[Cy Q. Faunce]

LOTAR is referenced on Scott Sonnon's Wikipedia page as an "Israeli counter-terrorism school".

Wikipedia (Links)

Scott_Sonnon

Sonnon has been the subject of discussion on MABS in the past:

Troopa - No BS MMA and Martial Arts

Troopa - No BS MMA and Martial Arts

Dr. Scot Sonnon???? - No BS MMA and Martial Arts

Dr. Scot Sonnon???? - No BS MMA and Martial Arts

The only references I can find to Lotar are on the page of a Krav Maga school in Redondo Beach, California (http://www.lotarselfdefense.com/pub/overview.htm), and in various articles which specify the Israeli school as "Lochama Be'Terror", while the variant of Krav Maga they train is known as Lotar.

Sonnon claims the following certificate from LOTAR:



I don't see any handwritten signatures on that, nor does it look like a legitimate document scan.

Can anyone translate this document for us?

Is there any reason to think this document is false?

[sambosteve]

So Scott is now a "counter terrorism expert" and LOTAR instructor? After teaching a tacfit seminar there? LOL
http://www.rmaxinternational.com/flowcoach/?p=634

From his wikipedia page:

Wikipedia (Links)

Scott_Sonnon

Scott Sonnon is a tactical fitness coach, counter-terrorism and USA national martial art team coach, yoga guru, and wellness speaker known for training the Israeli counter-terrorism school LOTAR...

That cert looks completely digital. No signatures. It does not look like a scan of a document to this lay person. The logo on the bottom looks photoshopped. Maybe War Wheel should take a look at it.

Some of Sonnon's credentials have been questioned in the past and not stood up well as we all know.

His Claims in terms of "Prasara Yoga" for example. According to the US Trademark registry, on April 5th, 2005, he filed to register the name Prasara.
On his website www.prasarayoga.com he claims:

Before I met my little Indian guru, I was sure that I could express my power. But the yoga I learned from her targeted each vulnerability in my body that professional sports science hadn't touch. In one "Hug" I realized that Amma "had me."

I surrendered all that I thought I understood about "body-flow" and began to working on the yogic routines called Prasara which would address each and every weakness throughout the human body. Just imagine, when this 51 year old woman could do things that a 32 year old world-class athlete couldn't even approximate. I tell you this: it deafens any of the ego's prideful protests.

"little Indian Guru"? How patronizing...LOL.

In this 2008 interview Sonnon claims to have trained yoga with his Guru (who is very well knowm but not for teaching yoga) for over a decade.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cach...clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Sonnon is not listed in her US registry:
http://amma.org/sites/index.html
http://www.amritapuri.org/ashram/centers/usa.php

I wrote to her a while back and recieved this reply:

Aum Amriteshwaryai Namah

Dear Friend,

Amma has many children (students or devotees) around the world. Often they chose to recognize Amma for the inspiration and teachings she gives, so mention of Amma's name can be found on many websites, in books, films, works of art, etc. This is a personal matter of people giving reference to Amma; it is not to be confused with the formal representation of Amma and her humanitarian work and spiritual teachings.

The person described in the website http://prasarayoga.com/ is not formally affiliated with the M.A. Math, nor does his website represent one of Amma's or the Math's activities. However, he may well be a devotee of Amma and may wish to publicly recognize the influence she has had in his life on his personal website.

If you would like information about Amma, please visit our official websites (see below). Feel free to ask if you have further questions.

In the Service of Love,
Prana
Information Centre, Amritapuri

M. A. Math, Amritapuri P.O., Kollam Dt., Kerala 690525 India
Tel. 0091 476 2897578 / 2896399 / 2896278
Fax 0091 476 2897678
E-mail: inform@amritapuri.org
main website: www.amritapuri.org
European website: www.amma-europe.org
U.S. website: www.amma.org

Sounds like a kind way of saying "we have no idea who this guy is".

[sambosteve]

This thread gave me cause to once again look at Sonnon's "honorable Master of Sport" rank again. A rank he claims was given to him by then ASF president Lenny Polyakov, who say he does not recall granting Sonnon that rank (he states he only gave him "Master of Sport" from the ASF).

I have looked at this cert many times (posted on his website):

Looking at it now, I notice some problems. Specifically with light patterns, apparent cut and paste shadows, some issues subtle distortions in the document's border, some overlapping text. Looks like the document could be enhanced..not an original scan? Could we have another Morton situation here?

I am trying to dig up an original, but have asked War Wheel to take a look at this image and assess.

The sad thing is that Sonnon was at once a credible guy.

