A Patent Purchase Scam Targeting Patent Attorneys

by Dennis Crouch

Randy Micheletti of Incubate IP in Illinois sent over information about a fraud now circulating among patent attorneys. On August 23 a man presenting himself as Steven Gunst, Managing Director of the Belgian poultry equipment maker Roxell BV, emailed asking for help drafting a patent purchase agreement for the sale of US9937534 to a buyer in Michigan. Roxell is real. Gunst is a real person and holds that title. The patent is real, and its face shows Roxell as assignee. The buyer named in the papers, Gateway MFG of Clare, Michigan, is a real farm equipment dealer, and so is the broker who sent the signed letter of intent, Robert Margeton of Ryco Advisors in Peachtree City, Georgia. But, all four are being impersonated.

The email domains are one place where it comes apart. “Gunst” wrote from roxellbv.com. Roxell uses roxell.com. “Margeton” wrote from rycoadvisor.com. Ryco uses rycoadvisors.com, plural. Micheletti did not catch those issues at first. What he did was look up Ryco and call the number on the firm’s own website, and the real Robert Margeton cut him off mid-sentence to ask whether he was an IP attorney who had heard from Steven Gunst. Margeton had already been contacted by several IP attorneys trying to verify the fake.

The deal on offer was a $1,650,000 patent sale in which the seller’s American counsel would hold a $285,500 deposit and then the $1,364,500 balance at closing. The basic setup here is that the money is transferred to the attorney’s account; then the deal will quickly close with the money being transferred out. A few days later, the bank will claw-back that deposit after discovering the fraud and the attorney will be left with a large hole.

The opening email was sent on a Sunday morning focusing on Micheletti’s availability. Micheletti answered the next morning, asking for the patent list and the buyer’s name so he could run a conflict check. He also copied a colleague to set up a call. The scammers came back with the patent number, the seller, the buyer and its street address, and a note that the parties had already agreed terms and executed a letter of intent (LOI).

By that point, Micheletti had noticed small typeface inconsistencies in the signature block, and so wanted to do a face-to-face call as a way to see if this was a potential scam. The scammers showed up. “Gunst” attended and handled questions through a heavy European accent, seemingly with knowledge of the whole situation. “Margeton” sent the executed LOI, copying the roxellbv.com address, but never sent contact information for the buyer’s counsel. In other words, the scam continued.

The difficulty with this setup is that the story is mostly based upon true information. Roxell manufactures in Belgium. Steven Gunst did become Managing Director on September 1, 2025. US9937534 is a Roxell patent covering “Poultry Feed Distribution System with Feeding Devices Having Rotatable Attachment Parts with Drop Tubes Hingedly Connected Thereto.” Margeton is a business broker principal at Ryco.

The problem here is compounded by the reality of our distance-based business. Most of us do some amount of business with people we have never met in person. And many are growingly confident in hiring new counsel without a specific recommendation from someone who has also worked with that individual.

I looked up the spoof domains being used. Roxellbv.com was registered on April 12, 2026; Rycoadvisor.com on July 30, 2026. Both are behind privacy proxies.

An old scam. In 2022, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center warned of an attorney trust account scam built around medical equipment: a supposed client found the lawyer through a professional networking site, asked for help with a lease, loan or purchase agreement, and asked the lawyer to serve as escrow agent, while a second person posing as a broker emailed an offer letter and mailed a cashier’s check. FBI, Attorney Trust Account Scam Promises High-Dollar Commissions on Medical Equipment Purchases, IC3 Pub. Serv. Announcement (June 30, 2022). See also, Counterfeit Check Scam Targets Law Firms Via Debt Collection Scheme, IC3 Pub. Serv. Announcement No. I-100824-PSA (Oct. 8, 2024). In August 2025 the Washington bar reported another similar setup. Wash. State Bar Ass’n, Scam Alert: Attorney Trust Account Scam.

Attorneys have a duty of confidentiality toward their clients as well as prospective clients. That means that an attorney who gets into a discussion with a potential scammer has to decide whether Rule 1.18 permits disclosure of the communications to authorities or the press. New York provided its answer in 2012 on similar facts, and came to the conclusion that an individual whose purpose in communicating with an attorney is to defraud that attorney rather than to obtain legal services “is not a client or prospective client entitled to confidentiality.” N.Y. State Bar Ass’n Comm. on Prof’l Ethics, Op. 923 (2012). In 2025, the ABA offered a similar account. ABA Comm. on Ethics & Prof’l Responsibility, Formal Op. 515 (2025).

You do have to be careful here. Perhaps most important, a lawyer may not simply declare someone a fraudster and start talking. Reasonable diligence comes first. Here Micheletti did the work rather than moving forward with a hunch.

NY Opinion 923 also makes clear that if the person was genuinely seeking legal services when he first made contact, the protections attach, and fraudulent intent arriving later does not necessarily strip them away.

Be careful out there folks!