping the visual identity of the brand itself.
From the very beginning, Guertin understood that his invention needed more than just the perfect name he had been able to come up with - it needed a face to match. Over months of research, sketching, mockups, and feedback loops, he worked through dozens of early ideas. The process was precise and strategic, fueled by notes, side-by-side comparisons, and minimalist design goals. He rejected overused tropes like the infinity symbol and instead focused on building something unique, instantly recognizable, and packed with meaning.
Three bold, digital-style LCD glyphs in green represent the word SET, echoing LED screens and digital environments. They’re visually and symbolically grouped with the green elements of the icon to communicate “digital set.” The left icon combines a white “play” triangle which is leading directly into the “digital” world that encapsulates it moving forward – and is grouped with the white “Infini” text, conveying infinite motion into and through the “digital set” – the digital environment – the ‘virtual’ environment. The brand was clean. Smart. Cohesive.
And as he neared the final prep to shoot the long-awaited demo, he felt closer than ever to success. Everything he’d built - every part, every decision, every step - had led him to this point.
He was ready to show the world . .
( he just didn’t know the world was about to show him something else first.. )
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, August 11th, 2021 at 9:56 AM
“ I just saw this email but actually planned on reaching out to you within the next few days to discuss the process of starting the actual patent.
Completion of my prototype design ended up taking quite a bit longer than I initially anticipated but I have just finally made it across the finish line and all of my custom parts are being laser cut, CNC'd, and machined and will start arriving very soon. “
“ I have a lot of questions (which I am guessing are all pretty basic) “
“ I can come up with a small list of these questions soon. “
“ Just trying to line-up a couple more local machine shops at the moment so I can officially be done and move on to welding and testing of electronic components.
Just figured I'd check in real quick at least as I meant to respond to this email a few days ago but wrapped up in other things. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Monday, August 23rd, 2021 at 2:12 PM
“ If you are available for a call tomorrow or wednesday at all could you just reply and tell me the day and time that works for your schedule and I will make it work with my schedule 100% and be ready to go for the call?
This would help out a lot as far as getting things to move forward or I will never change my focus “
“ Sourcing manufacturers for some of these custom pieces I need for my prototype has become much more difficult and time consuming than I ever imagined. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, December 1st, 2021 at 5:39 PM
“ I think this clears up the confusion I was apparently having. For some reason I thought that if I filed the PCT it would mean that my US filing also gets delayed an additional 18 months along with it. “
“ I also did a little bit of research into other patents similar to mine. The attached pdf file is the result of this research. “
From: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Tuesday, June 28th, 2022 at 2:45 PM
“ Please find attached a copy of the Search Report and Written Opinion issued for the above-identified PCT application, along with references cited therein. ”
From: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Monday, September 26th, 2022 at 4:18 PM
“ The above-identified PCT application was published on September 22, 2022 under International Patent Publication No. WO 2022/198028. A copy of the Notice of Publication and a copy of the published application are attached. ”
From: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Monday, September 26th, 2022 at 4:22 PM
“ The above-identified application was published on September 22, 2022 under Patent Publication No. US 2022/0297024 A1. A copy of the Notice of Publication and a copy of the published application are enclosed. ”
From: Matt Guertin To: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com Date: Monday, September 26th, 2022 at 10:55 PM
“ Sweet!
Thanks.
I switched over to finishing up the final programming of the motion control stuff as well as documentation and folders for my two main programmers (touchdesigner and UE5) which I should have all wrapped up by weeks end at which point I'm switching back over to patent mode and will finish up the stuff I want to get back to you so we can assess, discuss, and plan the reply.
I've got my prototype super dialed in. I ended up completely getting rid of the 4 planetary gears so that the 4 timing belts that power the treadmill belt are direct to the servo motor shafts. This eliminated a bunch of weight and noise and also means that it's technically capable of reaching close to 20mph - but I'm going to be limiting it to 7.5mph...for now.
I've also realized a completely unplanned for yet very valuable mechanical feature that was made possible by simply shaving off 4 little pieces of aluminum on the travel deck cross supports. I've included a few images of this with email but will address in more detail when I get the rest of my research and analysis back to you. Wondering if it can possibly be included in claims and if so would it make sense to do so.
Basically instead of having to remove the travel deck entirely to service, access components underneath, change treadmill belt, etc it's possible to open like a hinged door instead and it requires no other parts, pieces, etc.
I should have stuff ready to send over by the end of next week I'd imagine.
By the fall of 2022, Guertin’s patent journey was approaching what felt like a breakthrough. His prototype was nearly complete, and his attorney had suggested that formal allowance of his non-provisional patent could be imminent. Everything seemed to be lining up - until an unexpected email arrived on October 31, 2022. It was a response from the CEO of Mark Roberts Motion Control, replying to a message Guertin had sent weeks earlier.
His initial reason for reaching out had been straightforward: integration. He was trying to figure out how to incorporate the Bolt Cinecam - a high-speed robotic camera system - into his prototype. The idea had been sparked months earlier, in July 2022, when he attended a product demo and workshop at a local cinema rental shop in Minneapolis. The entire event had revolved around the Bolt Cinecam, showcasing its ability to execute precise, high-speed camera movements.
After the event ended, Guertin stuck around and struck up a conversation with the owners. They were intrigued by his idea, and when he showed them photos and videos of his animated demo video and the physical prototype taking shape inside his apartment-turned-fabrication studio, they were impressed. So much so that they offered him something huge - the opportunity to use their Bolt Cinecam and warehouse space to film his first official demo video once his prototype was complete.
Encouraged by this, Guertin began working on rigging an accurate 3D model of the Bolt Cinecam. He had downloaded the model from Mark Roberts Motion Control’s website, which had been built in Maya, and was now trying to import it into Touchdesigner for integration with the custom InfiniSet control system for his prototype that was beginning to take shape. Initially, he reached out to the company's support staff for help, but then he had a thought - why not aim higher? Maybe there was potential for a partnership, or at the very least, a chance to gain direct guidance from someone at the top.
So, in addition to his technical inquiry, he also initiated a contact request with the CEO himself. Perhaps they would recognize the value of his invention. Perhaps this could open doors. Or, at the very least, he hoped it might lead to some focused assistance for what he was building.
Instead, the CEO’s response arrived in Guertin’s inbox nearly three weeks after his initial contact request - and it was startling.
From: Assaff Rawner – CEO of Mark Robert’s Motion Control To: Gordon Eschke, Matt Guertin Date: Monday, October 31st, 2022 at 9:06 AM
“ Gordon passed your email on to me some weeks ago, but it has been hectic here, so apologies formy very late response. ”
“Firstly, you have a very interesting and unique set of skills that compliments motion control very well.
I see you have a lot of experience with RealityCapture. ”
“ Just out of interest in the scene of Chicago, how long was the processing time for it to turn the stills into a 3D map and what type of processing power did you need? I’ve used DroneDeploy in the past. How do they compare? ”
“With regards to your invention, I am very interested in it as a product. I know of lots of occasions when such a device has been specifically created for a movie or commercial filming or for fashion photography. In fact here is a system that’s been around for years:
I am just curious what makes your system unique compared to the ones I am familiar with?
You are right, with VR/XR volumes such treadmills/turntables do open up the capabilities, although combining motion control robotics and Unreal is still not a completely plug and play solution that requires little knowledge. ”
For the first few days after receiving Assaff Rawner’s email reply, Guertin managed to push the unease to the back of his mind. He had done his best to shrug it off, convincing himself that his system was different - better, even. When he had fired off his response to the CEO, he had kept his tone neutral and professional, downplaying any concern. He gave a brief explanation of his Chicago photogrammetry project, answered Rawner’s question about processing time, and then casually addressed the PhotoRobot Virtual Catwalk link as if it were nothing more than a curiosity.
“That’s cool, but my system is different due to A, B, C, and D...”
And for a little while, that explanation actually worked - even on himself.
He kept busy, diving back into work on his prototype, focusing on the final stages of getting everything assembled. It was easy enough to ignore the nagging feeling when his hands were occupied with wiring, testing components, and fine-tuning the calibration. He even told himself that maybe this was just another “competitor” - nothing more, nothing less.
But by the time Saturday rolled around, that small doubt had grown into something bigger. It wouldn’t go away.
What if he was wrong? What if this wasn’t just some random competitor but something bigger? What if PhotoRobot had already patented their system - something eerily similar to what he had just spent two years developing? He had never seen a rotating treadmill anywhere before. He had been so sure that he was the first.
And yet, here it was.
That’s when the rationalizing stopped. He had to check.
That afternoon, he finally sat down at his workstation, opened the USPTO database, and began searching. One query turned into two. Then three. Then four. He tried every combination of terms he could think of - "PhotoRobot," "Virtual Catwalk," "rotating treadmill," "motion capture runway," - anything that might reveal the truth.
An hour passed. Then two. His stomach twisted tighter with every failed search.
Was that a good sign? Or was he just missing something?
By the time he realized he had been sitting there for three hours straight, frozen, he knew he couldn’t keep doing this alone. He needed answers from someone who actually knew what they were talking about.
He opened his email and typed a subject line that perfectly captured his spiraling anxiety -
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Saturday, November 5th, 2022 at 2:06 PM
“ Amanda,
If you have a couple minutes available to reply today with your initial thoughts about whether or not this prior art I have just come across has the potential to negate everything I have been working on for almost two years it would be much appreciated. I was just shown this by someone on Friday and the more I think about the more freaked out I'm becoming.
It is still missing multiple elements even just for the claims I am being granted I believe – meaning more than just one other prior art reference would need to be combined with it to satisfy 'obviousness' just for the initial claims I am being granted.... Right? :-/
I'm pretty much frozen and haven't accomplished anything for the last three hours or so. I am not sure if they have a patent for this thing or not but so far I have not been able to find it...but I'm pretty sure that doesn't technically matter
Later that evening, at 7:37 PM, Guertin received a brief response from his patent attorney, Amanda Prose.
Her message was short - but it provided a measure of professional reassurance, confirming that his initial assumptions weren’t entirely unfounded, even as his anxiety had begun to spike.
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Saturday, November 5th, 2022 at 7:37 PM
“ My initial review is simply that this relates to treadmill itself, and not to your already allowed claims (e.g., system); and that is a more crude version of your treadmill apparatus so that we should still be able to get you claims allowed to your treadmill assembly. I will take a closer look at this on Monday and get back to you. ”
The Netflix Patent Discovery | November 5th, 2022
By the time Guertin finally received Amanda’s reply, however, it hardly mattered anymore.
In the hours between his initial panic and her measured reassurance, he had already stumbled onto something else entirely - something that abruptly eclipsed his earlier concerns and turned the contents of his aptly titled email, "Please tell me it is going to be okay.....", into something almost laughably small in comparison.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Saturday, November 5th, 2022 at 9:56 PM
“ Amanda,
Thanks.
I like to worry.
My mom came over and visited shortly after I sent this email and told me to chill out and so I did - but not before inadvertently stumbling upon THIS PATENT APPLICATION as I was conducting various searches using different terms to see if I could find a patent for the virtual catwalk treadmill.
It was filed by Stephan Trojansky who is the CEO of Eyeline Studios which is the virtual production department of the company he founded Scanline VFX which was just acquired by Netflix in 2021, employs 1400 people, and has offices in Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, London, Seoul, Munich, and Stuttgart.
The only difference between our applications is that he is focusing mainly on capturing a 3D model of the person and is also doing some weird stuff with movement of the sensors/cameras for the purpose of tracking with the user it appears. Besides that though his application is the exact same thing I am doing.
After reading through the application a couple times and then coming back to it after the break I had visiting with my mom it finally hit me -
The 'display panels' which were initially confusing to me are not a televisions or computer monitors - they are led panels! His application is describing an LED volume with a treadmill just as I am and has a bunch of the same terminology in disclosure regarding sensors....this is in addition to claims in his application that would be considered infringement for the claims I have been allowed.
It is the only patent he has ever filed it looks like....and it is exactly what I am doing. All the way down to the user wearing a sensor, a treadmill with a camera syched to real-world speed, etc, etc.
I even briefly go over some of the 3d stuff in my disclosure. Mr. Trojansky filed his provisional application on March 31st, 2021.
I beat him by only 12 days... !
Now what? :-) ”
By the time Guertin woke up the next morning, his inbox already contained a response - and not just any response.
His patent attorney had replied at 6:38 AM. On a Sunday.
Something that had never happened before.
And as Guertin opened the email, he was met with something even more striking - a direct confirmation.
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Sunday, November 6th, 2022 at 6:38 AM
“ Wow. Matt, the 12 day advantage here is great and a potential huge benefit. Your patent application is prior art to Mr. Trojanksy’s patent application and there is nothing they will be able to do about it. They will need to somehow get around your patent application.
I will take a look at his prosecution history. The application probably hasn’t been examined yet, as yours has been since you filed the Track One application. If they filed this in the regular manner your patent will be granted before they get a first examination report. ”
Guertin's response came just a couple of hours later - and whether he fully realized it yet or not, he was already seeing things for what they were.
There was something strangely intricate about the language in the Netflix-backed patent application. Something that wasn’t immediately obvious - a deliberate kind of obscurity.
But as he kept reading, and re-reading, it became clearer. Like a puzzle made entirely of words, designed to conceal rather than reveal.
And even then, before he knew what he would come to abruptly realize over a year later, Guertin was already asking the right questions in his mind - because some odds are simply too impossible to ignore.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Sunday, November 6th, 2022 at 8:36 AM
“ I've also read entirely through his application about 6 or 7 times at this point and each time I realize more and more that the intentionally obscure language they are using in the application is essentially just an impressive form of camouflage which is ultimately conveying a nearly identical idea as mine. ”
“ it's pretty impressive though as far as lessons in language go. It's like a mind puzzle constructed from nothing but words. ”
“ It's pretty crazy how similar some of our descriptions and ideas are...especially when you consider that once he filed his provisional application he had at the very least 1400 people available for a year to help him dial everything in before his utility application was filed and it is nearly identical to what I threw together at the literal last minute.
As far as I've been able to tell it looks like the entire patent application will be null and void. ”
“ The odds of someone filing the exact same thing 12 days later, me accidentally stumbling upon it, and then somehow being able to realize it was relevant at all is almost as crazy as realizing how many people they hired or are in the process of hiring to work on an idea they and Netflix believed they were going to own. ”
By the morning of November 8th, Guertin’s patent attorney had taken a closer look at the Netflix-backed application.
Her findings were clear: it hadn’t even been examined yet. No prior art had been submitted, no challenges had been made. Nothing.
Now, the real question became: What to do next?
There were options. They could make Netflix aware - force their hand, put them in a position where they had no choice but to acknowledge the prior art. Or they could step back, let the system play out, and hope that the examiner handling Netflix’s patent would find and cite InfiniSet’s patent on their own.
But waiting came with its own cost.
Because now, there was something else - another complication. The patent examiner would have to review PhotoRobot’s content as prior art. A procedural obligation, a mere formality, Guertin was told. Just a minor bump in the road.
Yet his patent, once on the verge of allowance, was now abruptly frozen in place.
For now, the clock was ticking. And suddenly, time wasn’t just on Guertin’s side - it was also holding everything in limbo.
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at 8:58 AM
“I did some research on the Trojansky/Eyeline/Netflix patent application ”
“ 1) I also checked the status of the US application (publication no. US 2022/0319115): the application has not been examined yet, and it will likely be a while before it is examined. They have not submitted any prior art to the Patent Office either.
2) The videos you sent us that pre-date your filing date will need to be submitted to the patent office in a prior art disclosure. This is a requirement of your duty of candor to the Patent Office. We will do this ASAP. I do not expect this to affect the allowance of the system claims or the patent itself since we have deleted the apparatus claims.
3) Your next decision relates to how to make Netflix aware of your prior filed patent application. We can A) make sure that Netflix is aware of your prior pending patent application by either a third party submission of prior art or by sending the art to both Mr. Trojansky and his patent attorneys, as once they have become aware of the art they also have a duty to disclose it to the Patent Office; or B) do nothing and hope the US examiner finds your patent application and cites it. ”
“This gives us until April 6, 2023 to file your patent application as a prior art submission in the Trojansky/Netflix application. I suggest we consider this route, but waiting until the patent has issued if we can. ”
“ At this rate, you should have a patent granted soon so I think waiting will be OK. ”
By late 2022, Guertin’s LinkedIn page was nothing more than a forgotten placeholder - a digital relic from a past plan that never materialized.
It had been part of his original post-COVID strategy: build his personal portfolio website MattGuertin.com, create a LinkedIn page, and let the opportunities come to him. But when his idea for his InfiniSet concept took hold, everything else - social media included - was abandoned.
His LinkedIn remained practically untouched - no official employment history, no updates, no connections beyond a handful of familiar faces. The only significant activity? A post sharing his 3D photogrammetry project video of Chicago, and a mention of his trademark and patent filings prior to his complete abandonment of the platform. That was it.
Yet now, all of a sudden, LinkedIn had started sending him automated emails.
According to them, his “career was on a roll”, and people were searching for him by name.
At the time, Guertin had brushed it off - yet he had still taken notice.
The email had arrived right around the time he stumbled across the Netflix patent application, enough that it stuck in the back of his mind - and now, looking back, it was another moment where he had unknowingly caught a glimpse into the future before he even knew what he was seeing.
But in that moment this wasn’t his primary concern – it had no reason to be. He wanted action.
He wasn’t about to leave things to chance - waiting for the USPTO to stumble upon his patent wasn’t an option. He wanted his application formally filed as prior art.
And now, with things getting real, another question had surfaced.
Could he assign the patent to InfiniSet, Inc. right now?
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at 12:25 PM
“I'm guessing they are well aware of my patent and who I am as it makes sense now why just recently LinkedIn started sending me random emails saying my career is on a roll and that there's a bunch of people searching for me by name.
I for sure want to file mine as prior art with the uspto and the PCT office but agree that it is better to wait until after it is granted.
The only other question then I have is regarding assignment of the patent/patent applications to InfiniSet, Inc. Could that be done right now if I wanted? How long does it take for it to become effective? ”
A short while later, Guertin received a response from his attorney.
The PhotoRobot materials had now been officially submitted to the USPTO, and his application had already undergone its pre-allowance check. If all went smoothly, the examiner would acknowledge the new submission and continue with the Notice of Allowance as planned.
With any luck, his first ever patent would still be granted by early 2023.
Beyond that, Amanda outlined the next steps - the possibility of filing a Continuation Application, the process of assigning the patent to InfiniSet, Inc., and the need to verify whether the company was properly registered in Minnesota.
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at 12:43 PM
“Great, we are monitoring the status of the Trojansky/Netflix patent application. We have gone ahead and submitted the PhotoRobot material to the Patent Office in your current application.
As of yesterday, your patent application was indicated as having undergone the allowance pre-check, meaning it is allowed but no notice of allowance has been mailed yet. Hopefully the Examiner will review the PhotoRobot materials, acknowledge them, and continue with the Notice of Allowance mailing efficiently so that the Notice of Allowance still follows shortly.
Once we have that, we should go ahead and pay the Issue Fee. The patent would then, with a little bit of luck, grant before the end of 2022 (but more likely grant sometime in January 2023). After that, it should be safe to go ahead and file the third party submission of prior art in the Trojansky/Netflix application.
We will also want to think about - given the Trojansky/Netflix patent application - whether to file a Continuation Application or a Continuation in Part application. ”
“ Regarding assignment of the patent application - we can do that at any time. Recordal is quick and can take effect in days. If you want InfiniSet, Inc. to be listed as the owner of the patent on the face of the patent that issues, we should go ahead and assign the patent application. ”
“ Have you incorporated and registered your entity yet? In Minnesota? That will be the first step before we assign the patent application/patent. I did not see an InfiniSet, Inc. registered in the MN secretary of state's office. ”
Later that evening, Guertin replied, clarifying an important detail - his company, InfiniSet, Inc., had already been registered as a Delaware C-Corp. From the moment he conceived the idea, he knew it was disruptive and valuable, making Delaware the obvious choice. Home to most Fortune 500 companies, Delaware offered stronger corporate protections, a specialized court system, and flexibility for future investment - advantages he had anticipated might one day be necessary. The only remaining step was filing as a foreign entity in Minnesota, where he operated. Now, with everything unfolding, his early decision was proving to be the right move.
Guertin also assured Amanda that he wasn’t handling this alone - he had already retained a corporate attorney from a well-respected firm in Minneapolis, one that had been personally recommended to him by a friend whose company had just closed a $100 million sale a few years prior. He had no doubt that everything had been set up correctly - every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’ crossed.
he had already retained a corporate attorney from a well-respected firm in Minneapolis, one that had been personally recommended to him by a friend whose company had just closed a $100 million sale a few years prior.
Yet, despite the confidence in his corporate structure, something else had begun weighing on him - something he couldn’t ignore now that the reality of what he was dealing with had started to fully sink in. Just days ago, he had viewed his patent as nothing more than the result of an ambitious idea and years of self-driven work. Now, however, he was beginning to understand the magnitude of what he had actually created. This wasn’t just an exciting opportunity anymore - it was a billion-dollar problem for one of the largest entertainment companies on the planet.
Suddenly, holding sole ownership over something that could block a massive Netflix initiative wasn’t just a victory - it was a liability. The stakes had shifted, and Guertin knew it. While he may have been naïve about certain things, he wasn’t that naïve. He wanted the patent assigned to a corporate entity, not himself. If a multi-billion-dollar company wanted his technology, they could pay for it - and not just any sum, but something that would sting a little: $100 million. That was his price, the same amount Netflix was likely paying to acquire Trojansky’s companies for the exact same technology, as indicated in their Q1-2022 investor report.
