Len Clements
on Barry Minkow and the FDIs attack on
Usana, Herbalife, Pre-paid Legal

June 24th, 2008
A lot has been going on in the network marketing (NWM) legal arena since my last Alert (see note below), not the least of which is Team Minkow's ever widening gallery of NWM targets to shoot at. Of course, they're still all publicly traded companies, but they're not just "illegal pyramids" now, they're products are supposedly dangerous, too. Curious how, out of over 2,000 U.S. companies in this industry, Minkow can only uncover these issues within companies whose stock he can short (put options, actually, but either way he still makes money by their stock going down).

If you are not familiar with this situation, please go to the Articles section of my web site and check out my first Rebuttal Report.

I'm working on a response to Minkow's latest stock dropping scare tactic propaganda (involving what are, in my opinion, a gross manipulation of statistics, as well as the legal system, and other physiological ploys designed to scare the Hell out of distributors - and investors), but first some old business: A few months ago Minkow attacked both Usana and Herbalife for allegedly "Cheating in China". That is, illegally operating "underground" NWM operations in mainland China where network marketing has been banned since 1998 (China was overrun with pyramid schemes in the 90's and essentially threw the baby out with the bath water). I began a Rebuttal Report to this attack but abandoned it when, well, no one cared. The SEC considered Minkow's allegations (substantial revenue from 30,000 undisclosed illegal Chinese distributors), and didn't care. Wall Street didn't seem to care. Even the Chinese government didn't care. So I stopped caring.

I care again.

Yes, Minkow's "Cheating in China" issue is old, stale news. But there's something far more important to be learned - to be exposed - from what I learned in my investigation of this matter. Something, I believe, far more revealing, and more insidious here than simply a possible stock manipulator getting desperate and clumsy in his efforts to make a company look bad. I strongly believe Barry Minkow knew his China allegations were false, or at least extremely tenuous, but published them anyway. I have little doubt that he knows certain aspects of this attack are false now, but leaves them published anyway.

I finished my "Cheating in China" rebuttal not so much to defend these companies against Minkow's accusations (as, it seems, no defense was necessary), but more as an exposé of Minkow's motives and methods. And if you are not involved with any of these larger, public companies, I urge you to not even think for a second that this is simply an attack on a few competitors (which, unfortunately, too many distributors view as a positive event). These are only the first battles in what could easily and quickly expand into an all out NWM media war. These attacks are harming your company, right now.

Here's the link to the "Cheating in China" rebuttal report: http://www.marketwaveinc.com/articles/ChinaRebuttal-1.pdf

 

And now, a favor, please...

As most of you know, for the first and only time in 18 years my MarketWave web site was hacked and wrecked in April of 2007 - within a few days of posting my Rebuttal Report to Barry Minkow's initial attack on Usana (interesting coincidence, isn't it?). After several attempts to reconstruct it (it's only at 70% functionality now) I decided to rebuild a brand new, state-of-the-art site with tons of cool new features. I launched that project in October of last year and the site quickly progressed to about... 70% functionality. And now, after going through three web designers and overwhelming frustration, it has stalled at about 80% completed for almost five months now!

So, does anyone out there know of a good, fast, reliable, web developer who knows ASP and SQL who can focus on getting that last 20% done? This site is going to get huge traffic when it's done, so anyone interested in a partial banner-barter deal is a plus (no NWM company ads, though).

If you'd like to assist, or know of someone you would highly recommend, please email me at MWave1@cox.net. Thanks.