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Rich Wyatt and Ted Nugent, on set (courtesy westword.com)

“The owner of the Gunsmoke gun shop who appeared on the reality show ‘American Guns’ has been arrested and indicted by a grand jury for dealing firearms without a license and tax-related charges,” denver.cbslocal.com reports, revealing the deep you-know-what in which Richard Wyatt finds himself. Specifically, a 13-count indictment (more thoroughly detailed at westword.com). Each of which carries a five-year prison term. Here’s one scam allegedly perpetrated by Mr. Wyatt [via denver.cbslocal.com]. . .

The indictment charges that Wyatt conspired with others to sell guns without a license. He is accused of changing the address of a store known as Triggers to the Gunsmoke address, but he never owned Triggers. When customers paid for guns at Wyatt’s shop they were sent to Triggers to fill out background check paperwork and pick up the guns,” according to the indictment.

Oh, and according to Fox News, he failed to report $1.1 million in income. Is there any gun-related TV show’s host who hasn’t been indicted for something? JK. A little.

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92 COMMENTS

    • Held himself out as a dealer for profit. I hate to take the governments side, but… it sure sounds like the current regulation. ” I’m not a gun dealer, but I play one on TV.”

        • That’s right. Like empty 22LR casings while traveling through DC, or civil asset forfeiture because you are taking home your casino winnings.

        • Dude…I lived literally 1/4 mile from his shop, and researched his business before I went pistol shopping. He took peoples’ guns for gunsmithing work and never returned them. He took deposits and never ordered the guns (how could he, he wasn’t an FFL.) The dude is nearly as slimy as Hillary, and belongs in prison. Fact.

    • If he sold them the gun and didn’t work FOR the person with the ffl, he was doing something he knew he shouldn’t of.

      • Ya, the distinction without a difference is glaring, and astounding.

        Do you know what it really says. It says that the regulating authority of the ATF does not protect you from handguns, long-guns, full auto, homemade suppressors, AOWs and Explosives, Tobacco, and very large fires ON AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL.

        FURTHER, IT DOES NOT EVEN PROTECT THE FIREARMS RETAIL INDUSTRY FROM SPURIOUS ABUSES OF NON-LICENSED RETAILERS DIRECTING PURCHASERS TO LICENSED RETAILERS.

        THIS EXPENSIVE HONOR SYSTEM THING IS REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY F’D.

    • I assume it’s because he was taking the payments. They probably had some kind of referral thing set up where he would keep a cut of the payment and send a check for the remainder to the other FFL, where the customer picked it up from, acting as sort of a proxy dealer.

  1. Yeah I don’t see how that’s a crime either Guys at FGuys at gun shows do the same thing because there is a 3 day weight in the state of Florida so they’ll give the guns to an FFL holder for the 3 days and then you come in and fill out your 4473 and do the paperwork and pay for the background check and basically that’s it

  2. I get it about wyatts but whats with the branding ted nugent in the photo.
    Trying hard to get justice for percieved nuge crimes?

  3. He was selling guns as a for profit business without an FFL. And that is what’s illegal. And leave the Nuge alone TTAG, we know you hate him but he had nothing to do with this business.

      • Doesn’t matter how I feel about the law. If you break it you have to be willing to do the time. Period.

        You can work to change the laws. But so long as they’re on the books……

        • Exactly. This. I sold a gun on Armslist last week, put in the ad that you must go to an ffl for transfer (so is the law with UBC’s in CO). A guy claiming to be a cop replied to the ad basically calling me a coward for following the law, and if the law was to do a turn in, that I would follow that as well. I understand nobody has been arrested for breaking it yet, but I’m not going to be the guniea pig, no matter how I feel about the law.

    • Actually, their is a great American tradition of changing the law by breaking it. It happened w/ the Volstead Act. Jim Crow Laws gave way cuz people openly broke them. It is happening w/ marijuana today as well as the SAFE Act.