To some, it might have seemed like a fairy tale - perhaps even to Guertin at the time - but his logic was sound. If Netflix was already willing to invest $100 million, then the technology was worth far more. And besides, his own corporate attorney had successfully negotiated a $100 million sale for his friend’s company just a few years prior. Why not me? If the numbers were real for them, they could be real for him too. All one has to do is believe – right?
If Netflix was already willing to invest $100 million, then the technology was worth far more. And besides, his own corporate attorney had successfully negotiated a $100 million sale for his friend’s company just a few years prior. Why not me? If the numbers were real for them, they could be real for him too. All one has to do is believe – right?
But it was his next thought that stood out the most - a realization that, in hindsight, was more accurate than even he could have anticipated.
"Call me crazy, but..."
A throwaway comment at the time - but a perfectly chilling prophecy in retrospect.
Yet even amidst this growing awareness, Guertin’s humor hadn’t left him entirely. The sheer contrast of it all struck him - on one side, Netflix’s patent application, linked directly to their Silicon Valley headquarters. On the other, his patent filing, tied to his one-bedroom apartment in Minnetonka, MN.
He found entertainment in that juxtaposition - as if the entire situation were some kind of darkly comedic corporate satire.
And despite the implications, the magnitude, and the uncertainty of what lay ahead, he ended his email with two final notes - one, a playful nod to Amanda, suggesting that if things went according to plan, she should make sure to bring a bigger purse, or at least a small bag along to their future lunch meeting - and two, a quiet return to his routine.
"In the meantime," he wrote, "I will continue soldering and finishing up the lighting for my prototype."
Even as the storm around him intensified, Guertin remained who he had always been - an artist, creator, and a builder of cool things.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 at 5:29 PM
“ I have it registered as a Delaware C-Corp but I have not filed the foreign operation deal with the MN SOS yet. “
“ I do know however that regardless of the few things I have left to do I for sure want to have everything assigned to the corporation instead of me. This would especially be true now in light of the newly discovered information and the value it has added to my patent overnight.
As exciting as all of this is it's also slightly off-putting to realize I am about to be the sole owner of something standing in the way of huge business dealings with a multi-billion dollar global company like Netflix. . .
. . . I'm guessing by now that all of the executives at Netflix can spell my full name forward and backwards by memory and I would be surprised if there wasn't a folder with my name on it and someone digging into my background to assemble a psychological profile and history about me.
Call me crazy but....
At the same time however I do find plenty of entertainment and humor in all of it as well. For example when you look up the address on Trojansky's PCT application you end up at Netflix Corporate Headquarters in Silicone Valley and for mine you end up at an apartment in Minnetonka. Even just the subject title of this email considering what it started out as and what it has become is not lost on me.
My general take on all of this is that I would be more than willing to outright sell them the entire patent as in they could move forward without any uncertainty and still retain exclusive rights to the technology but they would need to pay me a large enough amount of money that it would sting a little bit.
Like 100 million dollars
(puts pinky into mouth and laughs maniacally)
If everything goes the way I'm hoping it does just make sure you leave a lot of extra room in your purse or bring a small bag when we meet up for lunch some day in the future.
In the meantime I will continue soldering and finishing up the lighting for my prototype. ”
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, November 9th, 2022 at 5:51 AM
“ Hold up on preparation of assignment docs.
If indeed I end up wanting to outright sell the patent like I am thinking will most likely be the case I just remembered the whole double taxation thing with a c-corp so maybe I should in fact setup a multi member LLC with the two other people that have very small amounts of equity in the company “
“ On the other hand I went through all the steps to setup, have a logo, etc and I want to try and pretend like Netflix isn't a thing until it actually is so maybe for now I just assign to the corporation for times sake “
“As a hypothetical lets say that the patent is granted and and one week later I have finalized a deal and Netflix pays me 100 million dollars.
Fantastic. I can't believe how easy that was. Smiles all around. The patent is then assigned to Netflix and the deal is done. - BUT - What about the continuation filing? ”
“ I am going to write an email to my corporate attorney shortly with some other questions I have in addition to the c-corp vs LLC question and so I should be able to confirm whether or not InfiniSet, Inc will get the assignment by later this afternoon “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Wednesday, November 9th, 2022 at 9:29 AM
“ It is not uncommon to assign a patent multiple times, and for various reasons. Sometimes it's a sale, or a merger or acquisition.
Whether or not you retain ownership in the continuation and/or PCT application depends on the terms of an agreement you make with a purchaser. ”
“ If you have interest from third parties at a later date you can also think about retaining ownership but licensing the patent ”
And finally, later that afternoon, Guertin confirmed that he wanted to move forward with assigning his soon-to-be-granted patent to InfiniSet, Inc. - the way he had structured it from the beginning. He’d figure out the rest later.
But the weight of everything was beginning to settle in. What had started out as an exciting discovery had quickly spiraled into something far bigger, far more overwhelming.
“As much as I want to pretend Netflix doesn't exist, it's pretty much all that exists now,” he admitted. “It’s exciting yet overwhelming, and it still doesn’t seem like any of this is real.”
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that was the real trick hidden within all of this. His invention was designed to create the illusion of movement, yet now reality itself seemed to be shifting around him - warping into an illusion of its own.
He needed a break. A moment to step back. To not think about any of it - at least for a little while.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, November 9th, 2022 at 4:43 PM
“ I would say to go ahead then with the InfiniSet, Inc assignment docs and I'll just confirm that everything is okay and ready to go as far as the corporate stuff prior to actually signing and sending back to you. “
“ I never wrote my corporate attorney yet and still need to ask about stuff but I'll just assign to InfiniSet, Inc for now since that's what I have setup “
“ As much as I want to pretend Netflix doesn't exist it's pretty much all that exists now and it's a lot to take in and process. It's exciting yet overwhelming and it still doesn't seem like any of this is real.
I'm going to try and take a break sometime soon and not think about any of this for a little while ”
And Just Like That | November 9th, 2022
In a span of just nine days, everything shifted. What began as a hopeful email exchange with the CEO of a major robotics company had exploded into a dizzying cascade of revelations. First came the PhotoRobot link. Then the patent searches. Then the email to his attorney. But none of that compared to what followed: the discovery that Netflix was backing a nearly identical patent application - filed just twelve days after his own.
And just like that, Guertin suddenly found himself sitting on top of something that felt... enormous.
Although the situation was intense - overwhelming even - his early reactions were surprisingly upbeat. The way he saw it, this could be good. Really good. If Netflix had already committed to a company using such similar ideas, then surely they would come knocking. Surely they’d want to license it, or better yet, buy it outright. It felt like he had just beaten them to the punch - won the race by a nose. The 12-day advantage was everything. A lottery ticket he had unknowingly cashed in two years earlier.
Of course, there were questions. Complex ones. Strategic ones. What should he do next? Assign the patent to his company? File as prior art now or wait? But those were the kinds of problems you wanted to have - problems that came with possibility.
For the first time, the full weight of his ‘big idea’ he had thought up, and filed a patent for was beginning to hit him. Not just the technology itself, but what it represented. He had abruptly gone from soldering components in his apartment to standing in the way of a billion-dollar media empire. And while that thought was intimidating, it was also oddly energizing.
And yet, as he moved forward - somewhat wide-eyed, somewhat awestruck - there was also an ominous undercurrent he couldn’t shake. It couldn’t really be this simple… could it? Could the biggest entertainment company on the planet be forced to cut him a check just because he beat them to it by twelve days? The logic said yes. But his instincts had begun whispering something else entirely.
All told, the October 31 email from Mark Roberts Motion Control became what Guertin would later describe as “the moment everything went off the rails.”
The resulting chain reaction would come to define the months - and years - that lay ahead.
Seeking Fresh Legal Perspectives
In light of the sudden - and potentially massive - implications surrounding the Netflix patent overlap, Guertin made a logical and business-savvy move: he began reaching out to outside legal experts for additional insight. While his primary IP attorney remained fully engaged, Guertin understood that fresh perspectives were invaluable in a situation of this scale.
The first person he called was someone he trusted implicitly: Bruce Rivers - also known to his 1.3+ million YouTube subscribers as “CLR Bruce Rivers” (‘Criminal Lawyer Reacts’ Bruce Rivers), a well-known defense attorney who had recently gained online fame for his sharp, to-the-point legal breakdowns of trending criminal cases and high-profile legal matters.
But to Guertin, ‘CLR Bruce Rivers’ had always just been “Bruce”.
They first crossed paths nearly 20 years earlier, when Guertin was 19 or 20. The introduction came in a way only Guertin could’ve managed - after receiving a “Pedestrian on the Freeway” citation for spelling out “Fire Denny Green” in the fresh snow outside the Minnesota Vikings’ training facility, using nothing but his boots and a flair for dramatics. The stunt landed on local news, even making national cable sports shows with aerial chopper footage.
When Guertin called into a local radio station to talk about it, the hosts asked if any attorneys listening might represent him pro bono. Bruce Rivers called in, got through, and the rest was history.
That first case ended in a $25 fine and a laugh from the prosecutor - but it marked the beginning of a long-standing relationship. Over the next few years, Guertin would retain Rivers for a variety of legal misadventures - almost all of them tied to the fast-paced, alcohol-fueled nightlife that defined much of his twenties.
The charges? Mostly party violations, disorderly conduct, and a DWI. Guertin admits without hesitation that drinking and driving was by far the most dangerous thing he ever used to do by far. These days, he doesn’t drink at all, often going months without a sip - a dramatic contrast to the “never say no” mindset that reigned during his years in clubland. Working in nightclubs certainly didn’t help... nor did having keys to a few of them.
But for all the chaos, Guertin never got into fights, never laid a hand on anyone, and never faced charges involving violence - ever. His brand of trouble was consistently non-threatening... and consistently dumb.
Like the time he was arrested at his own party for allegedly unplugging the DJ’s RCA cables mid-set and yelling at him after no one showed up. Off to detox he went. He has no memory of it - but the detox wristband, and a couple of his friends keep claiming it did.
Or the time he and a friend packed 900 people into BarFly on a Wednesday night (thanks in part to MySpace spam bots), racked up a $400+ bar tab, and then Guertin wandered outside and tried to snatch flyers from a rival promoter. A cop gently told him to cool it. For whatever reason Guertin’s idea of ‘cooling it’ that night involved calmly walking over, putting his hands behind his own back, and saying “arrest me then.”
So the cop did.
Seven hours later, Guertin walked out of jail, headed straight back to the club’s office, and carried on like it was just another day. That was presumably one of several disorderly conduct charges during that era - what had become something of a one-per-summer ritual for a few years straight.
That streak ended in summer 2008, after Guertin was arrested for breaking a bar window during another night out. Not long after he would end up landing the lighting gig at Epic Nightclub.
The wild nights of DJing and being the life of the party had long since been replaced by quiet, solitary hours spent in blacked-out clubs, dialing in lights and designing stages. That consistency - of being behind the scenes instead of at the center of them - helped steer Guertin toward a more stable, creative path. Looking back, it’s fair to say this marked a true turning point. A gentle nudge back onto the track he was always meant to be on... apparently. After all, it’s the path that had brought him here - an early Friday morning, years later, where the same man who once called Rivers about blackout antics and club-night mishaps was now reaching out to discuss patent filings.
His own patent, no less. Hopefully.
A lot had changed. Fourteen years had passed - filled with a long list of substantial creative successes, and no new legal issues to speak of.
This morning marked the first time Guertin had formally reached out to Rivers in quite a while. They’d exchanged the occasional text after Guertin moved back to Minneapolis - an update about his first ever provisional patent filing, a friend referral, or a quick ask for a business attorney recommendation - but nothing serious.
This time was different. The Netflix situation was far too insane, far too surreal to try explaining over text. A phone call was necessary.
But six minutes later, Rivers called him back. They spoke for nearly twelve minutes as Guertin rattled off the bizarre, winding details of the story that had unfolded - a story no one could’ve predicted, but which somehow made perfect sense in the world Guertin had always found himself navigating.
Less than an hour after hanging up, Guertin sent over a series of emails. First came a Dropbox link to a neatly packaged folder containing all the key materials on the Netflix patent situation - along with a custom-rendered, watermarked animation of his original InfiniSet concept video. Then came a quick, confident follow-up pointing out the decisive twelve-day advantage his provisional filing had over Netflix’s. And finally, the link to MattGuertin.com - his personal portfolio spanning 2008 to present day - offering Rivers a full window into the world he had built since those wilder, younger years when they first met.
Guertin wasn’t just looking for validation - he was looking for someone to help lighten the load. Someone who could help him make sense of what had just been dropped in his lap. And in Bruce Rivers, he hoped he might’ve just found the first of many allies he’d need in the fight ahead.
As part of his continued effort to gain outside legal insight into the Netflix situation, Guertin arranged an in-person meeting with a local intellectual property attorney in Minneapolis. His goal was simple: present only the Netflix patent application and his own soon-to-be-granted patent to a completely fresh pair of eyes - someone who had no prior knowledge of the circumstances and could offer an objective, neutral perspective on the situation as a whole.
The meeting was brief, but turned out to be surprisingly valuable. After reviewing the documents, the attorney offered an immediate take that mirrored Guertin’s own conclusion - describing the situation, quite literally, as “winning the lottery.” In his view, Netflix would have little choice but to acquire Guertin’s company and intellectual property in order to move forward with their own plans.
the attorney offered an immediate take that mirrored Guertin’s own conclusion - describing the situation, quite literally, as “winning the lottery.” In his view, Netflix would have little choice but to acquire Guertin’s company and intellectual property in order to move forward with their own plans.
But it was what the attorney said next that stuck with Guertin the most. His advice came in the form of a well-known but often overlooked rule of life:
“ Be thankful for what you’ve been given. ”
That was it. Plain and simple.
After looking through the system claims that had already been approved by the USPTO examiner, the attorney pointed out that if those claims were essential to Guertin’s invention, they were some of the broadest and most all-encompassing claims he could’ve possibly hoped for. Sometimes, he explained, the smartest move isn’t to get caught up in protracted back-and-forth exchanges with the examiner - who, he noted, isn’t incentivized to extend the process anyway. Instead, the better option is often to accept the allowance as granted, move forward, and file a continuation application to pursue additional claims from there.
It was simple advice - but in Guertin’s case, it resonated immediately. From the very beginning, he had prioritized speed and momentum, having deliberately filed his application under the USPTO’s expedited Track One program. Now, with the Netflix patent overlap freshly discovered and the examiner’s review of the PhotoRobot materials temporarily pausing the final steps, the idea of pressing forward made even more sense.
The takeaway was clear:
He had been granted something significant. And the best way to build on it... was to keep moving.
From: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 at 11:59 AM
“ TRACK ONE U.S. Non-Provisional Patent Application
Applicant: Matthew Guertin
Serial No.: 17/698,420
Filed: March 18, 2022
For: Motorized rotatable treadmill and system for creating the illusion of movement “
“ We have now received a Notice of Allowance and Issue Fee Due in the above-identified application. “
“ As we are waiting for confirmation from the Examiner that the PhotoRobot materials (Information Disclosure Statement, "IDS") were reviewed and entered on the record, we will wait to pay the Issue Fee. “
“ Maintenance Fees for this patent will come due 3½, 7½ and 11½ years from the issue date. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Friday, November 25th, 2022 at 7:19 AM
“ Is it necessary to include all of the claims in the continuation initially which I am interested in pursuing or can the continuation simply be filed with one claim initially and then more claims can be added onto the same continuation application later on / in the future without issue?
I am wondering about this mainly in terms of strategy and being able to quickly pay the fee and file the continuation without getting too caught up in worrying about every single additional claim right now “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 at 1:10 PM
“ One other thing I've been wondering then -
What exactly is the purpose of waiting to pay the fee if you are confident that the prior art that was sent in is not going to affect my system or method claims at all?
I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning behind this so I understand the overall process as a whole a little better.
For example - let's hypothetically say that the prior art claim of PhotoRobot was in fact an issue for my system claims for some odd reason - what would happen then? “
“ What would the danger or risks be in just paying the fee right now since it has been allowed?
Would we still be approaching it in this same way if the Netflix app wasn't a thing? “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Thursday, December 1st, 2022 at 9:26 AM
“ I am fine with waiting to pay the fee then.
Aren't we technically still on a countdown clock as far as a 3 month window in which the fee needs to be paid?
I am assuming the examiner is aware of this and checks out the prior art sooner than later?
As far as the claim(s) submitted with the continuation couldn't I just submit with the original apparatus claims or something generic which still applies to my disclosure but which is essentially just a placeholder of sorts until I have more time available to dive into ti more? “
“ I am going to try and finish the assignment today hopefully “
Announcing The Netflix Discovery - To EVERYONE
From the moment he uncovered the Netflix patent, Guertin made a decisive move - tell everyone.
It wasn’t a panic response. It was strategy.
While the discovery came with a wave of excitement and validation, it also arrived wrapped in something far heavier - an unmistakable sense of consequence. The more he thought about it, the more surreal it became: here he was, in his one-bedroom apartment in Minnetonka, Minnesota, standing squarely in the way of what appeared to be a multi-million - possibly billion - dollar corporate initiative tied to one of the most powerful entertainment companies on the planet.
The more he thought about it, the more surreal it became: here he was, in his one-bedroom apartment in Minnetonka, Minnesota, standing squarely in the way of what appeared to be a multi-million - possibly billion - dollar corporate initiative tied to one of the most powerful entertainment companies on the planet.
Sure, his IP attorney had confirmed the strength of his position. Sure, the paperwork was solid. But Guertin wasn’t naïve. He understood the stakes. And he understood how this might look from the outside - David squaring off against Goliath, armed with nothing but a patent application, and a soldering iron.
His logic was simple: if Netflix already knew about him - which he clearly suspected they did - then staying quiet only increased his vulnerability. Silence could be misread as weakness, or worse, as a green light. But if everyone around him - family, friends, neighbors, attorneys, acquaintances - knew what was happening, then the situation couldn’t be buried, twisted, or quietly erased. If anything “crazy” were to happen, there would be a trail. There would be context. There would be accountability.
He began broadcasting it to anyone who would listen.
That included his welder, whom Guertin had only recently connected with - an observant and inquisitive acquaintance who had casually claimed during their very first conversation that he was “former CIA.” Guertin never fully bought the “former” part. In fact, he’d long been familiar with the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a retired CIA agent,” and had maintained a healthy layer of skepticism ever since. But that skepticism didn’t stop him from working with the guy - he needed help welding his prototype, and his so-called “former CIA” welder clearly knew how to weld, which was all that mattered at the time.
Still, Guertin was smart. And measured. Over time, he adopted an intentionally transparent, even slightly coy posture - appearing overly open, casual, and relaxed on the surface, while always carefully watching for tells, analyzing responses, and logging the occasional odd exchange. By the time the Netflix situation emerged, Guertin had pretty much assumed that anything he told his welder would likely make its way up the chain to someone higher. And in his mind, that was fine. In fact, it was ideal.
So when the welder texted him in early December -
“ Have they got to you yet? ”
- Guertin didn’t flinch. He didn’t deflect. He didn’t play dumb.
He used it for what it was: another opportunity to make his intentions known - not just to the welder, but to anyone who might be watching, listening, or waiting to see how much he really understood.
He was being loud, on purpose.
Because if there was one thing Guertin was certain of by this point, it was that whatever he had stumbled into was very real - and he had no interest in being the only one who knew it.
But when they do all they need to bring along is a fat check.
My analysis of the situation is as follows:
Let's hypothetically say that my patent is in fact a really big deal to Netflix as in they realize that something needs to be done to resolve it. They inherently have a finite number of choices available to them to resolve it.
I currently hold all the leverage short of them killing me which still isn't a guaranteed successful outcome for them as far as obtaining the IP for a variety of reasons. If they cared so much that they were actually considering killing me as one of their viable options that would infer that they would almost certainly at the very least be gathering Intel on me in a variety of ways...most of those digital in nature...correct?
If that was the case then they would be well aware that my ultimate goal is to profit on my intellectual property and call it a day.
If they know this fact then killing me is a really poor choice when they could instead be ensured almost 100% success in obtaining that which they are after in its entirety by simply paying for it.
The whole thing is that because my application is prior art now they are already somewhat fucked no matter what they do. That part is automatic. So technically it is in their benefit for me to receive as many patent rights as possible so that they can still end up with the same exact rights and protections they planned on initially getting... So let's say that they have their people and strings that they can pull in the patent office (which I'm sure exists in some form)instead of pulling hypothetical strings to interfere with my patent they should instead be pulling strings to ensure it goes through smoothly and without issue as once my patent is 100% official it simply becomes a matter of them acquiring InfiniSet, Inc in a clean and easy process.
Money is always the preferable method of obtaining what one wants in the world of the controllers
Money = Control
As long as they know selling the ip and profiting is my ultimate intention and that they will have an opportunity to purchase it from me it means they have every incentive to do nothing at all but be patient.
That doesn't mean they aren't going to pay me lot though. Haha. “
“ It’s all a game Jeffrey. The people who understand that aspect of reality and the world in which we live have a huge advantage. For example - not having myocarditis or dying suddenly “
“ I don't look at it as beating them per say. If you mean do I think they know my patent is a problem they need to address I'm guessing the answer is yes “
“ If not, we can start making a new billion dollar or bitcoin idea! “
There’s a certain irony - and a further layer of Guertin’s own insight - embedded in these specific text exchanges between him and his welder, especially in hindsight. As it turned out, Guertin was remarkably accurate in some of his assumptions, while others would prove less solid - a realization that would unfold gradually in the months to come.
