Below is a document written by Scott Yohman, the current owner of Safari Gard, recounting the history of the brand and how he came to own it ("own" is a bit of a loaded term, as you'll read...). It was originally posted to his personal FB account back in the summer of 2020. I've never seen this posted anywhere else so I figured it was worth sharing.

I had always wondered what had happened to SG and im sure im not the only one. While there is no way to prove every detail here, it does roughly line up with many of the tales i've heard over the years.

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I have researched this company for over a year and talked to numerous people about it, most of which don’t want to be involved or named. Take it for what you will. Honestly, about 70% of these people said something very close to or exactly this, “I don’t want to be a part of anything involving Casey Gray.” There are literal mountains of virtual evidence proving exactly how dishonest and criminal Casey Gray is, so there will not be any defamation here. You can find the information readily available online and form your own opinion from that. Here we delve into the history of Safari Gard (SG).

“Safari Guard” was registered on 12/30/98 in Temecula, CA by Greg Jevne. The name was amended to Safari Gard, Inc on 04/15/99. It was operated by Greg and Matt Jevne (brothers), Brandi Albright, and Mary Chadd until 2006 with the last corporate filing being 1/3/06. Products were primarily being distributed by Sterling Autosport in Murrietta, CA and West Coast Rovers (WCR) in Lake Forest, CA. In 2006-2007, with an international market expansion pending, Greg Jevne was injured in a rock crawling accident leaving him unable to complete fabrication work. The company, legally, went defunct. Enter Casey Gray. Casey purchased all the parts that were in stock. Greg gave Casey the welding jigs for SG with the agreement to find someone to use them to make more SG parts. As the SG parts were sold, a percentage of the income was to be used to purchase Safari Gard. Casey was to hire a lawyer to draft a purchase agreement for the business. No legal agreement was ever made/signed/notarized/filed and no money ever exchanged hands to purchase the business.

Between 2006-2008, Casey Gray hired Rodney Watkins, CPA to complete numerous corporate filings in multiple states under names to include: Grey Consulting Group, International Holding(s), Stronger Safer Smarter, S3 Inc, etc. Grey Consulting listed his one-year old son as his CFO and then girlfriend as the secretary. On 10/1/08, International Holdings listed David C Perfito of Rocco’s Oceanside Auto Service/American Reman in San Diego, CA as his business partner. They rented an industrial unit at 42110 Remington Ave, Temecula, CA 92590. In December 2008, various posts were made on different Land Rover forums insinuating a return of Safari Gard to market. On 1/12/09, Casey posted a “National Press Release” announcing the official return to market on all the major forums. David remained a silent partner, while Casey hired a few people to build/sell/ship the parts (one named Wyatt, last name unknown), while outsourcing the majority of fabrication because Casey didn’t fabricate the parts himself. Casey befriends Kep Wadiak who then touts SG products online and goes on numerous wheeling trips with him in early 2009. It is common belief, though unproven from witness accounts, that Kep helped make SG parts for Casey.

An unverifiable account of history by Casey puts him as out of the country and severely injured in late 2009. Scott Lewis of Sterling Autosport is now doing nearly all fabrication and shipping for SG. Eddie of WCR placed an order of ~ $25k with Casey directly to only receive about $2k in product, East Coast Rovers suffers around the same damage, and several retail customers placed orders never receive them. Kep Wadiak starts Tactical Rovers in 2010 and Casey reappears publicly at his shop threatening to sue him for copying SG products. The friendship ends and Casey resumes business with SG though sporadic through about 2011 according to posts on social media. East Coast Rovers (ECR) had the SG Defender front bumper shipped to Safety Devices in UK and copied with minor modifications and Casey threatened to sue them as well. Neither company was sued. Forums posts and witness accounts put the last verifiable sale of product in late 2009 to early 2010. Sporadic posts were made on Facebook up until 2016 and Instagram as recent as 2018, though almost none of them advertising business.

Now, for over 10 years people have been seeking out the old SG products and there have been several copies and variations of them made. I’ve always wanted them and had spoken to a few people about making my own. Then I had a few people that wanted me to make them stuff as well. I tracked down and purchased every SG part I could find and shopped them around several fabricators for reproduction costs. I figured if I was going to go this route, I should try and make it official. I spent 2 weeks tracking down Casey Gray and finally got a hold of him through his Facebook page for his run for Congress. On February 11, 2020 I spoke on the phone with Casey. He said he had $100k in inventory in warehouses in TX and CA and would be opening up for business after his congressional run. He declined to sell me any of it that day. I offered to buy the company or lease the name rights from him, he declined. He said he had sat at a table with ARB and walked away from a multi-million dollar deal with them, so he wasn’t interested in selling or leasing. He then went on to cuss me out, threaten to sue me, and made some very bold claims about a few other companies. Oddly enough, as we ended the conversation, he said that we might be able to work together in the future on some stuff.