      What is scary is if you take this mentality as an absolute. If some Jackhole calls anything a law and a cop agrees w/ him then you are obliged to follow it?! Must I succumb to Godwin’s Law?

      I call BS on you jwm because you have admitted, on this website, to carrying a weapon on your person contrary to a codified “law”.

  4. I don’t like the guy, but I doubt he would intentionally, flagrantly violate a law. He may skirt the border a bit, but not out right jump it. But really, if the government sends an army of imvestigators to dig into your past, they will find something especially if you have the complexities of owning a business.

    • This guy has a history of being a dickbag and violating the law. The following was posted in the comments the last time TTAG reported that he was arrested.

      “The soap opera drama surrounding Rich Wyatt goes back at least to 2005 when he was arrested for contempt of court related to nearly $100K he owed his ex-wife in a divorce settlement, apparently a Colorado Divorce Court Judge took offense to Wyatt’s refusal to pay his ex and/or attempts to conceal community property assets from the marriage.

      Wyatt hooked up with his reality TV wife Renee not long before the American Guns reality TV shtick aired in 2011. Kurt Grewcock and Paige Grewcock are not Rich Wyatt’s children, their use of the last name Wyatt was fictional for the American Guns story line. Renee divorced her children’s father Charles Grewcock of Connecticut in 2007 when Kurt was 17 and Paige was 13.

      Rich Wyatt has quite an infamous reputation for his hostile and obstinate dealings with a much larger than normal number of dissatisfied customers at the Gunsmoke gun store. Although Rich claims he is a “retired Chief of Police”, he actually was fired in 2005 as Police Chief (and Indian) at the one man police department of Alma Colorado, population 225, and was subsequently sued by the town for refusing to turn in his badge when terminated. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if Wyatt’s latest legal woes are more of the same shenanigans by hard headed a**hole who believes he is smarter than everyone else and continually tries to beat or scam the system to fend off ex-wives, bill collectors, civil judgments, the IRS, and now apparently the ATF as well.

      But who knows, maybe Rich is really one-hell-of-a-good-ole-boy who’s constantly in a sh*t storm or p*ss*ing contest simply because he has really bad luck.”

      • Reading that brief but accurate bio of the dysfunctional @$$hole loser and reality TV star Rich Wyatt gave me a Déjà vu moment, like I had written the words myself (I did). Too funny!

      • I stopped by Gunsmoke some years back, just before they had their TV show. Ol’ Dick was in the shop, and it didn’t take long before he pegged himself as a dick who treated walk-in customers like they were inconveniences and bums off the street. He didn’t greet me, or answer mine, besides with a grunt and a glare.

        One of his employees attempted to keep me from walking back out, and actually tried to apologize for his boss’s attitude without his boss hearing it. I felt bad for the guy, so I stayed and looked around for a bit. But their prices were on the far side of ridiculous, and the only milsurps that remotely interested me were the equivalent to Mitchell’s Mausers. I’m honestly surprised the place stayed in business for as long as it has.

        • Yep, this was my exact experience there. The guys that worked for him were decent but he was all about himself. Ever heard of the phrase schadenfreude? I hate to say it but this guy earned it.

    • Going just by the details provided here, it sounds like the complexities of his owning a business is simply that he didn’t own the business Triggers, the one with the FFL.

  5. But he used to be a cop!!! This isn’t possible. They’re all shining examples of uprightness and all that is good in the community!!!

      • No, you’re right. It’s impossible for retired cops to break the law. And couple that with the fact that police officers and retired police officers spend 5-8 hours of training at the range every week and are far better shots than the average citizen gun owners, every communist state of America that bans guns from citizen’s use allows retired LEOs to be able to pack and carry.

  6. I used to use them as an FFL and I can say from personal experience there were some shady business practices going on. It wasn’t run very well IMO.