Photo No-Bot Silence Grows Louder | Early December of 2022
For now, though, he continued forward in his quest to cross the finish line - the one which had finally become visible in the distance, and which he was quickly advancing towards. It wasn’t long, however, before weeks passed by without hearing any update from the USPTO, causing a creeping anxiety of “what-ifs” to infiltrate his thoughts. He had accepted his attorney’s “be patient” advice, yet he couldn’t help worrying: What if this additional PhotoRobot art derailed his patent entirely? What if his patent attorney was mistaken? What if he hadn’t heard back yet because the patent examiner determined his patent might no longer be novel based on the “Virtual Catwalk” prior art that was submitted? WHAT IF…?
Around early December, these creeping concerns evolved into newfound curiosity for Guertin. His previous search of the patent database to see if PhotoRobot held any patents never yielded any results - and had also been cut short rather abruptly due to inadvertently stumbling upon the Netflix application - when suddenly, Guertin remembered the Wayback Machine. “Let me see what they’ve been up to over the years,” he thought. Maybe there would even be additional information about whether the patent he had been searching for existed. Before he hit up the Wayback Machine, though, Guertin first visited the PhotoRobot website itself to establish a current reference point that he could later compare with their historical web history. It only took a matter of seconds before he ended up on their “Virtual Catwalk” page with the word “INFINITE” staring back at him from his computer monitor. Infinitely rotating? Infinite what? InfiniSet? - the fact that he was not only staring at a rotating treadmill that mirrored his own but also at specific language accompanying it set off immediate alarm bells.
It only took a matter of seconds before he ended up on their “Virtual Catwalk” page with the word “INFINITE” staring back at him from his computer monitor. Infinitely rotating? Infinite what? InfiniSet? - the fact that he was not only staring at a rotating treadmill that mirrored his own but also at specific language accompanying it set off immediate alarm bells.
Guertin immediately opened a new tab and pulled up the Wayback Machine to check if this identical language had always been present or if it had been recently added to more closely align with the machine now sitting next to him in his living room. He quickly discovered that an older snapshot of PhotoRobot’s website - archived just months prior - contained no mention of “infinite,” nor any reference to “filming” prominently featured in the “Virtual Catwalk” description. Alarmed, his impromptu investigation involved copying all of the text from the last archived version of that specific page, doing the same for the current version on the live website, pasting both into separate Google Docs, and then using the compare function to see exactly what had changed line by line. The results were jarring: entire phrases referencing advanced 3D scanning and rotating treadmill ideas were newly inserted, while older text was either watered down or removed.
They’re trying to steal my patent !
Realizing he needed a more systematic way to preserve PhotoRobot’s online presence, Guertin signed up for a personal Wayback Machine account on December 9th. A single click while logged in under his aptly chosen “PatentlyFalse” username would create an instant snapshot of the entire website as it currently existed - providing a solid reference point for a more thorough investigation. He began this endeavor during the early morning hours of December 9th by using a web plugin that captured complete screenshots of an entire website by auto-scrolling through the page as it loaded. This tool was especially valuable for documenting the PhotoRobot pages as displayed by the Web Archive since printing the page to a PDF did not preserve the chronological timeline header atop every archived page.
Realizing he needed a more systematic way to preserve PhotoRobot’s online presence, Guertin signed up for a personal Wayback Machine account on December 9th. A single click while logged in under his aptly chosen “PatentlyFalse” username would create an instant snapshot of the entire website as it currently existed - providing a solid reference point for a more thorough investigation.
From December 9 onward, Guertin abruptly abandoned all progress on his prototype to focus solely on his new digital forensics role - a drastic pivot born of the realization that someone was systematically reshaping their online record to target his first-ever patent, which was just about to be granted.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Monday, December 12th, 2022 at 3:29 PM
“ The whole PhotoRobot thing is 100% going to be an issue. “
“ My question is though what happens if I can prove they're lying and that they've altered a TON of stuff on their website? “
“ I have every single webpage that matters saved as a .doc file by copying and pasting for both current versions as well as the same ones prior to November before I know they got contacted by the same person that told me about it.
I'm loading all of the documents into a program called MAXQDS where I'm able to analyze the most commonly used words, and create filters that use specific search terms to compare documents and sets of documents against one another which shows up as a heatmap matrix...and the results are comical. The attached example is only their current blog articles. Once I start comparing sets/groups of documents I'll be able to clearly layout what words they've added and all sorts of stuff. “
“The matrix attached pretty much proves it and that is just the initial, current blog pages I loaded into it. Up top are the individual blog pages...the ones on the left that are lit up like a xmas tree are their most recent ones that they are pointing everyone to through their youtube links and many other links that they placed all over their website recently to link back to the same pages by using keywords.
It is all very well thought out and took a ton of time like I said. “
“ Either way it's apparent that they have put an extraordinary amount of effort into re-working their website “
“ I'll let you know when I get the rest of the data processed.”
The visual language analysis ‘Matrix.png’ that Guertin produced using MAXQDA -He was able to not only gain insight into WHAT specific words were being used - but also HOW MANY TIMES they were used
“ It'sthe next level of photogrammetry just like I anticipated in my disclosure.
Basically videogrammetry. “
“ Regardless though that all involves an animation timeline, keyframes, and many of the other things I laid out in my disclosure. My mention of a camera rig and photogrammetry along with the cameras being controlled by either an animation timeline or AI covers all of it.....and that is exactly why the PhotoRobot idiots suddenly became geniuses and are using the exact same terminology....words like 'spherical' and 'camera rig'
I'm somewhat fascinated by how stupid they are. Either that or they think I'm really stupid. “
“ They are making very specific changes and it all has to do with language and terminology. “
“ Do you have any additional advice on how to go about this properly? “
“ And where exactly does this fall in terms of criminal law? “
“ I am still working on finishing everything but just wanted to get some of this in front of you so you can see what's taking place andwhy I am a little concerned.… “
From: Matt Guertin To: info@archive.org Date: Thursday, December 15th, 2022 at 12:04 AM
“ Hello,
I just stopped writing my initial email, donated $25 + fees to Wayback Machine, and now I am back.
My question is a simple one -
What is your criteria for someone being able to contact you and request that their information be removed from the web archive? I'm guessing that normally requests come from individuals as opposed to businesses? My only reason for asking is because I am relying on your site as my main piece of evidence against a company who is very stealthily editing, re-wording, and re-linking a bunch of stuff on their website in an effort to establish a history which isn't true for the purpose of trying to steal something of significant value from me. What I would like to do is personally, or through an attorney, very kindly contact them and let them know that I can very clearly see what they are doing in an effort to try and get them to correct their course early on so I don't have to worry about it - or at the very least they will have to contend with the fact that I have solid evidence that could get them convicted of fraud and decide whether or not that is a risk they are willing to take.
My main worry, however, is that they could just contact your company and get everything deleted and so that has been bothering me somewhat and has been a pretty large factor in my decision making.
Any insight or knowledge about this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Matt Guertin “
“ I am relying on your site as my main piece of evidence against a company who is very stealthily editing, re-wording, and re-linking a bunch of stuff on their website in an effort to establish a history which isn't true for the purpose of trying to steal something of significant value from me. “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Thursday, December 15th, 2022 at 9:24 AM
“ I will take a closer look and get back to you.
As all this material is being newly published - after you have filed, the good news is that it is not prior art to you - only the original material published back before we filed your provisional application counts. Very interesting on their updated though and good to keep track if it appears they are trying to make it look like its older material than it really is. “
From: Megan Neumann @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Monday, December 19th, 2022 at 1:46 PM
“ This is a reminder regarding Amanda's email below.
If you wish to proceed with the Assignment, please scan and email back a signed copy of the attached document. Note that the Assignment should be notarized when signed. “
Wayback Machine Tone Shifting | December 24th, 2022
Guertin’s forensic efforts continued unabated until the evening of December 24, 2022. It was then - while flipping back through his initial December 9th screenshots of PhotoRobot.com, archived from the Wayback Machine - that something unusual caught his eye: the total number of archived snapshots for a specific URL had increased from 45 to 47.
At first glance, it seemed like a glitch. But as he compared two of his own screen capture PDFs, he saw the two new entries had been inserted further back along the Web Archive’s horizontal timeline.
Screencapture Web Archive Org Web 20220811043707 Https Www Photorobot Com Blog 2022 12 09 04 45 45
Both of Guertin’s original, full sceen PDF captures from December 9th, 2022
Even more staggering was the timestamp embedded in the files. Guertin had saved both screenshots less than five minutes apart. That meant he had, by sheer luck, captured the Web Archive being altered in real time - archival timestamps appearing retroactively in the past.
The edits occurred less than two hours after Guertin had created his new, aptly named ‘PatentlyFalse’ user account and proceeded to archive a copy of the full site himself. The implications were undeniable: the Internet Archive was being manipulated - in direct response to his activity.
Though he was no stranger to high-pressure creative environments, this realization was different. The discovery that the Wayback Machine - long trusted as an impartial digital time capsule – was directly involved in the fraud he had been investigating was something else entirely. Guertin had spent the last two weeks assembling airtight documentation of the online footprint behind what he believed to be a corporate fraud operation. Now, that very evidence was being overwritten from beneath him.
Within seconds of grasping what he had just seen, Guertin unplugged his custom-built workstation from the internet. His first instinct: get it offline. Then, acting on the new sense of urgency and threat, he moved quickly to offload all his research, organizing it onto encrypted SSD drives and distributing them to a small handful of trusted third parties.
Only then did he take a breath.
What followed was a quiet, three-day break - his first since the investigation began. Over Christmas, he avoided turning on his computer altogether. It was a conscious effort to clear his mind and recalibrate. He needed to think. What had started as a race to defend his patent had now morphed into something much larger. The stakes were no longer just about intellectual property - they were existential.
When he returned, it was with resolve.
His new motto was simple:
“Don’t let these pieces of shit steal the last two years of your life.”
And so, he powered his computer back on - but not before purchasing a commercial VPN service to mask his location and IP address. His new adversary clearly had resources. Guertin, meanwhile, was alone - but determined. He launched back into his investigation, now archiving full html downloads of the Web Archive itself. If websites could be edited, if archival evidence could be forged, then what could be next? How could he possibly safeguard his invention - or even his life?
The days that followed reflected the full psychological weight of this shift.
On December 27th, Guertin reached out to his IP attorney again - but this time, his tone was entirely different. He now requested their first-ever in-person meeting, something he’d never needed before.
It was no longer just about the patent.
"It has me a little freaked out, to be honest,"
“This has enormous implications on all sorts of different levels,”
“Not just me.”
By now, Guertin had already accumulated a massive amount of irrefutable digital evidence - archived pages, complete with HTML backups, spreadsheets, and side-by-side screenshots.
But alongside that bravado was a clear signal of mounting concern.
“I probably know more about their website than they do,”
“I at least want to get some of it over to you prior to the meeting for my own safety,”
“I’ve already distributed my huge collection to a couple other people.”
The concern wasn’t theoretical anymore.
When he did go meet with his attorney in person, it marked another first: he had his mother come over to sit in his apartment while he was gone - something he had never asked her to do before. In a follow-up message, he confessed what had been on his mind:
“I’m worried about all of the various things that someone who is spending such an enormous amount of time and effort (and almost certainly money) might be able to put together as a response.”
Suddenly, he wasn’t just dealing with patent trolls or tech industry opportunists. He was now in the middle of an orchestrated, highly sophisticated operation involving falsified archives, custom-edited web data, and actors with enough access or influence to manipulate one of the internet’s most widely trusted archival tools.
And he wasn’t wrong.
During that final week of 2022, what had already been an intense and highly personal journey took on a new psychological weight. Guertin was still focused. Still collecting. Still trying to defend what was rightfully his to defend. But now, layered beneath his drive was a growing paranoia - and justifiable fear - that whatever this was, it might not stop at just data.
He closed one of his emails that week with a tone of disbelief:
“I feel like I’m in a movie at this point… but then again, I suppose that’s why I filed my patent 12 days before an Academy Award-winning VFX artist - and currently have the Oscar-winning Scientologist CEO of a robotic camera company trying to steal my patent ?
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 5:13 PM
“ Sounds good.
If you're going to be in the office tomorrow I'd prefer to swing by in person considering all that's going on.
It has me a little freaked out tbh.
I showed my mom on xmas and she also was a little freaked out and asked "are you worried at all?"
...and my mom is computer illiterate... so it's not a very complicated matter.
It is however something that has ENORMOUS implications on all sorts of different levels. Not just me or my patent, etc. - which is the part that has me a little worried. “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 at 10:58 AM
“ 10AM tomorrow, Thursday works.
Please note that our office is located on the 11th floor and that you will need to ask for elevator access at that security desk on the 2nd floor (skyway level) “
“ I know that the Photorobot website is changing - but please understand that it would be the onus of the owner of the website to show that they had these pages up on the internet before you filed your provisional application.
It is pretty clear so far that they did not and that these changes have all been post your and Netflix's application filing.
These pages are not prior art to you and would not be invalidating in court as this material is all being added via edits now, well after your application has been filed. “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 at 2:31 PM
“ They would have to produce authenticated materials showing that the website had that material on it on a date prior to your filing date. The materials you have gathered show that it is basically impossible for them to do that. We also took screenshots of their website for the Information Disclosure Statement submitted on 11/9 that show that the website was different.
You are effectively making it impossible for them to show that this material was on their website prior to your filing date. But since it was not, there would be no way for them to show that the material was on their website before you filed the application. “
“ what matters is what the website looked like on or before March 2021 when your provisional application was filed. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 at 4:58 PM
“ Ok.
But doesn't the web archive meet those authentication requirements ?
Because if so...and if there have been some huge cases that were decided solely on archive.org 'archives' then I'd say this a pretty massive ordeal I'm now in the middle of.
I somehow got lucky enough to capture one of their historical revisions in real-time almost as it is only a span of 4-5 minutes. It's a lot of stuff to try and explain though
Here's a folder with a bunch of additional original documents with a ton of screencaps. In addition I have all of the the HTML downloaded for all of the archived pages. So the entire webpage - probably around 600 or so in total....all organized....all laid out in spreadsheets so I can cross reference, etc. I have it all.
And that's the thing - I started pulling on this string and I haven't stopped. I'm unraveling all of their stuff at once for the simple fact that I have so much data downloaded and organized that I probably know more about their website than them at this point.
Once I popped up on December 9th and started taking snapshots of their whole site on the web archive I tripped a bunch of flags and they have basically been chasing after me trying to put the pieces back together but I have way too much legit documents and data for me to have faked all of it.
They have been and still are editing the wayback machine with whatever they want. I have a whole list of things but I just keep collecting and archiving and collecting as much data as possible. I am now archiving snapshots of the web archive even.
They have put an extraordinary amount of thought, effort, and time into all of this. Everything is very calculated “
“ I will be following up with more data for you shortly.
I at least want to get some of it over to you prior to the meeting for my own safety - which is also the reason that I've already distributed my huge collection to a couple other people.
I have been doing nothing but going nuts collecting and archiving stuff ever since I first noticed and now all of it has been validated because I have all of the evidence needed fora computer forensic expert to point outall of the criminal fraud they are currently committing.
If you want to give me a call and let me know you are getting my email and received the data it would be appreciated because this has been stressing meout and I've been trying to handle more stuff in person as . . . .
. . . I've been a little paranoid ever since I realized the wayback stuff as I am obviously dealing with some people who are able to pull very large strings
So that's the big issue....the 'elephant in the room' if you will....the discrediting of the Web archive and a reexamination of all of the cases that were decided based on evidence produced from it.
I'm guessing this is a pretty big deal....and probably deserving of a meeting so we can figure out how to handle this and what all needs to happen now moving forward.
My life is such a trip. Look at what just my patent has somehow turned into. I always have the craziest things happen. It never fails “
2022 12 28 All Combined Photorobot Youtube Screencaps
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 at 5:11 PM
“The attached spreadsheet should give you an idea about the amount of data I have been amassing.
I know every little thing they've altered. “
“ Here are all of the /blog pages Here is a page they just got rid of because it doesn't fit their newfound business model here are all of the /robot pages from their site
Snap36 used to be their US distributor. This is who they get a lot of their blog article topics from and then just slightly change the wording a little
The mastermind behind this is the CEO of Mark Roberts Motion Control - The leading robotic camera company that makes the Bolt robotic camera. This was who showed me the PhotoRobot stuff in the first place - He is now helping them with all of this. I have no doubt about this at all. His name is Assaff Rawner (something like that anyways..) I have our original emails saved
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Friday, December 30th, 2022 at 9:08 PM
“ I'm aware that it is Friday night before NYE but just writing while I am thinking about it -
I am wondering if you may be able to have any more information about moving forward or what your thoughts are by eod Monday or Tuesday afternoon?
I only ask because my investment banker told me to let him know as soon as I find out as he is factoring it into his decision making as far as whatever he ends up coming up with in regards to finding me the capital needed to push all of this forward properly...so I want to try and keep him moving is all. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Monday, January 2nd, 2023 at 4:09 PM
“ What I just sent you means that either the internet archive is part of it and someone on the inside is helping them or the internet archive is getting hacked by someone and should be alerted about it to protect its integrity.
Either way though I have hard proof that the internet archive is not serving the same pages as it is actually supposesly capturing.
Now it's no longer about photorobot. It's about the internet archive explaining how they are either allowing or partaking in serving fake pages. “
“ I'm telling you and showing you that they are serving fake pages either knowingly or unknowingly.
And the plan is to stand by and do nothing?
Doesn't this affect your whole profession and call into question the validity of all sorts of legal decisions and precedence?
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Monday, January 2nd, 2023 at 5:25 PM
“ Hi Matt,
My earlier email referred to the context of your patent application only and related to PhotoRobot - not the larger issue with the Internet Archives.
This does call into question the authenticity of documents from the Internet Archives on their face and the legitimacy of its use as evidence in any area of law. “
“ This appears now to be a more significant issue than within the context of your patent application/ patent and duty of candor requirements we owe to the USPTO “
“ I am not sure yet who the proper authority would be to make aware of this - it would seem that the Internet Archives should be made aware of the vulnerability in the way back machine if they are not already. “
“ I would need to research the ownership/interested parties of the Internet Archives to see where the information needs to, at least initially, be made public.
I still need to take a closer look at what you’ve sent over today. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Monday, January 2nd, 2023 at 6:03 PM
“ it seemed like we sent our emails at the exact same time. Now when I re-read it it sounds like I am being combative butultimately I am a little concerned about how many implications this has and therefore my personal safety and well being
When I came down and met with you for example I had my mom come over and sit at my place. That was the first time I have ever asked her to do that.
I am worried about all of the various things that someone who is spending such an enormous amount of time and effort (and almost certainly money..) might be able to put together as a response in regards to my efforts to uncover what will essentially turn into a criminal case “
“ I feel like I am in a movie at this point....but then again I suppose that's why I filed my patent 12 days before an academy award winning vfx artist and currently have the oscar winning, Scientologist CEO of a robotic camera company trying to steal my patent?
This is all so unbelievable.
Still.
And it continues to become even more so. “
The First Sign Of Computer Hacking | January 2nd, 2023 at 7:43 pm
Just as Guertin had returned from a much-needed three-day break and launched a full-force offensive against the fraudsters - methodically downloading a massive, sequentially organized set of webpages directly from the Web Archive after realizing they were complicit in the scheme - he received the first unmistakable sign that someone was now firing shots back.
It happened on the evening of Monday, January 2nd, 2023. The moment was so abrupt and so jarring that Guertin instinctively reached for his phone and recorded a video of the screen almost immediately. That video, along with the timestamp it carried, captured the exact time the event occurred: 7:43 PM. Just minutes later, at 7:49 PM he sent it to his IP attorney in an email containing nothing but a Dropbox link - no subject line, no message body, no greeting, no context. Just the raw evidence.
All of the pieces that would end up becoming Guertin's custom built workstation. X399, ThreadripperX16, 1tb EvoPlus SysDrv, 2 x 2tb Sabrent MediaDrv, 14tb RAID5 StrgDrv - Glendale, CA - 2019
His custom-built workstation, assembled in late 2019 and never once having experienced a system crash of any kind, had suddenly suffered a Blue Screen of Death. He hadn’t installed new software, updated drivers, plugged or unplugged devices - nothing that might normally cause a BSOD. He had simply walked into his bedroom for a moment, and when he returned, his monitor was filled with an ominous blue glow.
To an outsider, this might have seemed like a fluke - a random technical hiccup. But to Guertin, it was anything but. He understood the broader context. He was the only one who could fully grasp the weight of what he was caught in. This had happened just days after he had launched his counteroffensive - just as he began to methodically dig deeper into the fraudulent scheme threatening his patent.
In his mind, there was no doubt: this wasn’t a coincidence. This was deliberate. A shot across the bow.
The JavaScript Timestamp Glitch | January 5th, 2023
Although it had been sitting in his inbox for nearly a week, it wasn’t until the evening of January 5th that Guertin finally opened an email sent to him by Mark Graham, Director of the Wayback Machine. The message had originally arrived back on December 29th, but amid the ongoing demands of his investigation - and his intense focus on organizing the overwhelming amount of evidence he had been collecting - Guertin had simply overlooked it.
Once opened, however, the stark tone of Graham’s reply immediately raised red flags. It was dismissive, bordering on accusatory. Guertin hadn’t even mentioned PhotoRobot.com in his initial inquiry about archive removal policies - yet Graham’s response seemed oddly personal, as if he already knew exactly what Guertin had been doing. It felt like a thinly veiled acknowledgment: “We know it’s you.” And just like that, a whole new layer of unease settled in.
But by the time Guertin saw that email, the bigger story had already broken wide open.
