Maybe we should all go on a quest to get as many membership and rank certificates as we can,lol!!

i know of this certain "grandmaster" who may have had his granny sign his cert

As I understand it to get a MA teacher closed down or sued for teaching fraudulent martial arts would require a strict legal definition of what a martial art is. There is such a massive range of genuine arts being taught that any definition would have to be fairly vague and so the fraudulent teacher should have no problems bypassing it.
BTW many year ago a guy came to our school, stayed for 6 weeks then left. A few months later we heard he had set up his own class and was teaching students moves he had seen on Bruce Lee movies! Obviously guys like this won't be able to keep this up for long - nobody can be that gullible for more than a few weeks surely but also trying to sue him would be equally difficult. What he was teaching would be called martial arts to most non-martial-artists who don't know any better.

new website (soon anyway)
http://itsjustnotpossible.com

here's a preview page:
http://itsjustnotpossible.com/QiGong.html


another one:
http://www.badmartialarts.com/

whoops!
http://www.scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2007/10/martial_idiocy.php

Is it fraud when you have your own students sign a certificate promoting you to 5th degree? Is it fraud to say you " invented " an art but that name has been around for centuries. Is it fraud when you say you teach Tai Chi and call yourself Sensei?

Hello Michael:

It would not be fraud to be called "Sensei" IF you were a Japanese national, and taught some subject in your native language, whether that was Tai Chi Chuan or Canoe regardless of the arts initial origin.

"Sifu" would be the correct cultural title attached to a chinese martial art (TCC) but there is the question of cultural relativity to consider

Jeff

All that's great but you should also ask if they've ever heard of Gene Lebell. If they haven't just leave.