Bill Newsome’s Usana connection
It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of a man named Bill Newsome. Bill is a man who once tried to do the right thing, but blinded by hate, is now engaging in blatant acts of defamation.
My sources tell me that Bill Newsome is currently posting on the Usana message board on Yahoo as “vivo_muerto”. He’s been asked by people if he is “Bill N.” and he has denied it, yet the evidence suggests otherwise.
Who is Bill? Bill is an angry man who is a former member of Community Bible Church in San Diego, led by Senior Pastor Barry Minkow. Bill was removed from the church because of his outrageous behavior, and now apparently has a vendetta against Barry Minkow. However, it’s important to note that the nine person elder board of the church dismissed Bill. Barry is not a part of that board and did not take part in the decision to remove Bill from the church. Yet Bill continues on with his vendetta, emailing complaints about Barry to the elder board, church members, the U.S. Attorney’s office, the IRS, the FBI, and various media outlets.
Does Bill have any credibility? No. He is an unemployed lawyer who tries to use his legal license to bully and intimidate more than Barry Minkow.
Is he really searching for the truth? Or does he just want to see Barry go down? I suspect the latter. Bill apparently has taken up for Usana and has attempted to discredit the investigative work of Barry, me, and the other professionals involved.
I don’t mind it when people raise questions about the investigation. I have no tolerance, however, for false accusations of criminal behavior. Bill (or the screen name that I believe to be Bill) has been alluding to it up until now, and this week he came right out stated categorically that I have engaged in criminal behavior.
His post on Yahoo (bold added to text by me):
vivo_muerto
19-Jun-07 09:51 pmI didn’t realize that the information in the the FDI report was “irrelevant” to the arguments on this board… you can just pick and choose the real “meat and potatoes” and determines what’s important.
Coenen, the CPA superwoman, snooped around, pretexted, lied, etc… but did she even find a financial reporting error? No, she didn’t. In fact, the only thing she “finds” is whatever her imagination can come up with from pretexted information and the kicker is, she always wrong about the information that she can’t see. She thinks herself an accounting/financial guru, smart enough to guess right…but the fact that she doesn’t guess right proves her CPA IQ isn’t at the level she thinks.
Sam Antar, working alongside Coenen, self-proclaimed accounting expert…who, by the way, IS NOT A CPA because he had it taken away FOR FRAUD! You see, SAM cannot just pay a small fee and travel to a company-paid conference for two weeks (CPE) and to become an active CPA again. In fact, he can’t even RE-TAKE the exam and get it back. However, he can collude with another ex-convict (Minkow) and together the dynamic duo can lie, cheat, steal their way BACK to the TOP….but this hiding under the cover of do-gooders. AND YOU PEOPLE JUST EAT IT UP….either that or just colluding with them.
Lies and deception are their weapon, they think its justified, fight “evil” with EVIL….but in the end it just makes them evil liars.
you can all “hang your hat” on the bio information errors, but that doesn’t make all YOUR lies truth. You can’t pick and choose, it doesn’t work that way when you purchased puts and manipulated the stock, and stole from INNOCENT investors.
Its clear that the Minkow report hurt USANA’s stock, and its also CLEAR that the report contains inaccuracies/lies… even Team Minkow knows this, so you attempt to divert the attention to something you can actually prove… like Waitley’s lack of a degree. No, I don’t think inaccuracies in the financials are “okay”, but there are degrees of inaccuracies… just ask the SEC.
That said, we can rest assured, not many people–if any at all–relied on Waitley’s degree, but the way the market reacted to Minkow’s report (along with the manipulation by shorting the stock), you CAN rest assured that Minkow’s report was relied upon by innocent investors and the report contained lies and/or criminally negligent inaccuracies. Rule 10b-5 was put in place to deter the type of manipulation created by Minkow, that’s what the rule is all about. I can’t imagine that the SEC is pleased with Team Minkow.
Vivo_muerto has absolutely no proof that I have ever pretexted or lied. He has absolutely no evidence to even suggest that I have done that. All he has are statements from Len Clements that “someone” engaged in “pretexting” with Usana’s bank. That’s not proof. It never happened. There was no pretexting by me or by anyone on my behalf.
Further, Bill regularly demonstrates his lack of understanding of accounting and financial statement issues. While Bill is busy looking for “financial reporting errors,” we fraud investigators are looking for fraud. Companies like Usana engage in fully disclosed frauds, and the accounting irregularities in such situations aren’t necessarily the typical accounting irregularities you are looking for.
The fraud here is the information Usana withheld from investors. It’s not so much in what they did say in the financial statements and related disclosures, but in what they did not say.
Some are also forgetting that fraud is lying about what a company earns or what it owes or other financial data. Usana lies about its earnings every time it dupes a distributor into signing up for the “business opportunity” without full disclosure of relevant information.
Usana also apparently lies about what it owes. The insider confirms that Usana did have the $2 million line of credit that I asked about and which Gil Fuller denied having in his response to me. Gil wrote to me:
As noted in Note G – Long Term Debt and Line of Credit in the 2005 Form 10-K, USANA currently only has one credit facility with our bank, which has been disclosed appropriately in our filings with the SEC. Also stated in Note G, USANA does not have any outstanding debt as of year-end. USANA does not have an obligation for $2 million with a maturity of May 2007 as you assert above.
USANA discloses both the available amount of the line of credit as of each reporting date and the maturity date per the current agreement. The line of credit is available for use as of each of the reporting dates, with the disclosed terms. The existence of a maturity date on the line of credit does not prohibit USANA from using the line of credit through the maturity date. Any changes to the line of credit agreement are disclosed in the period in which they occur.
You see, Bill, the statement that FDI’s report on Usana contains “inaccuracies/lies” is simply not true. Everything in that report was backed up with documentation and a good-faith interpretation of that documentation.
Barry Minkow may take a “turn the other cheek” approach to Bill Newsome, but I’ve contacted my lawyers. His unsubstantiated accusations of fraud are defamatory, and Bill has crossed the line with me.
I would like to suggest some caution in discussing Mr N. First, no evidence is presented that Mr N is the one being quoted. Second, wild and unsubstantiated claims by an anonymous poster can hardly damage a reputation, so false allegations of wrongdoing, while they can be hurtful, are not really defamatory. Third, when you research scams, you run into misguided and angry people all the time who are not really bad people. You don’t want to be the type of person who responds in anger to someone like that.
Love the blog.
John – Thank you for your comment. I haven’t posted the evidence about Bill Newsome, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Bill posting under a not-so-anonymous screen name is meant to damage a reputation, so his false statements certainly can be (and are) defamatory and libelous.
Yes, I have some fan club members who are upset that I am exposing scams, schemes, and frauds for what they truly are. That’s not new. But I do have to draw certain lines and hold people accountable when they cross them.
Thanks for the compliment on the blog…