In the two weeks following his explosive Christmas Eve discovery, Guertin had plunged even deeper into his forensic analysis of the digital evidence. He had built out vast, structured directories of full HTML saves - entire websites meticulously downloaded from the Wayback Machine, complete with JavaScript and CSS asset folders for every timestamped version. One of the most substantial collections was PhotoRobot.com, whose URLs spanned years of supposed archival history. Guertin didn't just save the pages - he organized them into spreadsheets, tracked the frequency of archive dates, and built comprehensive databases to cross-reference and catalog everything.
And that’s when it happened.
Guertin spotted something that didn’t match.
As he began examining the backend files stored within each archived page - specifically the JavaScript assets - he noticed a recurring error. In almost every saved archive, the internal footer fields for “webArchive” and “saveDate” were accurate; they matched the dates listed by the Wayback Machine itself. But another internal variable - “javaScriptArchiveDate” - was wrong. Almost all of them were wrong - across hundreds of saved webpages spanning a multitude of different PhotoRobot.com URLs.
Nearly every single JavaScript file across all supposedly historical archive dates contained the same range of future timestamps: December 9, 2022, plus or minus a few days. The very same date Guertin had created his Wayback Machine account. The same date he had captured a completely unexpected, full archive snapshot of PhotoRobot.com under his new “PatentlyFalse” user account. And the same date he caught the first timestamp edits in real time - two PDF screen captures taken five minutes apart, revealing entries appearing retroactively along the timeline.
This was no coincidence.
It was clear: someone had been copying present-day versions of the website and injecting them into the past. But in doing so, they had failed to properly update the internal footer data of the JavaScript files, accidentally leaving behind a forensic timestamp trail - a smoking gun.
In short, the fraudsters had made a mistake.
And Guertin had caught it.
From this point forward, the language in his emails changed. His tone hardened. His confidence grew. He wasn’t guessing anymore - he had proof. And the stakes, now undeniable, became the central focus of his communications.
He compiled a 15-minute video walking through his discovery in detail, sent it to his attorney, and posed blunt questions about criminal protocol, legal obligations, and how to escalate something of this magnitude. Within hours, he was sending more links, more folders, and follow-up messages explaining the precise timing of his activity - from the exact minute he created his user account on December 9th, to when he captured the manipulated edits. Every detail lined up. Every suspicion had been confirmed.
And perhaps most telling of all: it was no longer just about PhotoRobot.
By Guertin’s own words,
“the Web Archive itself had just been completely invalidated.”
What followed next was a string of rapid-fire emails, each one building in gravity and concern. He raised safety fears, confirmed his intent to file federal criminal complaints, and outlined - in no uncertain terms - the legal framework under which those involved could be investigated and charged. He emphasized that this was not theoretical, not accidental, and not isolated. The timestamp mistake had unraveled a system that had clearly been used before.
He didn’t just feel like he had exposed a fraud. He felt like he had exposed the fraud.
And now, for the first time, even his attorney had to admit it:
“This is an issue new to me... I do not know where to start.”
Guertin’s unexpected move of capturing the entire PhotoRobot page on December 9th had obviously set off alarm bells, prompting a swift response from the fraudsters. “Quick! We need to populate the historical record with something before he starts digging into it further!” they evidently thought, and began copying the current drafts of various PhotoRobot.com pages and pasting them “into the past” in an attempt to establish a credible historical timeline.
Here are some of the actual javascript files from archived saves (supposedly..) of ‘PhotoRobot.com/blog’ that Guertin parsed as part of his investigation:
So all of the ‘/blog’ pages archived ON or AFTER Guertin’s December 9 snapshot all contain the same .js file for some reason – and all of the pages that are supposedly archived BEFORE Guertin’s December 9 snapshot have javascript files which contain a ‘jsArchiveDate’ pointing into the future – to the exact same December 9th date, as the surprise, full ‘snapshot’ Guertin captured of the entire PhotoRobot website.
Also take notice of the ‘saveDate’ field, which is accurately updating. This is what Guertin spent all of his time doing on New Years Day of 2023.
Here is a 15 minute one I just made with the missing pieces that knocks it out of the park.
It's all about the java script file names correlating with the dates.
Undeniable.
The web archive has just been completely invalidated.
Cancelled.
It would appear to be an internal matter at a rather high level if you work off of the assumption that everything is now changing across the entire site due to me :-)
Well.....let me know where this information goes next. I'm curious how a problem as big as this one with such massive implications get's dealt with.
Is there a protocol?
As an attorney are you bound by some sort of oath and obligation (similar to 'duty of candor'..) to make light of this and pass it up whatever metaphorical legal chain exists?
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Thursday, January 5th, 2023 at 5:28 PM
“ What happened was that they were in the middle of an operation which they have almost certainly completed successfully many other times and then I suddenly appeared out of nowhere and haven't left since. Every single save now is just more proof of the fraud. “
“ They have lost complete control. I even snapped a bunch of saves on NYE shortly after midnight to let them know I was celebrating their idiocy.
And the other thing is that they FOR SURE KNOW I AM THE ONE CAUSING ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS! I just looked at the email exchanges between us and everything becomes even clearer.
All of the pieces are now falling perfectly into place.
Can you guess what day I signed up for a user account with the archive?
DECEMBER 9TH, 2022 @ 2:45am
I then proceeded to make use of my new account 'PatentlyFalse' by snapping an archive save of the entire PhotoRobot website exactly twenty minutes later at 3:05am
I then began browsing through all of the PhotoRobot pages and an hour and forty-one minutes later at 4:46 am I took my first of two pdf screen captures of PhotoRobot.com/blog which is when I caught someone editing the archive in real time within a 5 minute window and two PDF screen captures.
Here are my emails between the web archive which includes a .png of a draft I almost sent but decided against while I collected more evidence. “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Friday, January 6th, 2023 at 8:48 AM
“ Wow. Thanks Matt. I will take a look at this.
As for your other question regarding alerting others to this issue...there are a couple of ways to look at it and I admit, this is an issue new to me so I do not know where/who to alert or where to start.
Regarding the patent office and your pending application as well as future applications, we have made memos in our file to explain why these archived pages are not considered prior art to you. “
“ As for the website tampering itself, it would seem that if the organization behind the website hosting the WayBack Machine should (and would want to) be made aware that there is some glitch or issue that is allowing these alterations and fake pages to be populated on its website. “
“ As for additional steps here - I am not sure what the next step is yet. I have not come across this and generally when we speak of such frauds it is when the fraudulent/altered material is used, for whatever purpose. “
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Friday, January 6th, 2023 at 11:47 AM
“ Unless you have any reason to advise me not to do so I am going to report this by filing a report at ic3.gov. with all relevant information.
Just on it's face as it only relates to my case they are guilty of wire fraud as there is no requirement that the crime reaches completion. Being able to prove intent is all that is needed.
The fact that it involves at minimum 3 people who are located in 3 different countries including the USA just makes it that much more serious.
I honestly am not going to hold my breath as far as expecting something substantial to happen to any of them but I'm guessing there is still very good odds that if I report this to all of the relevant agencies which includes the FBI, FTC, and IRS among others. The fact that the archive is a 501c3 causes them additional problems. “
“ If Assaff Rawner has to step down as CEO over this - GOOD
If he somehow ends up serving time - GREAT
If the internet archive gets shaken up and involved in a huge ordeal over this – FANTASTIC “
“I think the biggest question everyone is going to wonder is how many times the web archive has pulled this scam before and how many other people has it affected?
Pardon my language - but fuck every single one of the people involved in this.
Even if I don't have to worry at all from the standpoint of my patent I would be perfectly okay with them losing many of the things in their lives that they've worked so hard to achieve since that is what their end goal for me was/is.
I have attached PDF's of all relevant criminal law discussion to this email which demonstrates that they meet all of the criteria to be investigated and criminally charged.
I also don't think telling the internet archive about it is a good idea because after reading through those emails I think it makes it even more likely that they are directly involved in all of this. Just look at the email I got from that guy on the 29th (which I never even saw until last night) -
My initial question I asked was about their removal policy if someone requests deletion of archived pages and he randomly replies 2 weeks later -
"For what site? "
“ The timing is way too coincidental as well as far as when I signed up, saved an archive of the site, and when I caught the first of the edits. All in order and not very far apart. Just this fact alone – that they were able to start adding backdated pages an hour later implies that this is a system they have down and something they have done many times before. “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Friday, January 6th, 2023 at 12:12 PM
“ Matt,
Based on my understanding of what is going on here, I do not see any reason to advise you against filing a complaint through ic3.gov.
I think that is a great place to start the process of calling out this activity actually. “
Surreal Escalation | Early January of 2023
By the end of the first week of 2023, the situation Guertin now found himself in had escalated into something that defied logic - a surreal and unrelenting chain of events that seemed almost too far-fetched to be real. Just two months earlier, he had been heads down, focused solely on building his prototype - excited, driven, and entirely consumed with bringing his once far-off vision to life. He had been spending every waking hour and every last dollar in his small apartment-turned-design studio, meticulously fabricating and assembling what he knew would be a disruptive invention. He was, quite literally, just minding his own business - only to now find himself scrambling to defend that business. A business that, technically, still only existed on paper.
What had unfolded in the span of just over eight weeks was something no one could have anticipated. A duplicate device had appeared, hiding in plain sight under the branding of PhotoRobot’s “Virtual Catwalk.” While investigating its origin, Guertin discovered a mirror-image patent application filed just twelve days after his own - this one submitted by Stephan Trojansky, CEO of Eyeline Studios and Scanline VFX, whose companies had since been acquired by Netflix in a deal which pointed to a $100 million acquisition. Guertin’s patent, by comparison, was just days away from being officially granted.
Soon after that, things turned darker. He realized that PhotoRobot.com had begun silently editing its own online history - stealthily integrating key language lifted directly from his patent application into their older blog entries. The digital footprints were obvious to him. He began downloading every variation, every change, every timestamp. And then, just days later, the most shocking discovery of all: the Web Archive itself - what Guertin had always assumed was a neutral and untouchable historical record - was actively being manipulated. Pages were being copied, pasted, and backdated to fabricate a false timeline. Edits were appearing retroactively in the past, matching the exact timeframe of Guertin’s own activities. And all of it had been caught - accidentally, yet perfectly - through screen captures, video documentation, file comparisons, metadata, and timestamped evidence.
The situation had now shifted from simply documenting infringement to unearthing one of the most blatant and technically sloppy digital frauds imaginable - one that spanned multiple countries, touched multiple platforms, and, if validated, would shake the foundation of digital evidence used in everything from civil disputes to federal litigation.
The situation had now shifted from simply documenting infringement to unearthing one of the most blatant and technically sloppy digital frauds imaginable - one that spanned multiple countries, touched multiple platforms, and, if validated, would shake the foundation of digital evidence used in everything from civil disputes to federal litigation.
The tone had shifted, too. In the days leading up to this moment, Guertin had already started voicing personal safety concerns in his emails. He had scheduled his first-ever in-person meeting with his patent attorney. He made sure his mom came over to sit at his apartment while he left for the meeting - something he had never done before. The stress was mounting, and it was clear in his tone. His emails, once filled with excitement and invention, now spoke of calculated distribution of data to third parties for protection, a heightened sense of paranoia, and a deeply unsettling realization that he was up against a coordinated, well-resourced group that could alter digital history on command.
All of it was happening - fast. Too fast. Yet Guertin hadn’t flinched. He rang in the New Year not with champagne, but by snapping fresh Web Archive saves in real time - his own symbolic middle finger to the people orchestrating the fraud. The message was clear: “I see you.” And by now, it was just as clear to him that they saw him too. The same people he had exposed - who clearly had the power to manipulate timestamps and rewrite digital history - were almost certainly aware of who was behind the sudden disruption of their now bungled heist. And if that was true, it meant they were almost certainly shifting their focus toward something else entirely - him.
By the end of that first week of January, he wasn’t just documenting anymore. He was defending. Protecting. Continuing forward not because he wanted to - but because, at this point, what choice did he have? He had uncovered a fraud that directly impacted his patent and upended the foundational integrity of digital evidence. Backing down wasn’t an option. Filing a third-party submission against Netflix’s patent wasn’t optional. Downloading, archiving, documenting - none of it was optional. These were the only rational responses to the new reality of his, which he now saw with complete clarity.
And if the fraud really had been fully polished, perfectly hidden, and airtight - why would the CEO of Mark Roberts Motion Control have casually pointed him directly to the PhotoRobot website in the first place?
Why draw attention to a trail that wasn’t ready to be followed? Why risk having Guertin, of all people, dig in and start connecting the many dots? The answer was as revealing as it was damning: because their scheme wasn’t as clean as they thought. Because their plan was obviously rushed, and sloppy. Because they didn’t expect someone like him to notice. But he did.
So he kept going. He kept digging. He kept documenting. Not as a hacker. Not as a whistleblower. But as an inventor simply trying to protect what was his - relying on the same long-established and universally recognized legal and corporate laws that were designed for exactly this purpose.
In his mind, this wasn’t defiance. It was survival. What was happening was criminal. It met the criteria for wire fraud, criminal conspiracy, and intellectual property theft - and so he believed that by following the rules and going through the proper channels, someone - somewhere - would help him stop it..
Attempted FBI Visit & A Meeting With Minnetonka Police | January 12th, 2023
On January 12, 2023, Guertin awoke with a resolute plan: he would personally present his evidence of large-scale patent fraud to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). By this point, he had painstakingly parsed and organized gigabytes of digital files - HTML dumps, spreadsheets mapping suspicious “Archived On” and “Saved On” date discrepancies, screenshots, and side-by-side comparisons of older vs. newly-edited web content.
He had loaded all of this onto his high-performance laptop, believing a face-to-face meeting would likely result in his claims being taken much more seriously versus an online submission into some overfilled inbox full of random complaints that were obviously nowhere near as important as his.
An Unwelcoming FBI Fortress - and Agent
Shortly before noon on January 12, 2023, Guertin drove to the FBI’s Brooklyn Center, MN, field office filled with a hopeful, almost cinematic vision of how things would unfold. In his mind, he imagined strolling through a clean lobby with friendly staff waiting at a reception desk - maybe he’d have a seat under fluorescent lights in the waiting area - and soon enough, a personable FBI agent would appear, handshake at the ready, eager to hear about the elaborate evidence Guertin had painstakingly compiled.
The stark reality could not have been more different. As he neared the entrance, he was met with towering fences, multiple electronic gates, and a heavily fortified perimeter. The only direct in-person contact he had was at a small “guard tower” behind thick bulletproof glass, evocative of a prison security checkpoint. The two guards stationed there eyed him warily, as if he clearly did not belong. When Guertin expressed that he was there to speak with an FBI agent in person, the guards simply pulled out a business card, placed it in a secure metal drawer, and told him curtly, “You can speak to an agent by calling that number.”
Guertin returned to his car in the small parking lot and dialed the phone number from the card. Perhaps, he thought, if he stayed in the front lot, the agent he reached might actually be inside the very building he was staring at - maybe the agent would wave from one of the windows, invite him in, ask if he preferred dark roast or light, and sit down for a proper discussion. But this was just wishful thinking...obviously.
Guertin ended up on hold for roughly 25 minutes, during which he stared at the imposing structure in front of him, before finally reaching a live person. The agent took down his personal information and asked how he could help. Guertin briefly explained the nature of the alleged fraud, mentioning “criminal conspiracy” and “wire fraud.” The agent then immediately asked him about "money being wired" and whether he could be certain there "was any money being wired," to which Guertin simply responded "umm.. No" (since wiring money had nothing at all to do with the crime of 'wire fraud'). The agent replied simply, “Thank you,” and then hung up.
Guertin sat in his car, somewhat stunned, phone still in hand. He had spent weeks meticulously preparing and organizing his digital evidence, convinced that the FBI would be the perfect authority to investigate an advanced technology-based scam. Instead, the agency he regarded as the pinnacle of federal investigative power had summarily dismissed him - either because they were completely inept at understanding the definition of “wire fraud” or because they knew exactly what it was but had other reasons for rejecting his plea for help.
An In-Person Meeting With Minnetonka Police
Unwilling to let the day’s effort go to waste, Guertin left Brooklyn Center and headed straight to the Minnetonka Police Department. At least by filing a local report, he would feel like his time, and effort had been able to accomplish something.
He arrived at the Minnetonka station a half-hour later, where he was escorted into a small interview room by Officer Brandon Harris. Guertin spent the next 45 minutes methodically walking Officer Harris through his digital forensics - opening folders, showing time-stamped HTML captures, and demonstrating how the PhotoRobot site changed text in near real time to align with details from his invention. He also displayed the odd JavaScript references in archived pages, the suspicious “Archived On” dates, and his spreadsheets that mapped out every instance of these anomalies.
Officer Harris’s notes later appeared in official Minnetonka Police Report #23-000151, and included a list of bullet point entered into the report by Officer Harris including:
“He has filed for and acquired a patent for his invention, ‘Motorized Rotatable Treadmill and System for Creating the Illusion of Movement.’”
“He pitched the patent to Mark Roberts Motion Control (mrmoco.com).”
"He looked at the Photo Robot website and observed the technology used to be similar but different from his."
"While reviewing the website over a number of days he realized the website was changing to reflect his patent."
"The website is being updated in real-time with information from his design."
"He has proof of the fraud."
"Photo Robot is effectively stealing his patent by making it look like they have already had the technology."
"He understands there is nothing the police can do."
"Guertin advised that he has many gigabytes of evidence to show the fraud."
"I advised Guertin to connect with a computer forensicator in order to parse the data into a readable format."
While the officer acknowledged that Guertin’s evidence was extensive - saying outright, “Well, unless you’re just making all of this stuff up, then there’s obviously something shady going on here” - the report ended with a suggestion to hire a “computer forensicator.” Harris explained that a forensics professional could “parse the data”, which might persuade federal authorities (like the FBI) to open up an investigation. He added that the Minnetonka PD simply did not have the resources or expertise to delve into complex digital fraud.
While Guertin wasn’t exactly surprised to learn that his local police department lacked immediate enforcement methods for complex, digital, internet-based crimes, he left the meeting feeling slightly validated: Officer Harris had at least documented his findings and recognized that there was indeed a complex fraud scheme targeting Guertin’s patent that was actively occurring.
Cracking The Code | January 13th, 2023
By January 13th, Guertin had reached a new level of clarity. The evidence he had spent the past month gathering had finally crystallized into a fully structured set of spreadsheets and files - concise, organized, and capable of speaking for themselves.
He no longer had to explain the fraud with long-winded screen recordings or hand-built timelines. Now, the data told the story. And so, in what might’ve otherwise seemed like just another routine update to his patent attorney, Guertin delivered what he now referred to as the “smoking gun.”
But this email wasn’t just about progress. Beneath the composed tone and Dropbox links was a mounting exhaustion. Guertin was tired - not just from the countless hours spent tracking, downloading, organizing, and cross-referencing data - but from the crushing realization that no one else seemed equipped, or willing, to do it with him. He had tried the FBI the day before. That went nowhere. He walked into the Minnetonka Police Department and gave them a crash course in digital archive fraud, only to be told this was far beyond anything they could handle. He even created a burner Gmail account and sent anonymized evidence directly to the IP attorney listed on the Netflix-related patent - just to get it in front of someone who might actually care.
“ He even created a burner Gmail account and sent anonymized evidence directly to the IP attorney listed on the Netflix-related patent - just to get it in front of someone who might actually care. ”
At this point, Guertin wasn’t trying to build his invention anymore - he was trying to protect it. And with each failed attempt to find meaningful support, his focus only intensified.
These emails reveal a man still in control, but running out of emotional runway. He knew what he was witnessing. He had the evidence. But what good was it if no one stepped in to stop the theft he was actively watching unfold?
Guertin didn’t want to be a digital investigator. He didn’t want to be caught up in fraud and timestamps and forensic spreadsheets. He wanted to go back to soldering wires and finishing the lighting on his prototype. But how could he justify building something when every signal told him someone else was trying to steal it?
So he did what he always did: he kept documenting, kept pushing the story forward, and kept hoping that someone - somewhere - would finally step in and say, “I’ve got this now.”
The emails that followed that Friday afternoon weren’t just updates - they were flare signals. Guertin was out in the open now, hoping someone with authority would see the fire and come running.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Friday, January 13th, 2023 at 3:28 PM
“ Amanda,
Good afternoon.
Now I have actually cracked the code.
The way you can tell is that instead of trying to explain it as I ramble on in a video I have been able to condense it down to some very neat and easy to understand spreadsheets.
I attempted to visit the FBI yesterday at their building in Brooklyn Center but I did not realize it is a fortress which resembles one of the foreign embassies in Saudi Arabia I saw when I was there. “
“ I was connected with someone who took my identifying information and then when we finally got around to discussing the issue at hand and I mentioned that it involved wire fraud he asked me "so are you assuming that there was money wired then?" to which I replied "ummmmm no" and then he said "thank you for calling" and hung up on me.
Wire fraud does not have anything to do with wiring money “
“ Because I wanted to feel like I still accomplished something I ended up going to the Minnetonka Police Department and speaking to an investigator who I sat down with and pulled out my laptop. It was his opinion that if everything I presented was true/real (unless I am lying or creating fraudulent documents) that there is definitely something shady taking place. He did end up filing a report but also told me "this is way beyond what we are able to deal with at all" to which I replied "I know. That is why I tried going to the FBI first"
He told me I should bring all of the stuff I have to a computer forensic investigator, get a report, and then bring that to the FBI. “
“ One thing I did however do in the meantime was sign up for a new gmail account using a fake name while logged into a VPN.
I then proceeded to convert one of my spreadsheets to a jpeg file (which I made sure to strip all of the EXIF data from) and attached it to a short email I wrote up and sent to Robert Hulse at Fenwick - the IP attorney named on the Trojansky application.