The next day I followed up with the companies he made those claims about suing out of business and selling his products. I then spoke directly with Greg Jevne, the man who started Safari Gard in the 90’s. We had a nice long chat and I think Greg might be one of the nicest people I have ever spoken to. I discovered that Casey Gray did not and has not ever legally owned anything at all regarding Safari Gard. After consulting an attorney, it was verified that no patent, copyright, or trademark had ever been filed for Safari Gard, any product of Safari Gard, or nothing at all filed by Casey Gray or Greg Jevne. After discovering that there was no legal claim to Safari Gard or it’s products, on February 13, 2020, I incorporated Safari Gard LLC in Florida and applied for a federal trademark with the USPTO. Since then, I have made small modifications and improvements to all SG products in the process of CAD design so I can patent and protect them. The trademark has been published in the official gazette and I have also hired out new artwork creation, not reusing any of the original Safari Gard stuff. The brand is something that I believe is worth reviving and I’m going far out of my way to make my products available to the community. I have the resources and the ability to make this successful, so I am.

 

Very interesting. Somewhere along the way I learned or figured out there were some strange goings on through the years.

I was very fortunate a year and a half ago to get a pair of original Safari Gard rock sliders that came off an '02 Kalahari at a boneyard here. I bought them and gave away the side steps that were on my truck since new to a guy here with a DII.

 

I’ve met Scott several times at rallys and he is a legit individual. I can see that he cares about the brand and his products.

 

Sounds sort of like the story of Pelfreybilt, a company that made some really rad products for Toyotas then turned around and took a ton of money from customers and then ran with the money. Kept making stories up until they couldn't any more. Iirc, it ended in BK with a lot of people, thankfully not me, losing a lot of money

 

Anyone get any of the new SG stuff? I've seen some reports of them not being super high quality like the old stuff anymore but I really like the look of them.

 

I have a new SG front bumper and skid for a D1 / D2. It's actually for sale right now on DiscoWeb since i've instead opted to go with an older RTE bumper that has a design I prefer more.

There is really not a huge quality difference between the old and new SG bumper, but i'd say the old ones tend to have a better overall finish. I've seen the post on the Defender bumper where things get heated with Scotty. I think that was totally blown out of proportion.

 

Did Scott have Greg's "blessing" to patent Greg's designs/alterations?

That has to hurt, to have something you created get mired in a bunch of scam and poor reputation (Casey).

 

This is my biggest hang up with the whole article. It looks like Scotty is an opportunist (nothing inherently wrong with that) who identified that there was nothing protecting the SG brand and designs so he took it upon himself to claim it as his own. Without patents, those bumpers are just items in the public domain that anybody can produce without any real legal ramifications. Greg doesn't seem to care at all about SG anymore and Casey can't enforce his claims because he didn't do his homework back in the 00's. Scotty's patents only protect his modified SG designs.

Personally, I feel it's wrong to continue to sell these products as Safari Gard since A) Scotty didn't acquire the original trademark (as we know now, it never existed) and B) he also didn't acquire the original designs or jigs (again, because nothing was patented or even available for sale). If you want to go make SG inspired bar work, more power to you! Just don't call it Safari Gard.

Im happy to see that Scotty is trying to handle this with care and is doing what he thinks is right given the history of this brand. I can't blame him for being passionate about SG and trying to revive it with his own flare. But anyone who has been around for a while knows this is not really Safari Gard and never will be. Hell, he's already stopped producing the D1 and D2 bar work so we're no better off with the new SG than we are with tracking down the old pieces!

 

The new SG is terrible by comparison to the OG stuff. Also Scotty is very combative on the facebook forums which is a major turn off for me as a consumer when he can't back up any of the claims of thinner metal being used (I've measured OG vs new bumper materials) and crap powdercoating with no intention or willingness to correct. RTE or tactical rovers are a much better group to spend money on "new" stuff. OG $G is still some of the best stuff out there for any rover with original powercoating still going strong.