[Gidi]

Originally Posted by Io Saturnalia

The only references I can find to Lotar are on the page of a Krav Maga school in Redondo Beach, California (http://www.lotarselfdefense.com/pub/overview.htm), and in various articles which specify the Israeli school as "Lochama Be'Terror", while the variant of Krav Maga they train is known as Lotar.

Sonnon claims the following certificate from LOTAR:



I don't see any handwritten signatures on that, nor does it look like a legitimate document scan.

Can anyone translate this document for us?

Is there any reason to think this document is false?

Disclaimer: I used to serve in the counter-terrorism school as a shooting instructor, it is technically the "counter-terrorism, shooting and sniper school", which is the name of the school in Hebrew - under the cat logo. (will try and find some proof if needed)

as for the certificate:
1st off, the fact that it doesn't say the full name in English doesn't necessarily mean a fake, the counter-terroism guys are sort of full of themselves, and might leave the sharp-shooting, snipers out.
However, on the technical side, notice that there is no date on this certificate, very odd, since almost everything in the army is dated.
also, the bottom logo, is the sniper's pin in the IDF, meaning its either a scan or a photoshop, certainly not the official logo which is drawn black and white. also it is exclusively a sniper pin, meaning if he worked with the counter-terrorism guys (CT from now on) he would have the cat you saw on the top and not the pin.

2nd, the lack of inked autograph, or any for that matter is also very odd, unless they e-mailed it to him and made it on the computer, which is odd.

3rd, I can't understand who he taught, is it the CT instructors? some other unit there? "all the fighter unit" sounds very odd but not clandestine odd.

4th, I don't know if foreign instructors are a common thing or if it ever happens, that doesn't mean it doesn't, i was discharged 5 years ago so things may have changed, and I was never a CT guy.

5th, the inscription looks like a poor translation of Hebrew directly to English, word for word, he might have done that with google translate or something, if it is real.

can't say whether fake or not, just a few things I noticed, hope this helped the investigation.

[MisterGreen]

Played with the image in photoshop. The image looks too 'clean' to be a scan. There are only artifacts surroundind the top logo, the bottom logo, the words, and near the borders.

IMO, it is a digital image, not a scan.

[Matt Phillips]

I have several comments regarding these documents. Let's begin with the ICTS cert:

This is a very low-information image consisting mostly of empty space (see below)


Above you see a capture of (most) all the noise in the document showing the profile of a computer generated document, with tell-tale signs of images from several sources brought together into one file. The "Cat" image is actually fairly detailed, and the crossed rifle insignia is actually a scan of a 3-dimensional object (I may need to make a video to show this). Now none of this implicates Sonnon as the composer of the document, as it may have been some IDF fellow (or gal) who made it for him, but it certainly is not a physical object.

Disclaimer: It has been pointed out in the past that images of real documents that have been "cleaned up" with bright/contrast adjustment show the same pattern of mostly empty space, but if that were the case, we would not observe high density/detail objects in the image such as the detail seen on the cat's body. The same process that obliterates the general noise would remove the lion's share of information from stuctures like this as well.

My personal opinion is that there is far more wrong with Sonnon's MoS diploma. Here is a noise enhancement of that document:



There is so much going on here I could write an entire article about just this one image. For starters:

There is clear evidence of multiple lighting sources, cut and pasted together;
There is clear evidence of a portion of the lower right border having been pasted onto the upper left;
There is reasonable evidence that the text "Scott B. Sonnon" and "Honorable Master of Sport" share a common angle of incidence relative to the axis of the "boilerplate" text.

Note that this is an image of an actual object. Were it the original file I could show all of this with crystal clarity.

I will develop all of the above points in more detail when I am less burried at work, but visusal inspection should suffice for now.

[Samuel Browning]

So is LOTAR a Israeli army or government affiliated entity, or a private company like say, Blackwater?

[Larus marinus]

Originally Posted by War Wheel

There is reasonable evidence that the text "Scott B. Sonnon" and "Honorable Master of Sport" share a common angle of incidence relative to the axis of the "boilerplate" text.

What means this?

[Matt Phillips]

Originally Posted by Larus marinus

What means this?

It means that all of the text that would be filled in (Scott's name and rank) is tilted by (say) 1/2 a degree compared to the Russian and English text of the diploma form. In other words, its evidence that it was added by computer onto a blank (or blanked) scan of the form.


Also wanted to add that the rectangular cropping in the lower right, and upper left are clips of the corner at the lower LEFT. My mistake.

[Larus marinus]

It looks pretty obvious to my non-expert eye, even without image enhancement (or whatever it was you just did) that the middle section of the certificate has been cut+pasted in (perhaps literally, before the thing was scanned and printed) from elsewhere.

The 'join' is obvious in the blue Russian text at the top...