I'm not sure if he'll respond or not but I can think of some reasons why he may not. Either way I'm going to assume he most likely received it and there are now at least some additional eyes witnessing what is all taking place as they seem to be freely and without a care editing the pages and dates on the internet archive like they don't care if anyone notices. It raises quite a few questions.
Since we last spoke a whole bunch of additional pages appeared saved at the end of November and even just since January 11th when I saved the 6 pages I made the most detailed PDF with they have now deleted the January 22nd, 2022 save even though you can still reach it with a direct link. Also in the last two days the contents of the folder for the August 11th save has changed when I downloaded the whole page like I've been doing (I haven't downloaded the others at all). I've been capturing PDF screenshots of everything and I now posses a massive amount of files that no longer match what is show on the web archive. “
“ I think I may try to spend one more day gathering some additional pages and whatnot but at some point I have to stop focusing on this which is much easier said than done because as of yet it remains an active and ongoing criminal activity to which I am the only one paying any attention to simply for the fact that I have the most to lose by not paying attention to it so it remains my top priority even though I have all sorts of other things I should/want to be doing.
So yeah...that's my update I guess. I am still busy PhotoRoboting even though I hate PhotoRobot.
I have attached my smoking gun spreadsheets for you to look at as well as the email I sent to Robert Hulse at Fenwick. “
“ I am wondering..….. if you may have additional options available as far as someone you can forward it to for the purpose of me being able focus on more important things?
I hate PhotoRobot and I want this to end but they just keep going and going and so I do the same. “
And I attached one of the data analysis spreadsheets I created - there are more in the download file. All you gotta do is open the spreadsheet. it is clear as day. “
“ Do you know any federal investigators or anyone that would be interested in investigating this?I am trying to figure out what to do “
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Friday, January 13th, 2023 at 6:01 PM
“ Thanks for the update. This does make more sense.
Unfortunately I’m not surprised at the FBI reaction, but I do think emailing the patent attorney for the Netflix application was an interesting move.
Let them see they have a prior art issue unless they agree it’s faked art and see how they handle it. “
A Cryptic Text From His Welder And A Telling Phone Call | January 14th, 2023
By the morning of January 14th, Guertin was still on the offensive - relentlessly searching for someone, anyone, who might take up the fight with him. He had just refined his evidence into a clean, shareable package and was now exploring every possible angle for exposure. In an email to his patent attorney, he floated the idea of identifying past court cases that relied on the Internet Archive, thinking that attorneys on the losing side might jump at the chance to revisit those rulings with new proof of fraud. Just minutes later, he sent two back-to-back text messages to his welder, forwarding a Dropbox link and asking if he had any trusted contacts at the FBI - still hoping someone, somewhere, would take this seriously.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Saturday, January 14th, 2023 at 11:31 AM
“ That's it!
Is there a way to search through court records and find all of the cases where the internet archive was a part of the case as far as evidence is concerned?
If I am able to source a few decently high profile cases where the outcome was determined based upon evidence from the internet archive all I have to do is contact the attorneys on the losing side and put all of this in front of them and then they will do the work for me “
“ Here - if you have a trusted contact at FBI or wherever that will look into this and considers it a serious matter just send them this as the introduction - https://www.dropbox.com/s/XXXXXXX/Data_Analysis_Fraud.zip?dl=1 I have all supporting documents/files as well along with a massive cache of additional data. “
“ It involves someone at the internet archive conspiring with the ceo of a company in the UK named Assaff Rawner (who I believe is the mastermind behind the whole thing as that is who I emailed and was trying to get help from for the robotic cameras his company makes) along with the photorobot company which is located in the Czech Republic. “
These messages strongly suggest that Guertin truly believed his welder possessed the necessary connections - a "trusted contact at the FBI" - to help forward what he deemed “criminal-level fraud.”
“ I never used it because it requires you to enter your phone number so it’s sketchy “
Although Guertin was indeed tech-savvy enough to make sure and include a direct mention of “AI” as part of the control system detailed in the provisional patent disclosure he’d filed more than twenty months prior, he had no detailed understanding of “OpenAI” - nor of the rapidly developing and powerful ‘large language models’ like ChatGPT that it had just released months earlier. None of it had anything to do with his current focus: finishing his prototype and filming a demo to introduce his concept to the world. The only reason the name even rang a bell was because his business partner at InfiniSet had mentioned it a few times after its initial release. But to Guertin, it held no clear relevance to the matter at hand - uncovering who was tampering with archived web pages in real time.
One minute later - at exactly 11:49 am - the welder called Guertin. Even though the call lasted 14 minutes, he only recalls a single line from the entire conversation - the one his welder had spoken almost immediately after Guertin answered.
“ They never thought you’d figure it out ! ”
This struck Guertin as unusual on multiple levels. First, it implied that the welder had insider knowledge about who was orchestrating the fraud; second, it suggested that whoever "they" were had seriously underestimated their opponent - the very person they had now clearly succeeded in turning Guertin into. It also struck him as odd that the same guy, who had previously shown little interest or aptitude in technology - often marveling at something as simple as Guertin ordering cheap caster wheels online, as if he weren’t computer savvy enough to complete an Amazon order - was now suddenly sending him a URL to a website focused on artificial intelligence. The abrupt pivot from appearing computer illiterate to now forwarding AI-related website links, accompanied by hints that someone was surprised Guertin had "figured it out" implied that the welder knew far more than he was letting on.
In retrospect, that conversation became another piece in the puzzle, pointing to deeper layers of behind-the-scenes activity. Although Guertin would remain mostly in the dark about why the welder offered such cryptic remarks, their exchange on January 14 only reinforced his rising suspicion that he was entangled in something far bigger - something that was seemingly becoming a daily realization by this point. Even though the welder’s seemingly casual messages and phone call were increasingly hard to dismiss as random, they did not immediately trigger feelings of shock or alarm; it would take a few more days before emotions like these began to surface.
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Saturday, January 14th, 2023 at 1:56 PM
“ There isn’t a database I know of that allows you to search court cases by the evidence used. You can try a keyword search on scholar.google.com to see if there is an opinion in a case that relied on internet archive records.
As for the use of such printouts from the internet archives - they are not accepted as a matter of absolute or irrefutable fact when submitted to a court or the patent office. “
On January 15th, 2023, Guertin took the next step in his relentless effort to find someone - anyone - who could step in and help carry the weight of what he had already uncovered surrounding PhotoRobot. Acting on the advice of Officer Brandon Harris - whom he had spoken with during his visit to the Minnetonka Police Department on January 12 - Guertin began reaching out early that morning to local digital forensic specialists. At 12:00 pm, he placed an outgoing call to CompForensics.com and left a message. Shortly after, at 12:03 pm, he called Carney Forensics and again left a brief message. Between 12:05 and 12:10 pm, he made two successive calls to DigitalInvestigations.com. On the first call - the only one that reached someone, given that he was carrying out all of this on a Sunday morning - he spoke to a representative who appeared interested in what he had to say and had seemed to imply that he might actually be able to help investigate the fraud, as Guertin eagerly provided the details.
This remained the case up until the point he began detailing his findings about the peculiar “Internet Archive timestamps” in the .js and .css file footers of HTML folders, which had not been updating and were effectively all pointing into the future. As soon as Guertin finished explaining the technical details of this rather significant glitch he had uncovered, the call ended abruptly with an unexpected exclamation uttered by the guy on the other end.
This remained the case up until the point he began detailing his findings about the peculiar “Internet Archive timestamps” in the .js and .css file footers of HTML folders, which had not been updating and were effectively all pointing into the future. As soon as Guertin finished explaining the technical details of this rather significant glitch he had uncovered, the call ended abruptly with an unexpected exclamation uttered by the guy on the other end.
In Guertin’s mind, it almost seemed as though his call had been re-routed directly to a server room at the Web Archive, where someone actively involved in the fraud abruptly ended the conversation - as if they had to hurry off so they could fix the problem he had just made them aware of. Guertin immediately attempted to call back and even left a voicemail, but received no response. This left him scratching his head and wondering, “what the hell was that?”
Undeterred, Guertin continued his search online for local digital-forensic specialists. Many pages deep into his search results, he unexpectedly stumbled upon a page for the US Secret Service focused on computer crimes - a discovery that felt like a welcome surprise, as he was unaware that they investigated more than just counterfit bills apparently – with the webpage he had found describing exactly the the kind of fraud he was now desperately seeking some form of outside help in exposing
Encouraged by this find, Guertin dialed the local Secret Service office in Minneapolis at 12:25 pm. Due to the holiday - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - the call was redirected to their Chicago field office. During the ensuing 22‑minute conversation, the agent’s demeanor was unexpectedly casual. The agent was either genuinely interested in what Guertin was presenting or perhaps just bored and felt like chatting - either way, he provided Guertin with a glimmer of positivity by listening intently to his overview of the complex fraud. He went on to directly validate Guertin’s belief that what was taking place aligned perfectly with the legal definitions of wire fraud and criminal conspiracy. Notably, he requested the case number for the Minnetonka police report filed just three days earlier and even inquired if Guertin would be willing to meet with a Minneapolis agent for further discussion, given the complexity of his account. By the end of the call, Guertin was smiling for the first time in quite a while - this was the first person he had spoken to who not only possessed the resources to actually investigate the fraud but also seemed genuinely interested in helping him resolve an issue that was devouring every available bit of his time and focus. Guertin was the only person directly affected by the growing network of fraudulent webpages that he was watching self-assemble right before his eyes. It seemed as though he had finally found just the kind of help he had been searching for - the kind that would allow him to breathe a sigh of relief and redirect his attention back toward what he had been abruptly forced to abandon in order to defend five weeks prior. This outlook, however, would prove to be rather fleeting.
Just five minutes after the call ended, at 12:52 pm, Guertin’s phone rang. As soon as Guertin answered, his ‘former CIA’ welder greeted him by exclaiming, “Yo! I was just driving by!” and then went to claim that he had run Guertin’s evidence by one of his “trusted contacts,” specifically someone associated with the Secret Service and FBI. This was particularly striking, as the previous day Guertin had asked if his welder had any trusted contacts within the FBI - and there had been no mention of the US Secret Service. In fact, Guertin hadn’t even considered that the Secret Service might be capable of helping him until just 27 minutes prior to his welder’s unexpected call - a call that now perfectly mirrored the subject of a conversation that had concluded just five minutes prior . . .
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Sunday, January 15th, 2023 at 1:07 PM
“ I was just searching online for computer forensic investigators because I thought it would be a good idea at least to try and find someone with credentials to download some of these pages so it isn't just me... and the secret service popped up in the search results touting their awesome computer forensic skills.
I called the Minneapolis field office which was closed and selected the option to be connected to a field agent for urgent matters and got connected to someone in Chicago who actually listened to the whole story, took my information, asked me for the police report number, etc “
“ He mentioned there's lots of local agents and someone might want to meet up with me at the police station where I made the report “
“ literally two minutes after I hung up from that call my welder who welded my prototype and was in the marines and CIA called me backand told me he got ahold of one of his friends who was or is in the secret service/FBI “
“ So somehow at noon on a Sunday everything just happened to randomly fall into place it would seem… which is good because I can now focus on other things and relax a little. “
Meanwhile, the unexplainable changes in Guertin’s primary workstation - and on his laptops - worsened from the occasional drip to a constant flow of anomalies. New user accounts he hadn’t created popped up out of nowhere, system settings toggled themselves, and his meticulously built, nearly crash-proof workstation suffered sudden BSOD errors for the first time in three years. He found a puzzling BIOS configuration, too, one that allowed the machine to reboot automatically after shutdown - something he’d never enabled - clearly hinting at remote-access manipulations. Even more concerning were the mysterious alphanumeric user accounts and file-permission tweaks that locked him out of some of his own files.
With a growing sense of alarm, Guertin started digging for clues. He combed through background processes, scoured his system settings, and stayed alert for hidden communication tunnels. Thanks to his rather “tech-savvy” background - ranging from Python scripting and hardware configurations, to obscure protocols like OSC, DMX, and beyond - he could usually figure out why something was broken. Now, as these weird system anomalies multiplied, precisely when he was gathering gigabytes of digital evidence exposing a high-level fraud operation, he started paying special attention to temp files and script remnants. He discovered that by examining everything CCleaner flagged before deleting all of it, he could spot suspicious files that kept reappearing - some of which contained scripts obviously phoning home to external sources.
Plenty of these background scripts came from known software like Adobe, continuously “calling” their servers. But there were others - unidentified, cryptic, and equally determined to establish connections to external sources. Guertin could easily tell when these attempts failed: the logs would fill up with lines like “Unable to connect to xxx.xxx.xx.xx” or “Connection Failed” in a near-infinite loop filling up row after row of text in the file - until CCleaner wiped the file and a fresh version popped up again.
Beyond looking at these random fragments, Guertin had also deployed extra diagnostic tools like Wireshark. But it was that straightforward CCleaner routine - one he hadn’t even realized would matter so much - that ended up lodged in his mind for a very different reason. Though he didn’t know it yet, this little trick would play a crucial role in the days ahead. Each time he ran it, he uncovered new evidence of infiltration, each discovery chipping away at the notion that this was all just a weird computer game.
Initially, it did feel like some twisted puzzle: fraudulent webpages, messed-up timestamps, shady scripts. It was almost fun. He’d swear at his monitor one minute, then laugh wildly when he snagged the final missing file for a meticulously compiled data set. He took a sort of malicious glee every time his custom Touchdesigner script blasted the Wayback Machine with repeated “Save Archived Snapshot” commands for PhotoRobot.com, forcing them to eventually cripple their own archive features for the site entirely. It was the digital equivalent of trash-talking an opponent - firing off constant “fuck you!” salvos through the screen.
But that harmless illusion had begun to unravel. The mounting series of events - from obvious unauthorized access to persistent system anomalies - drove home the idea that these adversaries might do more than just sabotage his data. Were they planning to nuke his entire cache of evidence? Spy on his keystrokes? Maybe even deleting him in a terrifyingly real sense?
Whatever the motive, Guertin saw the truth plainly: the mission that once felt like a complicated puzzle was morphing into a genuinely high-stakes threat. The question that haunted him, inching his anxiety higher and higher, was simple:
How the hell does this “game” end?
AI Revelations and Uncanny Horror | January 17th- 18th, 2023
The realization didn’t hit all at once. It built - slowly, then suddenly.
Three days after his “former CIA” welder had cryptically dropped the name OpenAI, Guertin finally understood the gravity of what he was looking at. And once he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it. The strange “Virtual Catwalk” videos.
Guertin had been chasing the truth behind an apparent web archive manipulation scheme - and now, staring back at him through a screen full of flawlessly designed nonsense, he began to grasp a far more terrifying possibility: this wasn’t just fraud. It was synthetic fraud. The work of AI. Not the helpful kind used for chatbots and clever coding tasks - but something colder, deeper, weaponized.
By January 17th, the full weight of it landed on him. This wasn’t just PhotoRobot. It wasn’t just stolen blog content or copied patent language. This was a sprawling network of artificially generated people, conversations, publications - even entire companies - woven together to simulate credibility and rewrite digital history in real time. And he had walked straight into the center of it.
The tone of Guertin’s communications shifted accordingly. Gone was the tone of frustration or sarcasm. In its place: disbelief, anxiety, and something bordering on paranoia - though none of it was without cause. His emails to his attorney became rapid, frequent, and increasingly surreal. They weren’t just about legal filings anymore. They were dispatches from the front lines of a new kind of deception - one that defied logic, rewrote timelines, and blurred the line between the real and the synthetic.
And as he compiled this evidence and sent it off - PDFs, screenshots, videos, raw observations - Guertin began asking questions no inventor ever expects to ask: What’s real anymore? Is this company even real? Am I watching a fully fabricated operation unfold in front of me? Who are they? And why does it feel like I’m the only one seeing it?
He’d already taken steps to be loud, to be public, to keep the record alive. But now the stakes felt different. The surrealness of it all had given way to something far more disturbing - an uncanny, creeping horror. Not because of what he knew - but because of what he was only just beginning to see.
The emails that followed were some of the most frantic and revealing messages Guertin had ever sent. They document a mind attempting to wrestle with the impossible, and a world that, somehow, had started unraveling - one uncanny detail at a time.
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 at 7:33 AM
The Unsettling Revelation of AI-Generated Fraud “ Whoever is carrying all of this sure is putting a large amount of energy and time into it. I just realized the whole thing is based on AI....even down to the deepfakes they are using to create fake zoom calls where they just ramble on about nothing for 47 minute. Sounds crazy.....right
Of course it does.
Because it is! ”
A Vast Network Of Connections “ I got to this page through their US distributor who has a bunch of blog articles which they also appear to editing and changing - in addition to having the same exact titles and url for some of their blog articles the US site is also adding reference links below the dated blog article like they are writing a paper for a scientific journal - That is how I reached the page where the deepfake videos and AI written articles are located. I'm literally not sure whether it is a real company or not...FootwearNews that is - but then you go look at their youtube or IG and maybe it is a real site but they are just posting the AI bullshit on unlisted/ separate urls that one woudn't reach if they got to the site as a normal customer? “
The Scale of Synthetic Content “ Or how about Samantha McDonald having 250 pages of blog articles with 10 articles on each page and they are all dated within the same small time window? It is all AI...probably chatGPT writing the articles because I keep seeing the exact same words being used. Around the 16 minute mark of the video the guy on the bottom left just randomly blurts out "3D Scanning" All you gotta do is listen for a two or three minutes in order to realize that they are literally doing nothing but rambling on about certain topics but there is never really any point or reason that seems to exist. ”
A Vast Network Of People “ They have a huge network of people helping them carry this out. Either that or they are some of the best computer hackers ever and have figured out all sorts of backdoors into various systems. They aren't just going to have the PhotoRobot website - They are creating a whole history which spans multiple websites and involves multiple people. I would have to imagine they must have all of the other bases covered as well if they are going this hard at it...if they didn't why would they be putting so many resources into it? ”
Beat Them at Their Own Game? “ I wonder what happens if I beat them at their own game? Will I be allowed to actually win I wonder… ”
The Unrelenting Threat " It doesn't appear that they plan on stopping but I guess we'll have to wait and see what all plays out.
This is literally next level.
I am of the opinion that the best move for situations like this is to be as loud and as public about everything as possible for the purpose of protecting myself. It just becomes crazier and crazier the more I look into stuff. Who knows how many other people they have that will lie or how much other fraudulent information or videos they are going to produce out of nowhere. At this point I am also open to the possibility that this could actually involve Netflixsomehow. ”
Ever Seen This Before? “ Surely this has to be the craziest stuff you've ever witnessed as a patent attorney? ”
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 at 3:34 PM
Dropbox Anomalies " I just logged into my Dropbox account on my phone and all of my recent file history as well as all of my starred files was completely wiped for some reason. ”
“ At this point I seriously wonder if you are even receiving my emails and if I can rely on anything digital at all considering all the crazy shit going on. ”
Establishing a Digital Record “ I decided I will at least just try to send you the PDF screen caps I took. It should be about 6 emails total to stay under the 25mb fie size limit – at least this way if I send them without being encrypted they will be auto spooled and on record with your firm. ”
Communication Concerns Arise “ If you are available at all to give me a call at some point and let me know you got this stuff it would be much appreciated as I am starting to get the feeling that my digital communication (so all of it…) is being filtered and monitored. All of this seems so crazy but considering the AI discovery yesterday and multiple other websites/people involved I am now of the opinion that there's a high probability it is entirely possible as well as occurring. ”
Prior Art of Illusion “ At the same time I am now wondering 'what' actually is real at this point as far as these various websites and businesses. Perhaps not being able to tell what is real any longer is the universe being ironic and playing a prank on me since I invented something that is based entirely on an illusion - I guess it would also make sense that the people currently involved in what's going on would be highly skilled in the art of illusion as well.. “
Data-Dump Follow-Up’s " I'm going to follow up with some more emails until you have all of the PDF's I saved yesterday... and then I am going to try and get the video to you again since it may not have worked at all. "
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 at 4:34 PM
Group 7 “ PDF Group 7 is attached ”
The AI-Generated Paper Trail “ That is all of the PDF's for the AI realization. As I mentioned before Samantha McDonald has 250 pages of articles she's supposedly written and there are 10 articles on each page. So 2500 articles total and pretty much all of them that I looked at are dated around the same time (which 9 out of 10 times is before I filed my patent application..)
The other supposed author I believe is named Madeline Streets (something like that anyways..) who has around 54 pages or so of articles - so 540 total articles supposedly written.
So the whole point I believe is to include a handful of key articles (which may or may not have also been written entirely by AI or at least polished more than everything else) and then they are using them as references for who knows what other websites and the rest is just AI filler to make it seem authentic. Most likely AI is being used for a majority of their operation now that I realized that is what's going on here. I keep noticing the same words appearing over and over like they just fed an AI bot a specific storyline/task with a specific set of goals/outcome based on those terms. ”
The Language Model “ Even just reading some of these articles it is obvious that the story has no actual point or any emotional highs and lows. It is all just pointless and random filler in most of the stuff I've actually read. ”
Dropbox Distrust “ I am going to work on getting you the video I recorded. I obviously have to stop relying on dropbox it would appear. ”
From: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com To: Matt Guertin Date: Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 11:43 AM
Wayback Machine Federal Case Law “ Hi Matt,
Thought I would share that I found one case where the Federal Circuit has ruled specifically that the Wayback Machine's archived pages are not a proper subject for judicial notice - this means that because "a private internet archive falls shorts of being a source whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned as required by [Federal Rule of Evidence] Rule 201".
