The USANA Scam: The Stain of its Past

Every growing business has problems of their own to conquer; just like USANA Health Sciences which has also faced many challenges in its earlier years. One of which is the so-called USANA Scam that happened last March of 2007; USANA was accused by a man named Barry Minkow, he is an executive of the Fraud Discovery Institute, and he accused the company of operating an illegal pyramid scheme.

An informal investigation took place and that was made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and it was then concluded in January 2008. The SEC recommended that there will be no action that needs to be taken against the company.

Then USANA filed its own lawsuit against Minkow and his company claiming a defamation and stock manipulation of the USANA Scam when he accused the company. However, USANA later on dropped the defamation suit against its accuser in March 2008.

A U.S. District Judge threw out four of the five claims brought by USANA against Minkow stating that USANA’s claims violated the California’s anti-SLAPP law for suing Minkow for its fair criticism.

The company didn’t show any probable cause of winning on the claims. The judge also cited two examples wherein the company failed to refute Minkow’s claims that their products were over-priced and of no better quality than other lower-priced brands.

The remaining charge of stock manipulation that was accused by Minkow was then settled in July of 2008 when both parties reached an undisclosed settlement, which also included the removal of all USANA-related materials from the Fraud Discovery Institute website.

However, the scam was already forgotten by the masses as USANA improved and developed well on their products and showing their critics that they are a true business and never a scam.

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