  7. Deru kui wa utareru: “The stake that sticks up gets hammered down.”

    Meaning: If you’re in the gun business, you are a target for the ATF. So keep a low profile or the jackbooted ATF fascists will make an example of you.

    • Yeah. It’s hard to believe that he went in for a reality TV show when he’s breaking all sorts of laws. That’s insane. He’s doing on camera all sorts of stuff that he apparently can’t legally do? Sheeesh.

      • “Yeah. It’s hard to believe that he went in for a reality TV show when he’s breaking all sorts of laws.”

        Some crooks are absolutely convinced they will *never* get caught. That only the dumbsh!t are ever caught.

        Case in point – 30 years back I had a job as a coin-op tech. Upright video games, jukeboxes, bar-top trivia machines, dollar bill changers, etc.

        One of our company’s clients was the local county minimum security prison. They had a Pac-Man upright video game in the common area – TV room. Their favorite TV show by far was C.O.P.S.

        Hootin’, hollerin’, yuc-yuc-ing it up watching the take-downs go down. Cuff ’em and stuff ’em. Yelling at the TV as to what idiots they were for getting caught.

        They never seemed to realize (or maybe they did, in retrospect) that they were mocking themselves…

        • Beyond all that, let’s analyze the ‘reality show potential’ for a normal gun shop.

          1. Half a dozen old farts sitting around talking to the guys behind the counter. Buying nothing, selling nothing. Customer can’t get any attention without directly and rudely interrupting these fossilized a-holes and just walk out.

          2. Nice clean store in a strip mall. Maybe 2 folks behind the counter who will offer to help you, but their selection is 95% plastic ‘perfection’ and poodle poppers. At least they want to be in business. Fill out your forms and send you on your merry with a cheerful “thanks!”.

          3. Whack-a-doos who build weird and/or sketchy stuff for other people. Likely with several kids, and an ex-wife or two floating around. They’re kinda weird to begin with, and producers can turn the volume up to 11. Crazy brother is the “gunsmith” when he’s not on the professional gator wrasslin’ tour. The shop pet is a pig.

          Which one makes the cut?

        • Your description was hilarious and true. You need to add one more. The local normal guy who hasn’t inhaled to much Hoppe’s and does an honest days work. If you find a gunsmith like that, keep em.

        • Joseph, Very true. They’re just so uninteresting that no one would ever want to film them.

          Nor would they ever want to be the subject of ‘reality tv’. A nice, normal civilized guy who does his work, makes customers happy, then goes home? What could the angle possibly be? 😉

  8. To answer the question about about non criminal gun related tv show stars, Jesse James will be close one he gets back on tv!

  9. A celebrity caught up in a gun situation with the Feds. What a coup for the administration (never let a crisis go to waste)…………… and the beat goes on……………

  10. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t just go out and get his own license. Or did he have one that was suspended because of missing firearms and/or poor record keeping?

    • When I read up on this months ago, it seemed like Rich avoided having the FFL in his name (including the corporation of Gun Smoke) because he wanted to avoid having to pay up anything to an ex-wife. Can you blame him? lol. Renee on the show is a second wife (or 3rd? I dunno) and Paige is his step-daughter.

  11. It sounds to me like he broke the law.

    But those laws shouldn’t even exist. They were passed to “reduce crime.” Does anybody here feel safer now that they took Rich Wyatt off the streets? Was there anything he was doing that leads to actual crime against people?

    I’m not commenting on the tax issues, just the licensing laws broken.

  12. When I read up on this months ago, it seemed like Rich avoided having the FFL in his name (including the corporation of Gun Smoke) because he wanted to avoid having to pay up anything to an ex-wife. Can you guys blame him? lol

    • She isn’t his daughter, Paige and Kurt’s bat$#it crazy momma married Wyatt only a year or two before American Guns aired, the doting father role was made for reality TV.

  13. He had 22 years in law enforcement and was a former Police Chief; he didn’t know he had to file tax returns???????

    When he had to surrender his FFL in 2012 you would think he was smart enough to know they were on to him and they were watching.