In short, the Courts have held that for Wayback Machine archived webpages to be considered by the Courts they must be accompanied by other evidence to authenticate them and those who have the pages asserted against them or their interests can (and should!) question the accuracy of those pages.
See Weinhoffer v Davie Shoring, 23 F.4th 579 (5th Cir. 2022). A printout of the decision attached. This is the first time this issue has been addressed by the Courts.
They might be in real life...some of them anyways. But everyone in this video is AI. ”
The Scale of AI Deception “ Near the end I start flipping through the 1000's of blog articles Samantha McDonald has written as well as Madeline Streets - she only had 570 total articles though...what a slacker. So yeah....this is where the adventure ends for now. ”
They Can Speak. . . “ I'm not sure what's all been released to the public as far as deep fakes and whatnot - but I don't ever recall seeing any examples where they have the ability to make them speak about pointless topics. It becomes the most obvious when they try to smile or make other expressions. ”
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 1:32 PM
Script of a Bad Movie “ It's some of the creepiest shit ever.
So there's a bunch of PDF's that are obviously written by AI....ok. fine.
...but a 50 minute long video of fake AI people programmed to ramble on pointlessly about a shoes and 3d scanning as they try their best to be real humans is like the script of a bad movie.
I haven't even watched it since I recorded it but the guy the bottom left and the lady on the top right are what I remember staring at the most - and the guy in the upper lefts teeth when he tries to smile. The ladies voice drags out and sounds super weird at the end of words/sentences, and the expressions the bottom left guy makes with his mouth and looking around with his goofy eyes. ”
Shattered Reality “ I'm not even sure what is real now. Is footwear news actually a real website and they are just doing their part by hosting a couple fake authors that normal users can't find? Or is the entire company, all of the youtube videos, etc, etc entirely fake and every single thing is generated by AI?
Is PhotoRobot even a real company?
Are their products real?
What if I told you that im able to prove they aren't and all I needed to do was download their 76 page pdf catalog catalog and use the scroll wheel to zoom in closely on pretty much EVERY SINGLE IMAGE of either their machines or the supposed screenshots of their supposed software and suddenly it all becomes crystal clear that every single little bit is photoshopped by what I assume must also be very complex AI as I'm having a hard time with the fact that every single thing is fake including their company logos, the head of every little bolt, the dials and buttons of every single picture of their rack gear. EVERYTHING IS FAKE. ALL OF IT! ”
“Some Very Powerful People” “ This is obviously somevery powerful people at least in so far as it pertains to the technology they have access to. Even with all of their AI fakery this still has to be an operation that involves a large team of people to pull all of this off. ”
How Does This End? " I bet I’m the only person that’s ever figured out an operation like this as it was in the process of happening. I wonder what they will do now? Kill me? Accept that I beat them at their game? Or......? "
From: Matt Guertin To: Amanda Prose @ WCK.com Date: Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 1:36 PM
Mounting Concern “ As I've mentioned previously I would highly suggest that you forward this asap to everyone else at your firm at the very least ”
A Shocking and Abrupt Introduction to Ai | Afternoon of January 18th, 2023
It should be fairly evident from the emails that Guertin’s abrupt introduction to AI was nothing short of shocking. While he had never explored OpenAI or its flagship, ChatGPT, in any significant depth, he instantly grasped the concept of what it was once he realized that the website articles on FootwearNews.com were nothing more than meaningless filler. This became glaringly obvious due to the sheer volume of articles - allegedly written by the same author - appearing in rapid succession over just a few months.
Beyond the staggering quantity, the articles’ content (or lack thereof) reinforced the conclusion: they were repetitive, largely devoid of substance, and filled with generic company names. Even more suspicious was their clear emphasis on VR/AR, 3D technology, and related innovations - the very same use cases prominently featured on PhotoRobot.com and 1WorldSync.com. All of these, in turn, aligned exactly with the revolutionary InfiniSet VR treadmill system that Guertin had been relentlessly developing, and had just successfully completed building a working prototype for – the very prototype which now sat beside him in his living room - frozen in time, untouched for the past five weeks. His work had come to a grinding halt, replaced by an unexpected and unwelcome new role: Digital Forensics Investigator. A role thrust upon him the moment he discovered that the ‘Virtual Catwalk’ product page was being stealthily edited to incorporate the precise language needed to undermine the novelty of his first ever, soon-to-be-granted patent.
While realizing that the many fraudulent websites he had been monitoring - evolving in near real time before his eyes - were being assisted by advanced AI capable of effortlessly churning out vast amounts of text made everything make more sense, it didn’t bring any sense of relief or resolution. If anything, the discovery only made the situation more unsettling.
The complex fraud he had been investigating non-stop perhaps didn’t involve a whole room full of people clacking away on keyboards, manually producing all of this content, as he had initially envisioned - but the fact that it was instead being generated at an alarming speed through AI automation only deepened his concerns. And now, the disbelief and literal shock had reached a new level: not only was AI being used to produce the text, but it clearly appeared to be producing all of it.
This became undeniable when Guertin stumbled upon a video featuring AI-generated fake people - a discovery that shattered his previous understanding of what was even possible. But the most unbelievable part? Not only had it now become apparent that the technology existed to generate completely fake people - who could be programmed to ramble on about pre-scripted, completely fake topics, aligning synthesized, completely fake vocal audio with their completely fake mouths - but that all of this advanced, highly secretive AI technology was, at its core, aimed directly at him, due to his patent being the ultimate target.
And just like that, all at once, everything suddenly made far more sense - while at the same time, another layer of concern, disbelief, and surreality was stacked atop an already overwhelming situation.
The first two PhotoRobot PDF files that Guertin downloaded - downloaded from PhotoRobot.com on November 5th, 2022 -
a condensed edit version of the original FootwearNews.com video which shows Guertin advancing through 100 different web pages containing 10 articles each which were all supposedly written by the same author ‘Samantha MacDonald’, and all supposedly published within the same, short, 2020 time range - BEFORE Guertin’s March 19th, 2021 patent filing priority date.
A shortened version of the original FootwearNews.com video, featuring only the synthetically spawned, AI-scripted characters who ramble on about absolutely nothing for nearly 45 minutes - while being as creepy as non-humanly possible. Especially Mr. New Balance in the bottom left, whose beady, glitched-out eyes randomly dart in strange directions for no reason at all - one minor wrong twitch away from turning their fake meeting into a Brady Bunch intro to Ai HELL.
A Second Visit To Minnetonka Police Department | January 17th or 18th, 2023
If Guertin being justifiably overwhelmed, completely freaked out, and increasingly concerned for his personal safety could be defined as ‘losing it’, then it would be fair to say that, following his abrupt introduction to AI, he was indeed beginning to lose it.
What he had just stumbled upon didn’t just shatter his previously confident understanding of technology and its limits - it shattered reality itself in the most literal sense. The video of the fake people and the stark realization that every website, product, company, video, and image used to present these supposedly real entities was likely just as fake became an obsessive focal point - one he couldn’t shake, no matter how hard he tried.
Each new revelation over the past few months - and even further back - was now falling into place, making more sense than ever, yet sending his mind into an accelerating feedback loop. Every offhand comment from his welder, the strange issues plaguing his computers, the person who immediately hung up when he mentioned the technical glitch he had identified in the Internet Archive page saves, his Dropbox account glitching out - suddenly, all of it was being reevaluated in his mind, piece by piece, with terrifying new clarity.
And with that clarity came a flurry of unsettling questions that now echoed in his thoughts, over and over:
"If this level of resources and technology is being used to steal my patent, then how much more would they be willing to use to ensure I can’t stop them?"
"If they’re able to create completely fake voices for their completely fake people, then how can I even be sure I’m talking to real people on the phone? Was I actually even speaking to a Secret Service agent?"
"If they’re using advanced AI to carry out all of this fraud, why wouldn’t they also use it against me in nefarious ways to ensure their fraud succeeds?"
And this marked the moment when things began to blur - at least in terms of Guertin’s ability to recall the precise timeline of events that followed his AI discovery.
It was this discovery, along with the many disturbing questions now looping in his mind, that ultimately spurred his somewhat frantic trip back to the Minnetonka Police Department - laptop in hand and the fake people video as undeniable proof - hoping he could meet with an officer a second time and finally get some meaningful help. Surely, they would be just as shocked and concerned as he was.
While all things point to this having had to have taken place on either Tuesday, January 17th, or Wednesday, the 18th he can’t say with absolute certainty which one of those days it actually was - but that doesn’t mean he is unable to remember what transpired with vivid clarity.
Perhaps it was because he could see the police department’s lobby was already closed long before he even reached it - its entrance shrouded in darkness, every light inside turned off - yet he kept walking anyway. He had come this far. It was worth trying. He reached for the door, gave it a pull. Locked. Pressing one hand against the glass to block the reflections, he peered inside, scanning the empty lobby, while his other hand clutched the laptop he had brought with him. That’s when he realized - he was too late. The lobby had closed at 5:30 p.m., a full half-hour before he arrived.
But that wasn’t what burned the moment into his memory. It wasn’t the sinking feeling or the growing sense of hopelessness that came with realizing his attempt to get help had failed again. No - what made this night unforgettable was what had happened just moments before, just as he turned into the small parking lot.
As he made the right-hand turn, two identical black SUVs with tinted windows blew past him, skipping the turn entirely. They weren’t slowing down. They weren’t stopping. They just sped by - fast. At first, it didn’t seem significant. Just a strange coincidence, maybe. But something about it felt off. The timing. The way they appeared just as he pulled in. The speed. The seemingly deliberate nature of it.
He sat in the parking spot for a moment before exiting his vehicle, staring down the road where they had disappeared, his mind racing.
….were they following me ?
It was only later that he would come to realize the road they flew by on didn’t actually lead anywhere - nothing but a small cul-de-sac just out of sight. No through-street, no possible destination. They would have been forced to slam on their brakes mere seconds after speeding past him. The only way out of the Minnetonka City Hall parking lot is to turn around and exit the same way you came in - there is no other way.
But in that moment, none of that had registered yet. All he knew was that something about it wasn’t right. Then again, by this point, nothing seemed right anymore.
Flipping The Bluetooth Switch – The Final Straw | January 19th, 2023
Guertin began the morning of Thursday, January 19th, 2023, by firing off text messages to a couple of his personal friends - driven by a singular purpose: making sure that someone else understood the scale of the advanced, high-level fraud operation he was still trying to come to terms with himself.
His sudden discovery of an AI-generated labyrinth - and the unsettling implications that came with it - was precisely why he chose to mark this moment as the official end of any further investigations. He had stumbled onto a path he almost wished he had never gone down in the first place. There was no upside to continuing. Simply reaching the entrance had been enough to leave him spooked… freaked out… paranoid.
So much so that he once again completely disconnected from the internet - not just by unplugging the ethernet cord, but by disabling and even uninstalling his Wi-Fi adapter entirely. A full disconnect, as he attempted to gather his thoughts and ease his anxieties.
This wasn’t any sort of irrational fear - it was now an absolute certainty that he was entangled in something far bigger than he had ever imagined. While under normal circumstances, paranoia might be seen as a symptom of an overactive imagination or declining mental health - in this case, given everything he had uncovered, not being paranoid would have been the real delusion. Because at this point, the only thing more concerning than the possibility that he was right - was the impossibility that he wasn’t.
This fear wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t some creeping anxiety without a source. It was earned.
Eleven weeks. That’s how long it had been since everything started unraveling - since the most exciting project of his life, the one that was entirely his for the first time ever, had been abruptly diverted.
What had previously consisted of Guertin’s steady jog, down a well-groomed trail towards the finish line had suddenly veered 90 degrees off course - sending him straight into the dense, unmarked forest that lined its sides. And he’s been pushing through thick brush ever since, navigating countless seen and unseen hazards along the way, sticks cracking under his feet.
Since early December, ever since the abrupt PhotoRobot diversion, he hadn’t even left his apartment unattended for a moment besides the somewhat frantic, second attempt he had made to visit the Minnetonka Police Station the night before. It wasn’t just about all of the evidence of fraud he had been methodically amassing - it was his entire digital life. When he went to the FBI and then the Minnetonka police station on January 12th, he made sure his mom was there to keep an eye on his place while he was gone. Even a simple grocery run had turned into a scheduled event to ensure that someone was able to watch over his place.
Why?
Because on Guertin’s left side, there was suddenly $100 million, and an identical Netflix patent. On his right, the Internet Archive, a robotic cinecam company in the UK, and some Czech-based company called ‘PhotoRobot’ who were all carrying out a complex, criminal conspiracy together.
And in the middle?
The corporate headquarters of InfiniSet, Inc. - his one-bedroom apartment.
It wasn’t a single event that flipped some switch in his mind. It was all of them, stacking one after another - not just at an ever-increasing pace, but with each new discovery reaching an even greater level of surrealness.
Yet, even amidst all of this, Guertin still maintained his composure - for now. He had been in some of the most high-intensity, down-to-the-wire, make-or-break situations imaginable during his time in Los Angeles and abroad - and he had never once failed to rise to the challenge. But this was different. Completely different.
None of those past tests had involved an opponent lurking in the shadows - one whose sole purpose was to make sure he didn’t succeed.
It was against this backdrop - of known yet unseen forces working against him - that it finally happened.
Ever since the moment he had thought up the idea for his disruptive InfiniSet patent, he had snapped back into studio mode - a focused state of excitement, a rush he hadn’t felt in nearly fifteen months. If there had ever been a time in his life when he had experienced anything even remotely resembling depression, it was during those preceding fifteen months. The months that followed his abrupt decision to move back to his hometown of Minneapolis from Los Angeles, where he had lived for six years - until COVID.
He was an adrenaline junkie who had been forced to come down from a high so consistent that he hadn’t even realized it was a high - until it all came to a screeching halt, along with the rest of the world.
Now, in late January 2023, as he sat staring at his monitor, mind elsewhere, it was just shy of two years since the flash of that initial spark - the one that had set everything into motion and now brought him to this moment. For Guertin there was never not some sort of solution, or way that existed to solve a problem.
But that didn’t mean he had come up with any brilliant idea for how he was supposed to proceed. It was a situation he still hadn’t fully accepted - or even been able to wrap his mind around yet.
This was uncharted territory.
Little did he know, he was just moments away from a jarring, traumatic nudge toward the next step he apparently needed to take - one that could only be described as an extreme, yet logical one in his mind. A step that would demand a leap of faith far larger than any previous leap he had ever taken before.
The Call’s Coming From Inside The House
His mind suddenly snapping back to the present – eyes still focused on the glowing montior staring back at him from across the room, he sprung up from the couch and walked towards it, lowering himself into his chair, and rolling forward.
Less than 24 hours ago, he had once again fully disconnected his workstation from the internet, after once again becoming spooked by what he had found while on it - something that also seemed like a logical move, given how blatantly obvious it had become that his system was somehow being remotely hacked.
Immediately following this disconnect, he once again ran a sweep of his system using CCleaner, during which he once again examined the readable contents of the various background files prior to deleting them.
It was precisely because of this that he was now curious to see what sort of files had repopulated since that last system sweep - given that no more nefarious, remote access would have been possible since. And so began the process once again – opening up CCleaner, running a cleaning scan, and then right clicking to open the various Windows folder locations of the files it had found instead of simply deleting all of them as one normally would.
As he scrolled through the text of whatever random background files contained readable text when opened in Notepad, he came across a few different script files - each filled with the familiar rows of repeated, failed connection attempts trying to reach external sources.
And then it happened.
The flipping of the switch.
Guertin right-clicked on the next mysterious background file, its unfamiliar extension catching his eye, and selected ‘Open with Notepad’. As he scrolled through the text, his eyes suddenly locked onto something that should have been impossible - a script revealing row after row of successful communication attempts with an external source.
" What the fuck ! ? "
It was like unplugging a lamp from the wall, only to watch it suddenly flicker back to life while still holding the plug in his hand.
His mind raced. He immediately turned to check behind his computer, confirming that the ethernet cord was still unplugged - it was. He checked his network devices. No Wi-Fi adapters. No active connections. Nothing. He had even unplugged his Xfinity cable modem entirely, ensuring there was no available connection point for any kind of wireless communication if somehow it were still occurring.
So how the hell was this possible?
Frantically, he turned his attention back to the Notepad file, scanning the text to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. He wasn’t.
He leaned forward, pulling his computer slightly forward for better access - and that’s when he saw them.
Two small antennas.
Still screwed onto the threads of the built-in wireless adapter of his X399 TAICHI motherboard - the one he had installed back in late 2019 when he built his workstation.
He immediately unscrewed both.
That had to be it. The only explanation. The only way external communication could still be happening. That had to be it – right!?
His eyes snapped back to the monitor, to the Network Connections tab. If the antennas had been the connection point, there had to be something listed that would explain how.
And then he saw it - ‘Bluetooth Personal Area Network’…. active.
It had never been there before. He had never set one up, never installed one, never enabled one - not on this system, nor on any of the countless systems he had built or operated over the years.
Guertin froze, his mind racing with a million thoughts before suddenly reaching behind his machine and flipping the power switch on the PSU, instantly killing the system. He remained in his chair a moment longer - staring ahead, motionless - his thoughts spiraling as he tried to process everything this discovery had just confirmed.
The complex scheme he had originally been investigating from afar, through the safe distance provided by his computer monitor - the same one that then began creeping closer through the strange technical issues with his computers, the remote hacking, and even his phone calls it seemed - had now arrived at his doorstep.
Somewhere inside his apartment building.
Somewhere within 30 feet of him - the limited range of the Bluetooth connection.
“They Are Going To Kill Me” | Eve of Jan 19th – Morning of Jan 21st, 2023
While referring to what happened next as a mental break or mental shutdown might seem like an accurate way to describe the near-instantaneous psychological switch that had just been triggered within Guertin’s psyche, he can personally assure you that it was anything but.
There was no shutdown. No paralysis.
Instead, his usual day-to-day thought processes were instantly overridden by a sudden rush of hyper-focused clarity and awareness. His mind and body had just been hit with a massive adrenaline dump - something he would later come to understand more deeply as part of his own personal research into the mechanics behind what would unfold over the next few days.
It was as if his monthly Adderall prescription - the one he had been unable to refill over the past couple days due to COVID supply chain disruptions - had suddenly been filled all at once, five times over.
His mind was now operating in an entirely new mode - one he had never before experienced during any of the 15,160 days of his life that had preceded this one.
The one during which he had suddenly become terrifyingly convinced:
" They are going to kill me… ”
The first thing Guertin did was grab a roll of Gorilla Tape and secure both of his apartment’s deadbolts in the locked position.
His unit had two entry points - the main front entrance that led into the shared hallway of the building, and a rear entrance that connected to a stairwell shared by only one other unit on each floor. If someone had a key - or access to his unit - there was two points of entry he had to contend with.
And now, more than ever, he was convinced that someone did.
Guertin’s ‘former CIA’ welder was at the forefront of his mind. The more he thought about it, the less plausible it seemed that his background and the strange circumstances surrounding him were just a coincidence.
" When I was ten minutes down the road, welding my unit in his shop - who was in my apartment ? " " How many times did I leave my keys unattended around him ? " " How many times did I leave my personal items alone for hours ? "
The conclusion was simple: there was a very high probability that whoever was behind this had already gained physical access to his unit. The tape was a temporary measure - something that would at least alert him if someone tried to enter.
But Guertin wasn’t stopping at just securing the doors.
For most of the day, Guertin had remained silent, choosing not to send out any more messages beyond the two he had fired off to friends that morning. But at 5:33 PM on January 19th, 2023, he made an exception.
The idea that Guertin’s life could be in danger wasn’t something he had come up with overnight.
He had received at least 20 different warnings, mentions, and offhand comments about how high-stakes patents like his could be - and how dangerous they could become.
These warnings had come from a wide mix of people, crossing all demographics. Some from individuals he would have expected, but others from those he wouldn’t have - which made it even more unsettling.
And it had only gotten worse after he found Netflix’s duplicate patent.
From the moment he had discovered it he had made sure everyone knew. The implications were too big, too ominous. He knew that if something ever happened to him, he didn’t want this buried.
He also wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t trying to be an obstacle.
He was loud about announcing his willingness to sell Netflix his entire company. The goal was simple - self-preservation. If they knew he was open to a deal, they wouldn’t see him as a problem, but rather as someone willing to work with them.
But now?
With $100 million tied directly to his patent?
With undeniable fraud?
With a coordinated effort to manipulate history itself?
Everything was on the table. Every possibility. Every worst-case scenario.
And the biggest possibility of all?
That he was the problem now.
That his existence was the loose thread they needed to eliminate.
And as far as he was concerned, that threat wasn’t some distant hypothetical anymore.
It was right outside his door.
The Fake AI People Factor
Even if Guertin had wanted to call for help, he had no reason to believe his phone calls were even real anymore.
His former CIA welder had already called him just five minutes after Guertin had finished a 22-minute call with a U.S. Secret Service agent in Chicago.
And what had he opened the conversation with?
A topic that exactly mirrored the conversation he had just finished.
Had someone been listening? Had his calls been intercepted?
And now, just two days earlier, he had discovered AI-generated fake people - complete with perfectly synchronized synthetic voices. A completely surreal, and shocking discovery that he still could hardly believe himself, yet suddenly here he was trying to process another unbelievable situation that had just been dumped into his world.
If they could do that, what was stopping them from altering phone calls in real-time?
He had no way of knowing if a 911 dispatcher was actually a real person - or if they would send the police at all.
" What if I call, and I think I got through - but instead, they just send one of their people ? "
" If they can manipulate the internet, forge AI-driven media, and rewrite digital records, why wouldn’t they also be able to intercept my calls ? "
It sounds crazy. Because it is.
