Fuel to the Fire: Andrew Hedrick’s Counterfeit TK-7 Scheme Unveiled

Sometimes, people catch a bad break. Moshe Tal is one such guy. He met Andrew Hedrick.

If you met him today, you might think Andrew Hedrick is one of Oklahoma City’s prominent citizens.

A philanthropic churchgoer, prominently seated in a pew at the First Moore Baptist Church on Sundays, his Facebook posts show how charitable he is. And a family man. His social media reveals him with his family on faraway vacations.

He has a podcast.

A YouTube.

A website.

A Ravening Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

But Andy Hedrick was not always an obvious success. Around 2009, he borrowed from Chase and several other trusting banks. Instead of repaying them, he opted for bankruptcy. Under Oklahoma law, the homestead exemption allows homeowners to exempt unlimited equity in their primary residence and not pay their creditors if they file bankruptcy.

Hedrick kept his home and stiffed his creditors.

If someone examined his loan applications, it might reveal insights into what he told the banks about his financial condition when the mood was optimistic. The Bible instructs us to forgive our debtors, and Hedrick took it further. He forgave his creditors.

Around 2015, Hedrick met the inventor Moshe Tal.

It was a bad, sad day for Tal, but a good one for the ravening Hedrick.

Moshe Tal, an American and Israeli Hero

Many years his senior, Moshe Tal grew up in Israel and served in its military for four years. On the front lines, during the Six-Day war, Tal was an ambulance driver picking up the wounded and delivering supplies, first aid, and water.

In the 1970s, he acted in several films, including an Academy Award-nominated Israeli film, I Love You Rosa.

Shown in theaters throughout the United States, the film became an Israeli classic, shown on Jewish holidays on Israel TV.

Later, Tal moved to America, where he worked as a cab driver and gas station owner.

In the 1980s, he invented a fuel additive called TK-7 and relocated to Oklahoma City. There, he purchased a warehouse to manufacture and sell his product.

Added to gasoline, TK7 increases engine performance by boosting fuel octane performance and providing the type of upper cylinder lubrication and valve seal protection lost as the lead was removed from domestic gasoline.

Tal was soon selling the additive in 35 states, as well as Canada, Israel, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay, Panama, New Zealand, Nigeria, China, and S. Korea.

A year after buying the warehouse, Tal drew worldwide headlines when he accused Dr. Ishan Barbouti, an Iraqi, of conspiring with his employees and others to take over his manufacturing facility.

Tal alleged Barbouti wanted to use the additive and his license to manufacture to obtain chemicals for Libya, in violation of a 1986 U.S. trade ban.

Barbouti consulted, designed, and procured products for the Rabta complex in Libya (above), which CIA director William Webster described as “a chemical agent production plant and a metal fabrication facility” that was “clearly chemical warfare production.”

Tal might have made a fortune, but he cried foul and prevented Libya from having, under Ghadafi, the largest chemical warfare agent production plant in the Third World.  Tal exposed the plot, leading some to label him a hero who may have saved countless lives.

Tal was also on the front lines after the Oklahoma City bombing, being one of the first to arrive at the scene because he was headed to a nearby building. Instead of running, he ran toward the catastrophe.

For days afterward, he worked with the FBI and ATF. Tal organized local restaurants to provide food and needed supplies to rescue workers responding to the 1995 bombing.

In the wake of the May 3, 1999, F5 tornado that tore apart south Oklahoma City, Tal hopped onto a bulldozer to clear debris in his neighborhood.

Over the years, Tal did well manufacturing his product and he worked with various distributors to sell it to buyers.

Then he ran into Andrew Hedrick.

Tal Takes in a Viper

Tal wanted to give the bankrupt young man a break and hired him as a salesperson and later a distributor for TK7.

Hedrick understood the internet, and Tal did not. So Tal allowed Hedrick to access his website, tk7products.com and manage the website. Tal and Hedrick signed a five-year contract for the non-exclusive sale of TK7.

Tal allowed Hedrick to call himself VP of Operations for TK7 Products on the website.

Tal trusted Hedrick and gave him access to his website TK7Products.com. Hedrick, an IT expert, changed to login information to Tal’s website, including the password, a fact he did not bother telling Tal.

Hedrick Finds a Friend in Need

Hedrick needed money to expand his company, Awesome Enterprises LLC, which held the contract with Tal to sell TK7.  He tried to borrow money, but unforgiving banks were unwilling to lend him anything. Hedrick reached out to his old college friend, Doug Switzer, the son of the famed football coach Barry Switzer.

Hedrick told Switzer he would partner with him.  Switzer invested $250,000 from a $500,000 line-of-credit obtained from Prosperity Bank, secured by Switzer’s $1.5+ million in rental properties used as collateral based on Hedrick’s word that he would make him 50-50 partners in Awesome Enterprises LLC – that would handle sales of TK7.