    Arrogance or stupidity???

  14. Sorry, I haven’t read the rest of the comments, quite a few. TLDR, in other words.

    But I’ve been wondering why there was a few years there with some cool gun shows, then the
    total lack thereof. This explains that.

    Get in the national limelight, become the target of excessive scrutiny by the Feds.

    Trumped up charges? Who knows, but whose going to jump in for the next firearm fun show?

    No one in their right mind…

    • I wish “Top Shot” would return. The reality show portion of the program was inoffensive, and seeing guns and shooting depicted as fun and interesting was a treat… doubly so knowing it was filmed in CA.

    • or it could be that the only FFL’s willing to take that chance and be on TV are the ones that are already attention whores and involved in all kinds of questionable activities… I’m just saying, “Reality TV Star” attracts a certain kind of person…

    • I think there’s a simpler explanation. Most of those shows disappeared shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting. Networks just didn’t want to take the heat in the anti-gun media echo chamber after that event; it was easier to just drop the shows. It’s kind of like how a lot of movies were edited after 9/11 to remove shots of the WTC.

      Basically, the explanation is less “government conspiracy” and more “people are pussies nowadays”.

  15. So it ain’t Paige Wyatt? She’s a Grewcock? I lol’ed! It seems Mr. Wyatt is a wannabe reality boy. Ya’ got your wish!

  16. Wyatt might have held a license from Colorado or other states to work as a police officer or reserve officer, but he certainly never worked 22 years for any Agency, and his brief stint as “Chief of Police” was at a wide spot in the road known as Alma Colorado (population 270) where he was also the patrolman, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, detective, he did it all, because during his tenure Alma was a little 1 man podunk police department and his termination from that position makes him a “Fired Chief” instead of a “Retired Chief”, a term usually associated with a pension and benefits after a LEO becomes eligible for a legitimate and honorable retirement. Wyatt’s line of bull$#!T about his LE career was just one of many half truths and lies on his resume, he unsuccessfully ran for Sheriff a time or two, and he claims to have been an instructor at Gunsite Ranch which I find really hard to believe. Looks like Wyatt’s treachery and lies finally came back to bite him in the @$$.

  17. How can this be? Wasn’t Rich Wyatt by Rich Wyatt’s own account, personally anointed by Jeff Cooper to be the next…Jeff Cooper? Say it isn’t so Rich. Say it isn’t so.

  18. Even R. Lee Ermey got in trouble with Johnny Law, but only as a teenager engaging in “criminal mischief”. After his second arrest, a judge gave him a choice between joining the military or being sent to jail. The Gunny chose the former, and the rest is history.

  19. While trying to look at this objectively, with LIMITED information, I can’t stop myself from thinking anti gun government tarnishing the gun industry yet again. I find it difficult to believe someone as knowledgable as Wyatt is about gun laws, that he would engage in activities deemed illegal or even questionable without consulting legal minds knowledgable about firearms law. I may be wrong, but something smells wrong about this.

  20. Have show on Discovery channel has been good for all most any one has run firearms businesses did show on there at same time. Not surprise it seem happen to a lot people done show on discovery channel. I agree most people they had target on there back from government sent doing there show on Discovery channel.

  21. Meh. GovtTerrorists have as much credibility as a pedophile, which they often Savile-Sandusky are.

    Innocent, until proven otherwise.

    If anyone deludes he’s guilty 1st and has to prove himself innocent before a bunch of degenerate servants who know not their place in the world? Ship yourself off to North Korea, or any country in Europe, where you too are presumed guilty by GovtTerrorists until proven otherwise.

    More GovtTerrorist FLaggotry.

  22. I have difficulty following his/her postings, but maybe English is not their first language. Willing to give him/her the benefit of the doubt in case trying to communicate in a new language is tough for anyone.

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