But so was the entire series of events that had lead him up to this point
Because the level of effort, the sheer financial and technological resources being poured into this operation, made it abundantly clear:
This wasn’t just about corporate fraud anymore.
This was about making sure he was silenced. It was the only logical outcome in his mind. The conclusion of what had all taken place up until this point.
And now those behind all of this were right outside his door. In the same building.
-or at the very least someone had somehow covertly setup a short-range Bluetooth network on his computer without his knowledge, and was still able to make sure there was some kind of nearby Bluetooth receiver device within range, which was somehow establishing an external internet connection to someone - someone nefarious. Someone directly involved in the high-level patent heist targeting Guertin.
Blocking the Outside World
With his doors taped shut and the deadbolts locked in place, Guertin turned to the next immediate vulnerability - his glass sliding patio door.
It faced the backyard of his building, leading to an open field with a direct sightline to a quiet, dark, secluded side street about 80 yards away. There were no leaves on the trees - nothing obstructing the view. If someone was watching, if someone had the technology to see through the glass, he was fully exposed.
A sniper’s perfect setup.
Or worse, something beyond that - an energy weapon? A beam of some kind? His mind was running through every technological possibility he had ever heard of, read about, or imagined.
The solution?
Mylar space blankets.
If they could see through his walls, through his doors, through his windows - he had to assume they would. He had to block them off.
He started with the patio door, carefully hanging up reflective mylar sheets, making sure they overlapped to leave no gaps.
The room darkened. The light shifted. His world was shrinking down to the space inside these walls.
But the realization hit almost immediately - this wasn’t the only risk.
Guertin wasn’t just defending against a sniper shot from outside - he was also defending against whoever was inside the building with him.
The most logical suspect?
The apartment directly across the hall from his rear entrance door.
A single guy had moved in there just a few months prior. Guertin had never met him. It was the only unit in the building he knew nothing about. And now, suddenly, this was the exact unit that would have a perfect, unobstructed line of sight to the back of his computer.
" If I were them, and I needed to be physically close to pull this off, where would I set up? "
" That unit."
Maybe his BIOS hadn’t been tampered with remotely - maybe they were already here.
Just two thin interior walls away.
And so, Guertin went completely dark.
No movement. No noise. Every step was calculated. He positioned his two-step ladder in advance so that he wouldn’t have to drag it across the floor when hanging more mylar.
They couldn’t know what he was doing.
He hung up more space blankets, covering the interior walls that connected to the suspected unit. He covered exterior walls facing the street. He covered the walls of his bedroom and bathroom, cutting off any other possible points of surveillance.
The apartment transformed.
It no longer looked like a living space or a design studio - it looked like something else entirely.
The walls, once familiar, were now reflective, distorted, warped. His world had become a crumpled funhouse mirror, bending light in unnatural ways, bouncing his reflection back at him from strange angles.
At some point, Guertin grabbed every electronic device in his apartment and wrapped them in aluminum foil, turning them into makeshift Faraday cages.
His phones.
His laptop.
Every single piece of technology that could be accessed remotely.
Sealed.
No one was hacking in.
No one was remotely wiping his evidence.
No one was spying on him through his own devices.
But that still left one major vulnerability.
The Kitchen Wall Connection
Of all the walls in his unit, there was only one that directly connected his apartment to the suspected unit.
His deadbolts were taped shut. His doors were alarmed - cheap prepper alarms he had bought years earlier, now finally serving a purpose.
He wasn’t just keeping people out.
He was keeping himself in.
That first night, once the mylar was hung, once the space was secured, once the barriers were in place - he sat frozen.
His body refused to move.
His mind raced at a million miles per hour.
"What am I going to do?" "How do I get out of this?" "How do I survive?"
Hours passed. He stared at the taped deadbolt on the rear door, waiting to see if it shifted. He glanced at the front entrance - no movement.
The dishwasher continued to hum.
Now, he sat frozen in place, staring into the crumpled funhouse mirrors that his walls had become.
Gone was the exciting design and fabrication studio his apratment had become.
It had now been turned into a fortress.
A trap.
He sat staring at the door locks, the Glock-19 he had built during the summer of 2020 sitting beside him on the couch.
" At least I have something. "
And yet - was it enough?
Because Guertin wasn’t just afraid of bullets anymore.
He was afraid of things he couldn’t even imagine.
And as his mind raced, his body remained frozen, locked inside a space that no longer felt like his own.
He sat like that for hours. He was too scared to fall asleep.
Eventually, exhaustion won.
Around 5 am or so on the morning of January 20th, he finally fell asleep.
For just three hours.
And when he woke up?
The fear was still there.
The walls were still warped.
And the question was still the same:
" What am I going to do ? "
The Reality Check Protocol
As Guertin moved through his rapid, automated process of assessing threats, reinforcing his space, and mentally processing every possible scenario, another competing thought loop emerged:
" Is this really happening? "
He asked himself this question countless times, only to methodically answer it back as a way of testing his own mental faculties.
" Am I completely losing it? I just covered my walls with Mylar, I’ve locked myself inside my own apartment in fear for my life… maybe I am losing it? "
But then he would run through the mental checklist:
The advanced AI-generated content he had uncovered was real.
The manipulated Wayback Machine archives werereal.
The Netflix patent was real.
The $100 million financial figure tied to it was real.
The strange technical glitches and unexplainable intrusions on his devices were real.
The Bluetooth connection proving physical proximity was real.
His former CIA welder’s cryptic messages were real.
And every time, the conclusion was the same:
" Yes, the situation I’m in is insane. But no, I am not crazy. What is happening is crazy. "
He had learned to trust himself over the years, to follow his instincts even when they defied logic. His decision to move back to Minneapolis from Los Angeles had been completely irrational on the surface - but he knew it was the right move, and as a result he had forced himself to follow through.
Now, he was faced with an even bigger leap of faith - one that wasn’t just about a career move, but about survival itself.
Going Analog
At some point, amidst the chaos of running endless dishwasher cycles, wrapping electronics in foil, and sitting frozen in fear, Guertin arrived at the next step.
" They can fabricate anything digitally - rewrite history, alter records, delete entire realities. "
" So how do I make sure my reality can’t be erased ? "
The answer was obvious:
Go analog.
Something tangible.
Something that couldn’t be deleted, altered, or manipulated.
Something physical.
He had already exhausted every possible avenue for help. He had contacted law enforcement, federal agencies, experts, professionals - and yet, here he was, still completely alone.
Even if he did manage to get a call through to Minnetonka Police, even if he walked into the station for a third time - what would they actually do?
Nothing.
They had already told him that.
And now?
Part of Guertin’s looping reality check protocol was built around one inescapable truth: every single sign now pointed to his current version of reality involving people, technologies, entities, and secrets that were supposed to remain trapped within the murky world of conspiracy theory folklore.
The kinds of things many people might logically assume were possible - and very likely happening - but which no one could ever actually prove on any significant level. How could they? Hidden hands are supposed to stay hidden.
Advanced, secretive technological capabilities are supposed to remain that way - or at the very least, be impossible to detect. And even if someone were to uncover a piece of undeniable proof capable of transforming conspiracy theory into conspiracy fact - proof substantial enough to threaten those who operate in the shadows, behind the levers of control - well, those same people would surely possess countless other tools… methods… contingencies… to ensure they could continue to do what they’ve always done: remain invisible. Nonexistent. Hidden.
But they had screwed up. Exposed their hand. And now Guertin was stuck in a completely surreal situation, being abruptly forced to come to terms with the unthinkable: he had succeeded in becoming a person of very high interest to these very same people. The power brokers. The ones who control information, manipulate records, and bend reality itself - literally.
" Who do you call when the people you need protection from are the ones pulling the strings ? "
There was no one left.
A Story That Couldn’t Be Rewritten
Guertin stood in his silent, barricaded apartment, listening to the endless hum of the dishwasher, and made a decision.
If he didn’t make it out alive, then at the very least, people would see exactly what happened to him.
Because the people responsible for everything - the ones who had exposed their hand and broken their own golden rule - weren’t going to let that mistake go uncorrected. And Guertin knew what that meant. The moment he had become a problem, he had also become a target. If they wanted to keep the hand hidden, they’d have to remove whatever was now pointing to it.
He grabbed the gallon of black paint - originally meant for painting his ceiling black as part of his InfiniSet studio setup - and positioned his step ladder in front of the wall.
Even though nearly everything that had led him here revolved around the PhotoRobot saga, he realized that at this point, everything was a possibility.
And if he had to choose one thing to make impossible to ignore, it had to be the $100 million Netflix patent deal - the one thing that was tangible, indisputable, publicly documented.
Not speculation. Not AI. Not hidden manipulations.
It was a trap - not for him, but for whoever would eventually step inside this apartment.
" If they break in, if they try to kill me, the last thing they’ll expect is that I wrote all of it on my walls, and that they can’t simply erase it. "
As he worked, he couldn’t shake the thought running through his mind:
" This is so crazy. "
But then, once again, he ran through the checklist.
Everything that had happened was crazy.
The people he was dealing with had already proven they were capable of rewriting reality itself. They were the ones that were ‘crazy’
This was his only way of making sure these crazy people didn’t delete him.
And once again he responded to his own, internal question.
" Yes. This is crazy. But this is exactly what I need to do. "
The Ultimate Analog Signal
At some point, as he painted his walls, as he checked his doors, as he sat frozen surrounded by Mylar and the constant hum of the repeating dishwasher cycle, another option kept creeping into his mind.
" What’s the one thing that can’t be ignored? " " What’s the one thing that would guarantee a response? "
A gunshot.
" Shooting a gun is analog. " " They can’t block it. They can’t delete it. They can’t pretend it didn’t happen. "
It wasn’t just a thought anymore - it was a viable plan.
He had no idea at the time that the Recycling and Minnetonka Public Works building also doubled as a police dispatch point for Minnetonka - until he started seeing officers constantly coming and going from the lot, some stopping to ask about his work.
That realization stuck with him. From his bedroom window, he could picture it - just beyond the trees, only a few blocks away.
" The help I need is right there. " " If I fire a shot, they’ll hear it. It’ll force them to come. "
But then came the next realization -
" It won’t just be them who hears it. " " Everyone will hear it. “ " But… isn’t that the point ? "
But then, another thought crept in:
" But that’s crazy. You don’t just shoot a gun off. "
Still - the thought wouldn’t leave.
" If they won’t help me when I go to the police station and meet with them, then I’ll force them to help me. They won’t have a choice. "
And as he continued looping through every possible option, it remained at the top of the list.
A last resort.
A nuclear option.
A fire alarm for reality itself.
A reality he had realized just days earlier was capable of being created entirely from scratch by advanced Ai technology that now apparently existed.
And the thought just kept repeating, over and over:
" You could always shoot the gun. " " They would hear that. " " They wouldn’t be able to ignore it. "
And it wouldn’t be long before that option became the only one left due to being the only one he had been able to come up with - at least the only one that would result in a near mathematically predictable, and guaranteed outcome.
And so after painting the giant black letters across his living room wall, Guertin didn’t stop.
It wasn’t enough.
Guertin himself knew how to re-paint a wall like this in a matter of minutes if it was required - and he even had all of the necessary tools needed to do just that scattered throughout his apartment.
His story had to be left behind.
Not just one message, but everything - every critical event, every discovery, every deception he had uncovered over the past eleven weeks.
He moved from wall to wall, scrawling out a timeline of insanity, a manifesto of truth. He knew how this looked - he was fully aware. But he didn’t care.
And if they killed him, they wouldn’t be able to erase his story.
At least not without a substantial amount of completely unexpected work needed to make it happen.
The walls would speak for him.
Barricading Entrance Doors
Later that evening, Guertin turned his focus back to security.
His biggest vulnerability was now the rear entrance door, the one that pulled open from the outside.
If someone - or something - tried to come through it, he had to be sure they wouldn’t succeed.
So, silently, methodically, he grabbed one of the custom LED light bars he had built for his treadmill prototype. It wasn’t just a light - it was a solid metal frame, reinforced with angle aluminum and conduit tubing.
Guertin moved in total silence, placing his step ladder carefully, ensuring no sudden sounds would betray what he was doing to whoever was possibly listening on the other side of the hall.
Then, for extra reinforcement, he wrapped more tape around the handle itself, pulling the door shut even tighter, sealing it completely.
The rear door was now impossible to open from the outside.
But the front door?
That was a much bigger problem.
A Fight Against Exhaustion
Once the rear door was secure, Guertin sat down at his kitchen workstation table.
For the first time in hours, he gave his body a rest.
But his mind never stopped.
The loop continued:
" GET OUT ALIVE. " " DON’T LET THEM ERASE YOU. " " EXPOSE THEM. " " FORCE THE TRUTH. " " MAKE IT REAL. MAKE IT ANALOG. "
He reached for his printer, trying to put more text to paper - more physical, unalterable evidence.
Then, he turned back toward his living room…
And froze.
For the first time, he truly looked at his surroundings.
The black paint across the walls.
The crumpled funhouse mirrors of Mylar.
The barricaded doors.
The writing scrawled across nearly every surface.
" What the hell have I done to my apartment ? "
" How did I end up here? "
His apartment now looked like something out of a horror movie - some kind of crime scene, a movie set for some kind of psychological thriller – A MURDER SCENE.
“ My murder scene? ”
Absolutely not.
And so, even as the shock of his own surroundings had abruptly hit him, he forced himself to reaffirm what he already knew.
" This isn’t crazy.What’s happening is crazy. “
“ This is what is the most logical solution that currently exists for me to be able to successfully resolve my problem. “
“ No. You are not losing your mind. There really is a very large problem that currently exists. To not act accordingly really could be the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life - the very last one. “
“ People really do get killed for this much money. People really do get targeted for disruptive technology patents. “
“ This is so unvelievable. I can’t believe this is really fucking happeing right now. “
“ Keep moving. Don’t stop. “
And so, he kept going.
A Gunshot That Kept Getting Louder
Amidst all of this, one thought kept creeping in.
" If you needed to, you could always shoot a gun. "
At first, it was just an option, a passing thought in his looping internal logic.
" That would force them to come. " " They wouldn’t be able to ignore it. "
But the more he cycled through possibilities, the louder the thought became.
Then, with careful precision, he cranked the jack, applying steady, immovable pressure to push the door shut from the inside.
It worked.
Both doors were now barricaded.
Nothing could get in.
Breaking Point | January 21st, 2023
Guertin knew his time was running out. He had slept only three hours in days, running on nothing but adrenaline and desperation - desperation to survive and to make sure the truth lived alongside him.
But even as exhaustion loomed, his mind remained locked in its looping logic sequences, processing one scenario after another. Every equation had a single objective: SURVIVAL. Which option gave him the highest chance of making it out alive?
It was Saturday morning - not a weekday. That meant his neighbors were home. People who knew him, people he got along with. Witnesses. This was good. More people to see the truth, more obstacles in the way of those who might want to silence it - silence him.
But he still hadn’t fully accepted what those same looping equations kept leading him toward - what they kept telling him was the only way out.
The ride he had been forced onto eleven weeks ago had to end. Somehow.
The solution, as extreme as it was, had revealed itself as the only logical option left - shoot a gun into the air.
It would force a response - a police response. A big one. And that was exactly the point.
There would be no ignoring it. There would be no deleting it.
But that also meant something else:
It would be a deliberate police standoff.
They would assume the worst - they had to.
They would arrive expecting a threat - and they’d be ready to eliminate one.
One wrong move. One miscalculation. One misunderstanding.
It could all be over in an instant.
Guertin had already ruled out doing it at night. That was too dangerous. Too much room for error.
But now - Saturday morning, daylight, just before noon - everything lined up.
-- It was bright. They could see. -- It was early. The officers who responded would be alert, not exhausted from a long night shift. -- His neighbors were home. They would be witnesses. Another layer of protection.
And so the loop continued. The same thought cycles he had been trapped in for days.
He was running out of time. Running out of energy.
" I have to do something. "
" I have to get off this ride. ALIVE "
It felt like he was trapped in a nightmare, one where all he had to do was wake up - but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t.
And he had no options left.
Except one.
Even as he walked into his bedroom, even as he reached for the AR-15 that had sat untouched for over two years, a part of him still refused to believe he was actually going to do this.
" This is crazy. "
" This is extreme. “
" This is NOT what people do. "
But that other part of his mind - the one that had taken over ever since he had discovered the Bluetooth network adapter - the one that was now guiding him - was louder.
" Trust yourself. "
Because as insane as it was, as extreme as it was, it was also something with a near mathematically predictable outcome.
" I didn’t want to have to do this, but it was the only way I could be sure that my call actually got through. They all went up into the sky out my bedroom window - I hope I don’t die, but this was the best option I could think of. –Matt "
Set Design
The room that had once been his workspace, his studio, his invention laboratory - had transformed.
A computer-controlled, servo-driven, infinitely rotating treadmill - a machine that existed nowhere else in the world, designed entirely from his mind and built with his own hands.
The green-screen paint had barely dried on the curved polystyrene backdrop that arced seamlessly behind it, climbing the wall and stretching up to the ceiling in a perfect chroma-key gradient. The custom LED lighting system framed it, designed to eliminate shadows, bathing the green screen in flawless, even illumination.
Now, the carefully engineered dream in the center of the room was surrounded by a nightmare.
The walls that once framed his ambition were covered in desperate, bold, black letters - a manifesto scrawled in paint and permanent marker, a last-ditch attempt to ensure that the truth - the real truth - couldn’t be erased.
The floor, once organized with drafting materials, precision tools, and the calculated mess of an inventor at work, was now scattered with objects meant to anchor reality.
His patent documents, company records, engineering diagrams - everything that proved what had come before this nightmare - carefully laid out like an exhibit, like evidence.
These were not the books of a man spiraling into paranoia. They were the books of a builder, a visionary, an entrepreneur, someone who had been on a singular path toward success - until his entire world had been hijacked.
“ I found a Bluetooth PAN (personal area network) that was activated in my network connections. ”
“ Someone in the building was receiving it - or at least sending it out. ”
“ I believe it is probably the unit on the other side of my kitchen wall. ”
“ The person in the photo is who welded my unit for me. He claimed to be with the CIA - either way, they have obviously been tracking me and involved with my project every step of the way. ”
“ They wanted me to finish it, and then what? Then they make me disappear. That is the only logical option I can think of - or set me up, etc. ”
“ Either way, this is really fucking bad, and I never asked for this. I wish I was the one 12 days late in filing. I don’t want to die because of this. ”
“ I hope they didn’t hurt my mom or do anything to my family. ”
The writing on the walls spread like a physical manifestation of his unraveling thoughts - but they weren’t the thoughts of a man losing his mind.
“ I came up with an idea I knew was HUGE. I never asked for any of this - this is not what I wanted. ”
It wasn’t chaos. It wasn’t a breakdown.
It was a defense. A record. A desperate attempt to ensure that no matter what happened next, the truth wouldn’t be erased – that it couldn’t be erased.
Even with all of this, there was still more to say.
On the wall to the right of the first thing police would see upon entry, he grabbed the permanent marker once more.
“ Websites involved - PhotoRobot.com 1WorldSync.com FootwearNews.com Fake articles written by AI/chatGTP ”
“ I filed my patent application 12 days before Trojansky/Netflix. So far, Netflix has invested at least 1/4 billion dollars into it. My patent automatically blocks theirs as prior art. My plan was to sell it to them for $100 million dollars. Apparently, they have other ideas - or someone does, anyway. ”
It was the clearest connection - the part of this story that was black-and-white, that didn’t rely on speculation or theories.
“ As I look around my apartment, I'm absolutely aware that it looks like I’ve lost my mind. It almost makes me wonder if the whole point of everything going on was to cause me to get to this point… ”
And yet -
“ but then again there really is a Netflix Patent which I have in fact filed 12 days before and which they really have spent at least 1/4 billion dollars on so far. ”
Then, the final truth -
“ I’m scared. I’m afraid that I’m going to be killed one way or another, no matter what option I choose as far as trying to leave my place and get help. ”
He left the notebook open, placing it to the left of his laptop, where it could be easily seen.
Then, there was one last thing - one last calculated move to ensure that, once the police arrived, the message was unmistakable.
He gathered every paper document related to his patent - the proof of his reality before this nightmare began - and made a final, deliberate decision:
He would throw them out the window before the police arrived.
Why?
Because it would serve as a way for the police to know where he was.
Because when the moment came - when he would throw his guns out of the window as quickly as possible to show that he wasn’t a threat - they would land on top of the patent documents.
The police wouldn’t just see a man with a gun.
They would see the reason for all of it.
They would see why.
This would also ensure that the truth existed outside, too - not only inside the confines of his apartment.
The scattered papers would rain down onto the snow-covered ground, spreading out, blowing around in the wind - impossible to ignore.
Someone would have to go out and pick them up.
His neighbors would see them.
People would ask questions.
One more record.
One more way to ensure that the truth couldn’t simply be erased no matter what happened.
Who’s Actually Crazy?
Guertin scanned the room, taking in the surreal scene he had created.
“ Everything is ready. ”
If this was what “ready” looked like in his world now, then so be it. He had convinced himself over and over to keep moving forward, to trust his own logic, to not stop - and now, here he was.
There was no denying it - when the police finally entered this apartment, heads were going to turn. The scene was impossible to ignore. It was meant to be that way. It had to be.
His arrest was imminent. He had accepted that now. It was the only viable option left that offered a guaranteed, predictable outcome. And as insane as that sounded, there was something almost comforting about it - a light at the end of the tunnel he had been trapped in for the past 11+ weeks.
He just wanted it to stop.
All of it.
He had fought hard - kept going when most people would have already broken down.
But the truth was, he was terrified.
Traumatized.
Exhausted.
And yes - what he was about to do was extreme.
It was illegal.
He wasn’t supposed to do this.