Hedrick never legally put half the company in Switzer’s name, a fact he did not bother to tell his longtime friend Switzer.

On his own, Hedrick was unable to sell TK7, but Switzer was good. He soon got lucrative contracts, starting with a fracking company in Seiling, Oklahoma. For five years, everyone made money.

Made Himself Co-Founder

Hedrick and Tal’s agreement through Awesome Enterprises expired in 2020.

Tal sent Hedrick a new Non-Disclosure and No-Use Agreement [NDA], which Tal required before granting them a new five-year contract, so Hedrick and Switzer could continue to sell TK7 for another five years.

When Hedrick returned the new NDA to Tal, he has changed the “Receiving Party’s” name from Awesome Enterprises LLC to: ATK7 Products LLC, infringing on Tal’s exclusively owned TK7 trade name which Tal created in 1982, as well as violating the confidentiality provisions of the August 2015 distribution contract, which clearly stated “A Distributor shall not include TK7 trade name as part of its legal entity’s name”.   

Tal also did not notice at first that Hedrick changed his title on the website from VP to co-founder of TK7 products.  Tal invented TK7 in 1982 when Hedrick was 10, which made it seem unlikely that the devout Hedrick could have co-founded TK7 alongside him.

Tal told Hedrick to change his title from co-founder back to VP and demanded Hedrick to dissolve the unlawfully formed TK7 Products LLC.  But Hedrick refused. He thought he had the upper hand.

Tal also discovered in October 2020, while negotiating a new contract, that a year earlier, in 2019, without bothering to tell Tal, Hedrick formed TK7 Products, LLC  a company using Tal’s trade name.

They were making money, and it was hard to stop abruptly. However, Tal refused to sign an agreement with Hedrick using a company that used his own trade name and product brand name.

Tal cut off Hedrick completely.

Needed Money to Live It Up

Hedrick then took over $250,000 from the line of credit his pal Switzer had provided to Awesome Enterprises LLC, the company in which Switzer believed he was a partner. But Switzer discovered Hedrick had failed to make him a legal partner in Awesome.

Switzer was angry. Hedrick pacified him by making Switzer a partner in the TK7 Products, LLC, which had no contract with Tal. But Hedrick told a little white one. He told Switzer he had obtained Tal’s permission to form the company in TK7 name.

Switzer contacted Tal and soon learned that Tal had never given Hedrick permission to use the TK7 name. He also found that Hedrick illegally took another $90,000 on top of the $250,000, and now he was not going to pay it back.

How could he pay it back?  After all, Tal would not sell him the TK7 and somebody had to take the financial hit. And Hedrick was well practiced in making sure everybody but him took the hit.

Hedrick refused to change the name of the company or dissolve it. He was going to use Tal’s brand name. But Hedrick caught a bad break. He was unable to steal Tal’s formula. He was going broke.

Hedrick Tries Counterfeiting

Hedrick, scrambling, made a deal with another fuel additive company and printed labels mimicking the labels Tal had used for decades. He even advertised phony studies.

Hedrick labeled his product TK7. But business did not go well, since Hedrick’s counterfeit TK7 did not work anywhere near as well as the real TK7.

Then COVID arrived. Hedrick applied for a PPP loan from the government for TK7 Products, LLC, which he falsely claimed the unlawfully formed TK7 Products LLC was a fuel additive manufacturing business. Despite Hedrick never manufacturing fuel additives, his wire fraud against the US Government went undetected. Hedrick got the loan, and because he is a Christian, he applied for forgiveness, which the US government granted on behalf of the taxpayers.

But that money only lasted so long.

Tal Gets Sick

Happily for Hedrick, Tal suffered from a series of mini-strokes which ultimately led to an open-heart triple bypass surgery and Hedrick took this opportunity to sue Tal for breach of contract because Tal refused to sell him TK7.

The only hitch was that there was no contract between Tal and Hedrick’s unlawfully formed TK7 Products LLC.   But Hedrick perjured himself in court and said there was. Why not? What did he have to lose?

Tal was sick, and with a little luck, the old man might die. Hedrick could then claim he was the sole founder of TK7. Hedrick sued Tal for breach of a contract that never existed with a company that should not have existed.

But he was clever. He selected a judge who had an old feud with Tal dating back to before she was a judge.

FR Will Look at Curious Court Corruption

In our next piece, we will explore the legal proceedings and the judge who seems inclined to help Hedrick more than one might think she should.

When you hear the story of how Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons, Judge Natalie Mai, the prayerful Hedrick and his attorney, Lief Swedlow worked together, you may wonder why the FBI is not investigating a crooked conspiracy.  On the other hand, perhaps they are or soon will be.

To be continued…

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

Frank Parlato

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.

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