In a recent chat with the Life Is Peachy podcast, Dino Cazares explained he’s not behind Burton C. Bell’s financial problems.
“One of the biggest misconceptions is that people thought that I sued Burton, but that’s not true,” the guitarist revealed about the period Bell left the band. “It was Raymond and Christian who sued us individually. We had separate lawsuits. They sued us separately so they can get separate money.”
Cazares went on, “So if they would have won my lawsuit, I would have had to give them a million dollars. I won my lawsuit against them. I didn’t owe them anything. But, actually, Burton filed for bankruptcy, and when he filed for bankruptcy, he tried to get out of paying those guys. And, unfortunately, he lied in his bankruptcy. That’s a federal offense.”
“Raymond and Christian took him back to court, made him open up the bankruptcy. The bankruptcy was null and void. So Burton had to pay back those guys, and they took all of Burt’s assets,” Dino added. “Assets, meaning whatever you own, whether it’s a house, a car, a trademark, copyright, business, so on and so on. They took all that away from him for lying in court.”
Dino continued, “When you go through a bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court sells your assets to try to make money back, to pay back the people you owe money to. So, when I found out that Burton’s assets were up for sale, my lawyer contacted the court of Pennsylvania and said, ‘Hey, look, we’re interested in buying this Fear Factory trademark,’ Burton’s half. At this point, I owned half and Burton owned half.”
“Raymond and Christian did not own the name at all whatsoever. They were only owed money. That’s it,” the musician clarified. “But they didn’t own the trademark. Even though they tried to take the trademark from us and try to find every possible way to do that. ‘Cause that’s what lawyers do, right? They were not successful. So, the bankruptcy court owned Burton’s half of the trademark. They put it up for sale. It’s like eBay.”
Cazares further shared, “They auction it off. So I had to place a bid if I wanted that trademark. And that’s what I did. I put a bid up. Now, Burton couldn’t buy his own assets back because he already lied in court. It was a federal offense. So he couldn’t buy his assets back. So he didn’t even have the opportunity to do that legally. I figured, ‘Hey, I’m gonna try to buy this name.’ And I wanted to bring Burton and say, ‘Hey, look, I got the name. Let’s just continue.’”
“So I put a bid up for the trademark. They wanted a lot of money for it. And Raymond and Christian put a bid up for it as well. But eventually I ended up winning the bid, I ended up winning the auction, and I owned Burton’s half of the name, which meant I owned full 100 percent of the trademark of Fear Factory. So I reached out to Burton and I said, ‘Hey, just come back 50-50,’ which I found out technically, even though I bought Burton’s 50 percent of the trademark, I couldn’t give it to him,” he said.
Dino concluded, “I couldn’t legally buy it and then give it to him because if I did, then that means I was colluding and buying a name and just giving it to him. It goes against what the court’s orders were. So I couldn’t even do that, but I could pay Burton 50 percent of whatever we earned as Fear Factory. Now there was a problem with that. The problem was Raymond and Christian froze his assets.”
In the early 90s, Fear Factory was sued by producer Ross Robinson over their debut album. This lawsuit affected the band’s future. Bell had legal issues with former bandmates and filed for bankruptcy twice. In September 2020, Bell left Fear Factory for good. The singer continued his career with Ascension of the Watchers.