Grunt pretty much nailed it. AV123 also had a laundry list of vaporware and individuals waiting for refunds on defective merchandise or non-delivered product for years (up to 1-3 years). There were certain ethical and business practice issues which you also have to look at to get the bigger picture along with the alleged charity fraud.
Like Grunt eloquently pointed out, the customers acted as a buyers club. Then in time, this policy changed and the customers were still a "buyers club" but when you pre-ordered goods now to get the "sales price", that money was then turned into "store credit" which was then non refundable. This conveniently set up a lot of hype for in development/napkin sketch products which you can then pre-pay for a special once in a lifetime discount. People felt very comfortable doing this because of the re-enforcement from the AV123 following (their forum) and the company front man who had a lot of charisma and charm.
The infamous RSL-II vaporware was the latest and greatest vaporware from AV123. They even set up a fake company Act 3? or something to make these when they were initially looking for these pre-pays. Unfortunately, many individuals were taken in at $6000 a pair. This is just one example, there are plenty of other cases were people never received a product or their refund. The misdeeds go well beyond the alleged charity fraud, it is one big cluster ^%%$#.
