CEO of Taser manufacturer accused of exaggerating origin story about 1991 shooting

Rick Smith claims he’s been upfront about relationship with slain men

The CEO of the company that manufactures widely used police body cameras and Taser stun guns has allegedly exaggerated a tragic origin story he’s told about the company.

On multiple occasions, including in a 2020 SEC filing, Axon CEO Rick Smith has claimed he co-founded the company because of what he described as two friends and former football teammates being shot and killed in 1990.

Family members, speaking to Reuters, said large parts of this story don’t hold up.

Todd Bogers and Cory Holmes, whose names, stories and images have been used in Axon public materials and presentations, died in 1991, not 1990.

They also were not friends with Mr Smith, those close to Bogers and Holmes told the news organisation.

“He’s making money off of being a great liar,” Bogers’s sister Shelby Bogers told Reuters.

Ms Bogers also said she hadn’t heard Mr Smith was using her brother’s story until more than 15 years later, and that the CEO hadn’t attended the men’s joint funeral or offered to assist during the four-year investigation to find the killer responsible for the 1991 road rage incident in which Bogers and Holmes were killed.

Mr Smith does not appear in the yearbook for the Scottsdale, Arizona, high school where the deceased boys attended until 1987, a year after Bogers and Holmes graduated.

“We put rigor behind all of our SEC reporting practices to ensure all necessary disclosures are made,” the company said in a statement in response to the investigation. “Reuters’ questions are misguided and inaccurate and given the petty nature of their inquiries, they do not merit a response.”

A company spokesperson added that Mr Smith got to know Bogers and Holmes through football team-related social events, and pointed out a passage in a 2019 book by Mr Smith, noting that the boys were “a few years ahead of me.”

At least 80 per cent of large police departments across the US use body cameras, and many of those are manufactured by Axon.

The cameras, often purchased with taxpayer funds, have been marketed as a key tool for police reform, though investigations suggest cameras on their own do little to increase accountability.

The company, founded in 1993, has a market capitalisation of over $19bn.

Mr Smith has at times been one of the most highly compensated CEOs in the world, Reuters notes, with benefits such as a $246m stock option award in 2018.