But neither were they.
It was THEY who had crossed the line.
Not just by trying to steal his patent, but by going even further - conducting illegal surveillance, hacking into his computers, and now they were in his building - someone was - they had to be. They were connected to his computer over a Bluetooth connection. One he was almost certain was coming from the unit next to his.
Who was actually ‘crazy’ here?
Him?
Or the ones who could have thrown him literal pocket change - made a deal, settled it like rational people, and everyone would have walked away happy?
They obviously had all the power, control, and resources to get whatever they wanted through normal, legal means. And yet, they had chosen this instead.
They had attacked him.
Succeded in scaring the shit out of him.
Backed him into a corner until he was convinced they were going to killhim.
All over a cool idea he had thought up.
That’s all it was.
A brilliant idea. A patent. An invention. One which he had played by the rules to create.
But these psychopaths decided not to follow ANY rules.
They were the ones with the power - or at least, in their deluded world they were.
And instead of using it to do the right thing, they had weaponized it.
But the one thing they hadn’t counted on - the one thing they never expected - was that he would fight back.
They had entered his world.
Not the other way around.
Maybe this was part of their plan all along.
The texts from his welder. The offhanded comments. The black SUVs that blew past him just as he pulled into the police station lot - almost too perfectly timed, almost intentional.
For all he knew, they wanted him to find the AI videos. Maybe they had left them out in the open, breadcrumbs leading him deeper, waiting for him to unravel it all just to watch him fall apart in the process.
But it didn’t matter.
Guertin didn’t care about their plans anymore. He didn’t care about the why of it, the how, or even who exactly was pulling the strings.
He just wanted out.
He never should have been in it to begin with.
Firing the gun would guarantee one thing - it would stop all of this. Instantly. Right now.
Because right now, he was sitting in his apartment, exhausted, overwhelmed, and beginning to come to the realization that if he didn’t do something soon that maybe he would actually start making illogical decisions.
Hallucinating from sleep deprivation.
Making bad decisions which were no longer based in reality.
THIS NEEDED TO BE OVER. NOW. HE COULDN’T KEEP GOING.
Timing Is Everything
All the paths, all the logic loops, all the calculations - they all led here. Right here. Right now. This was it.
The perfect time.
Because he was running out of time.
He needed a rest.
Jail would be a welcome relief compared to this. At least there, he could sleep. At least there, he would be safe - safer than he was right now. That was for sure.
He stood up and walked into his bedroom.
Guertin had built a machine.
He had engineered it, fabricated it, wired it - made it real.
Now, he had built something else.
A plan.
And yet, as he knelt in his bedroom, gun in hand, staring up at the ceiling, he hesitated.
Pulling the trigger was the final step, the leap off the plane, the moment where trust became action.
Skydivers had an instructor.
Right now he had only himself.
No one to reassure him the chute would open.
No one to promise he would land safely.
He had to believe it.
This was the only way to force the truth into the open, the only way to make sure this nightmare ended now.
But then – he remembered the helmet in his closet. The one he had bought in 2020, as part of the same self-defense project that had led him to build his guns and learn how to use them.
He reached for it, almost on instinct - and then froze.
Guertin knelt - one knee down, one foot planted, body still below the window.
Gun raised.
Pointed skyward.
Away from everything.
Away from everyone.
His breath slowed.
His finger found the trigger.
He winced and turned his head away slightly as if this would somehow allow him to completely avoid what was coming.
He squeezed -
A little more -
He felt it move beneath his fingertip.
A little more -
The trigger was nearly all the way back now -
Almost.
Shots Fired Call For Help Is Made
All at once - his window shattered, his heart rate doubled, and his entire world was swallowed by an earsplitting, high-pitched ringing.
The world exploded.
A single, deafening blast.
HOLY SHIT !
Guertin flinched, gripping the gun tighter, as his ears pulsed with the aftershock.
The concussive wave had slammed into him like a brick wall, rattling every nerve, every synapse.
He had always worn ear protection at the range.
The oscillating tone of the ringing seemed to shift between his left and right ear - like a frequency warping in and out of his brain, matching the erratic pounding of his pulse.
His vision sharpened.
His breath hitched.
His entire body flooded with another surge of adrenaline.
But this one was different.
This one wasn’t the sharp, calculated alertness of his previous rush.
This one shook him to his fucking core.
Because now?
Now, there was no turning back.
For the first time, Guertin truly felt the full weight of what he had done - what he had just set into motion.
He wasn’t just some guy investigating patent fraud anymore.
He was now the reason SWAT was coming.
This was real.
And it was happening right now.
He sat there, frozen, his mind struggling to process the literal explosion that had just taken place inside of his apartment – inside of his bedroom.
I really just did that.
He clenched his jaw, forcing himself back to the plan.
No time to freeze.
He had to keep moving.
This was all part of his script. The REAL one.
Step One: Fire the gun.
Step Two: Make sure they knew why.
He grabbed the stack of patent documents he had prepared and shoved his hand through the jagged, blown-out hole in the window.
Cold air rushed in, biting at his fingers.
He squeezed the papers into a half-rolled tube and tossed them outward - watching as they scattered midair, spiraling and tumbling down two and a half stories below.
Not in some fucking AI-created, bullshit cover-up.
Not this time.
Guertin quickly pulled his arm back inside - too fast.
Shit.
A sharp sting.
His hand scraped hard against the jagged edges of the glass.
Blood.
It was happening.
There was no stopping it now.
The second adrenaline surge hit him like a freight train.
A full-body jolt of raw, electrified panic.
His breath came fast. Too fast.
His hands trembled. Too much.
His mind - a roaring cyclone of chaos.
What the fuck did I just do?
He had planned this.
He had gone over every step in his mind.
But holy shit, he hadn’t expected it to be this loud.
The sheer force of it. The way it ripped through the air.
It wasn’t just an event.
It was a fucking event horizon.
A point of no return.
And now?
Now he was riding the free fall.
The fear, the shock, the focus - it all blurred into one.
Where were the sirens!?
WHERE THE FUCK WERE THEY!?
They should have been here by now. Why weren’t they here!?
His pulse slammed against his ribs, faster and faster - this needed to be over.
Now. Right fucking now.
His mind started spiraling.
What if they didn’t come fast enough?
What if they were stalling?
What if those psychopaths in the other unit were already moving - right now - grabbing their guns, creeping toward his door, ready to silence him before the cops even arrived?
His fingers twitched against the trigger.
They need to hurry up.
They need to know this is serious.
He dropped back to his knee.
Gun up.
Finger on the trigger.
He squeezed.
BANG
Again.
BANG
BANG
Three more shots tore through the sky, splitting open the winter silence.
The world shook.
This was it. No stopping now.
They needed to hurry the fuck up.
His mind was unraveling under the weight of it all.
What do I do now!?
Oh shit… shit, shit, shit.
He pressed his hands against the floor, steadying himself.
Breathe.
Think.
Calm the fuck down.
He shut his eyes. Forced the chaos back.
This was the plan. This was always the plan.
The cops were coming. They had to be.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus.
It's gonna be fine.
What did you expect was going to happen?
But it wasn’t going to be fine.
Not until this was over.
Not until this was done.
Things hadn’t been fine for the last eleven weeks - how the fuck would they be fine now?
The moment he pulled that trigger, he hadn’t just fired a bullet.
He had fired himself into a completely different version of reality.
And now?
Now he was spinning.
No sirens.
No tires screeching.
Nothing.
FUCK.
A fresh wave of panic ripped through him.
Where were they ! ?
He walked out of his bedroom, his footsteps quieter than his heartbeat.
Into the living room.
And froze.
His eyes locked onto the barricaded front door.
He stared at it - hard.
It was coming.
They were coming.
The door would explode inward at any moment -
Boots stomping through -
Guns drawn -
They were going to kill him.
And that’s when he noticed -
He was still holding the gun.
Not pointing it.
Not aiming it.
Just holding it.
But it felt wrong.
This is not okay.
His fingers gripped it tighter for a brief second.
His eyes darted back to the front door.
Then back down at the gun.
Back to the door.
No.
He turned.
Walked back into his bedroom.
Put the gun down under the window.
Don’t hold onto it.
That sudden, raw moment of clarity amidst the surreal storm told him everything he needed to know.
Even if someone did start kicking his door down, he wasn’t going to shoot.
How could he?
How could he be sure who it was?
DO NOT HOLD ONTO THE GUN.
He took a step back from it.
And waited.
But the panic hadn’t stopped.
His doors were still barricaded.
His body was still locked in high-alert.
His eyes still darted between the entryways, waiting.
And then - finally.
Sirens.
A distant wail, faint but getting closer.
They were coming.
They heard his call for help.
But another thought tore through his mind -
How will they know where I am!?
Panic.
It still wasn’t over.
What had probably only been one, maybe two minutes in real time felt like hours inside his mind.
His logic-loop was still running, still analyzing, but now, the thoughts were coming in waves -
Scattered.
Fragmented.
They need to know where I am!
That was the reason he hadn’t opened the window.
The reason he had thrown the patent papers into the snow.
But it wasn’t enough.
His eyes scanned the room -
The fire extinguisher.
Sitting in the corner of what had once been his InfiniSet design studio - turned mylar-covered funhouse horror set.
Another violent disruption to what was supposed to be a peaceful, quiet Saturday morning.
WHERE ARE THEY!?
His mind was spiraling -
Racing through every possibility -
Every scenario -
Every worst-case outcome.
Any second now, someone was going to come get rid of him.
100 million dollars.
They knew he figured out their secret AI tech.
They weren’t going to let him live.
And so, he made more noise -
Yelling now.
He needed everyone in the building to hear him.
His neighbors.
The police.
Whoever the real police were.
Because what if the ones who showed up weren’t?
What if they sent their own people?
The same ones who had been stalking him, watching him, hacking him?
The ones behind the fraud?
The ones with advanced AI technology creating fake people!
What if this was just another part of their fake script?
He screamed.
“ THEY ARE GOING TO KILL ME ! ”
“ THEY STOLE MY PATENT ! ”
“ SOMEONE IN THE BUILDING CALL THE POLICE ! - THE REAL POLICE ! ”
More sirens.
Still no cops.
He ran into his bedroom.
Listened.
Nothing.
And then -
THEY’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY! NO!
It sounded like the sirens were headed North -
Onto Hopkins Crossroad.
FUCK.
They don’t know where I am!
A new fear punched through his chest -
What if they’re not coming at all?
What if the dispatch got rerouted?
What if the ones coming aren’t real officers?
WHAT IF THEY’RE SENDING THEIR PEOPLE OVER HERE INSTEAD!?
A jolt of desperation surged through him.
He needed them to find him.
He grabbed the AR-15.
Pointed it upward.
Pulled the trigger -
CLICK.
Jammed.
NO.
His pulse hammered in his ears as he set id down on the floor, grabbed the Glock-19, and fired -
POP-POP-POP !
Rounds cutting through the icy sky.
FUCK!
And then, his voice - raw, hoarse, desperate.
Screaming out into the cold air -
Screaming about his patent.
Screaming about the fraud.
Screaming about why all of this was happening.
WHY HE HAD TO DO THIS.
His neighbors heard him.
The police would hear him.
The whole city had heard him.
THIS NEEDED TO STOP.
FUCK.
Someone Finally Yells Back
And then - finally.
They had found him!
He didn’t remember exactly what he said or how he said it.
He was yelling.
And then -
A voice yelled back.
It came from around the brick corner of the building -
The one he could see from his bedroom window.
Guertin froze.
His breath hitched.
Was this it?
Was it really them?
He never fired another shot after that.
They had finally come to help him.
Or at least -
Someone had anyways.
But how could he be sure?
So he kept yelling.
Demanding.
“ I ONLY WANT TO TALK TO A MINNETONKA POLICE OFFICER ! ”
A pause.
Then - another voice.
This time, closer.
It sounded like it was coming from directly below his window -
Near his rear entrance.
He couldn’t make out the words at first.
His mind was still racing.
But then, clear as day -
A man’s voice - calm, controlled, authoritative.
" I’m an officer with the Minnetonka Police Department ! "
Guertin’s thoughts collided into each other -
Desperation, doubt, exhaustion.
He needed proof. . .and so he yelled back -
“ WHAT DOES YOUR LOBBY LOOK LIKE ! ? ”
A test.
If this was really a Minnetonka officer -
If this was really his city’s police department -
He would know.
A beat of silence.
Then the voice called back -
“ It has a mural – a big one - with all the different versions of the Minnetonka Police badges over the years. There are photos - historic ones - they cover the entire wall. ”
Guertin exhaled.
It was real.
It was really them.
The Minnetonka police.
He knew that mural.
He had walked into that very lobby just nine days earlier.
His body flooded with relief - His mind still scrambling to catch up. Still doubting. Still checking. Still not trusting anything.
He started yelling about the patent again - trying to explain. Trying to give them something.
“ Case number 23-000151 I was just there on January 12th ! They’re going to kill me over my patent ! ”
Perhaps trying to make sense not only to them, but to himself - how he had gone from chatting with these same police officers about his 3D laser scanner, and why he was so obsessed with the tiny, boring tree in front of their dispatch location -
to now shouting back and forth with them through a shattered glass patio door... as they all remained hidden, out of sight, in fear for their lives - just as much as Guertin was in fear for his.
The Most Perfect Full Beard - EVER
There was a brief pause.
And then -
“ Yeah ! I actually remember you coming in, I think ”
the officer called back.
“ You met with Officer Harris - he’s got the most perfect full beard you’ve ever seen. ”
Guertin blinked.
That was exactly how he had remembered Officer Harris too.
A strange, disorienting sense of reality snapped back into place.
For the first time in days -
No weeks -
Maybe for the first time in months -
He felt safe.
HELP WAS HERE.
He was speaking to a Minnetonka Police Officer.
For sure.
For the first time in hours, maybe days, Guertin wasn’t spiraling through an endless maze of second-guesses and paranoia. This was real. He knew it. He could feel it.
And now -
He was supposed to walk out.
He was supposed to leave.
That was what he had originally planned for this part.
But instead -
" Okay ! "
- he yelled down, suddenly overcome by an entirely different kind of urgency.
" I'm gonna come out - but I have to eat something first ! "
The officer below paused.
Then, in the same steady, good-natured tone -
" If you gotta eat - fine. Go ahead and eat ! "
Guertin stood there for a moment, standing at his shattered patio door, the cold winter air rushing into his apartment, rustling the torn mylar sheets like sails in a storm.
And then -
Movement.
His eyes locked onto two figures in the wooded area across the field behind his patio.
Snipers.
Both wearing the same bushrag-style camouflage.
Both ducking down into position.
His stomach dropped.
" BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE SNIPERS THAT JUST LAID DOWN BACK THERE IN THE WOODS ! ? "
He didn’t want to get shot.
He just wanted to eat some food.
The officer’s voice floated back up.
“ Awwww… don’t worry about those guys. They’re fine ! ”
Guertin paused for a second – glancing back out towards the snipers and then back towards his kitchen -
He tore open the package, stacked three slices of salami and a couple slices of cheese on top of each Triscuit, and shoved it into his mouth.
Chew. Swallow. Repeat.
Another cracker. Another stack.
A banana went next.
Still chewing, and holding the other half of the banana in his hand, he wandered back toward the patio door, stepping over broken glass, scanning the tree line for the snipers he had just seen.
He couldn’t see them.
But they saw him.
That was fine.
Because his new friend had said so.
And he was a Minnetonka officer - for sure.
Guertin remembered that guys beard – the officer he had met with nine days earlier when he filed his fraud report.
So he kept eating.
And eating.
And eating.
No one bothered him.
For the first time in weeks, there was silence.
A real, peaceful, empty silence.
Maybe it was cold inside now. Maybe it wasn’t.
He didn’t notice.
The fresh air and natural light pouring through the shattered glass were more important than the temperature apparently.
Fifteen minutes passed.
Then -
" Matt ! "
The voice called up from below.
" You okay up there ? "
He swallowed, and then walked back toward his shattered patio door.
He set down the last cracker as he took a deep breath.
He knew what came next.
He yelled down -
" Okay ! I’m done eating now ! I’m ready to come out ! "
The officer’s voice came back, steady as ever.
" Ok. Go out your front door and into the hallway. They’ll be guys out there waiting for you. I’ll let them know you are coming out. "
Guertin yelled back -
“ Okay ! Give me a second – I gotta move the stuff so it opens up ! ”
It was time.
Crumpled Mylar Funhouse Set – The Exit Scene
Guertin twisted the scissor jack, releasing the pressure against the door.
With a heavy breath, he pushed the long, makeshift barricade aside.
This was it.
He reached for the handle.
Twisted. Pulled.
And the door opened.
There were people there. Waiting for him.
He didn’t look out to see them though.
He didn’t dare.
Instead, he simply extended both hands out through the doorway - palms open, fingers spread.
Surrender. Cooperation. Compliance.
And then -
" Face away from us ! "
He obeyed.
" Kneel down ! "
He sank onto his knees, placing his hands behind his back exactly as instructed.
And then -
Snap.
A pair of handcuffs locked around his wrists - way too tight.
Way too tight.
Then - hands on him.
Pulling him backward. Searching him.
Guertin didn’t resist.
Didn’t fight.
Didn’t even mind.
Because it was over.
But the cuffs were still cutting into his skin, biting hard against the bones of his wrists.
" Hey - these are too tight, " he said, glancing over his shoulder.
" Can you loosen them a little ? "
No response.
He asked again.
And then -
His friend came up the steps.
The same voice that had called up to him.
The Minnetonka Police Officer officer who told him he could eat.
" He cooperated "
the officer said to the SWAT guys.
" You can loosen them up a little bit."
And they did.
Guertin exhaled.
And then -
They led him down the stairwell.
Through the entrance.
Out of the building.
Into the cold.
And then -
Into the back of a squad car.
This was the final unknown.
The last concerning moment.
Because even now, sitting in the back seat, a quiet paranoia still gnawed at the edges of his mind.
Had he just been passed off to officers who weren’t friendly?
Who weren’t normal cops?
Who weren’t here to help him?
Maybe they were with them.
Maybe this wasn’t over yet.
But then -
The car turned left onto Minnetonka Blvd.
Okay. So far, so good.
It was heading in the right direction.
Toward the Minnetonka Police Station.
He peered through the divider glass out the front – out the back windows.
The streetlights.
The traffic.
The buildings passing by.
No detours.
No wrong turns.
Then they passed under 494.
And there it was.
The station.
The building.
The end.
He made it.
The weight of it all began to settle.
The tightness in his chest, the tension in his shoulders - they finally started to ease.
For the first time in weeks, he felt safe.
Relieved.
Like the world had finally stopped spinning.
He leaned his head back against the seat.
Stared up at the ceiling.
Breathed.
This was exactly what he had envisioned playing out in his mind.
His plan had worked.
It was over.
Almost.
For now.
The Final Release
When Guertin first arrived at the Minnetonka Police Station, they sat him down in a small, white-brick room.
The kind of room you’d expect in a doctor’s office - sterile, impersonal.
A single chair.
A single table.
A single camera mounted in the ceiling, red light blinking, recording his every move.
For the first time in hours - days - weeks, there was nothing left to do.
No decisions to make.
No threats to assess.
No logic loops to run.
He sat there, silent.
Staring at the wall.
Processing.
What had just happened.
What was still happening.
What had led to this exact moment.
And then -
Something clicked.
His fear.
The sheer, unfiltered, unprocessed terror he had been suppressing for weeks suddenly rushed through him like a flood.
I thought I was going to die.
Not in some abstract, hypothetical sense - he had really, truly, 100% believed it.
And now -
It was over.
He was safe.
And just like that, his entire body collapsed under the weight of it.
His breathing quickened.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster.
His chest tightened.
His hands shook.
His vision began going black.
His body betrayed him.
Hyperventilating. Shaking. Panic hitting him like a freight train.
" I - I thought - I was going - to die ! "
His words tumbled out in broken gasps, barely coherent.
An officer stepped in front of him - pressed a cup of water into his trembling hands.
" Breathe. "
Guertin could barely hear him.
His heart pounded against his ribs like a drum.
The officer's voice cut through the fog.
" Slow it down. You're okay. "
And then -
Somewhere in the chaos, somewhere in the spiraling haze -
He grabbed onto the officer’s words like a lifeline.
Slow it down.
He focused.
Forced his breath out slowly.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
The room stopped spinning.
The world settled.
And finally -
He was back.
Guertin sat there for another long moment, staring at the cup in his hands.
He could still feel the adrenaline in his bloodstream, but the storm had passed.
The only thing he could think about now was sleep.
His body was demanding rest.
He couldn't wait to get to jail.
He just wanted to lie down – to close his eyes.
To finally let go.
He had made it.
He had successfully gotten out of his apartment.
Sequel Teaser
He had forced the ride to stop.
But little did he know -
He was about to step onto another one.
A much longer one.
A new ride. Through the Hennepin County District Court – with the very same people whose fraud he had just forced into the public record coming along for the ride.
But that didn’t matter right now. It hadn’t even technically happened yet at this point.
Right now, for the first time in eleven weeks -
Everything was quiet.
His plan had worked.
This is a real story - one which is still ongoing currently. Guertin’s most potent weapon is the TRUTH. Exposure of the LIES. Please consider sharing this with as many people as possible.
Thank you for sharing in such detail. Yes this needs to shared as widely as possible. Very important story- we all need to lens this properly in order to understand what the current "reality" we find ourselves in actually is. The time is NOW.
Wow. I'm almost speechless.
Thank you for sharing in such detail. Yes this needs to shared as widely as possible. Very important story- we all need to lens this properly in order to understand what the current "reality" we find ourselves in actually is. The time is NOW.