This week, it was announced that Usana Health Sciences (NASDAQ:USNA) and Fraud Discovery Institute had reached a settlement in their legal battle. Usana basically had most of its case thrown out by a federal judge, but still could have pursued allegations of illegal manipulation of the stock.
The most interesting thing about the whole case against Barry Minkow and FDI is that Usana repeatedly called the report issued by Barry “false and misleading.” Yet the company never addressed any of the substantive allegations in the report or proved that they were incorrect. And no one held their feet to the fire and demanded that they prove that what he said was false.
Yet a business decision was made by both sides of the case to settle, and according to the Associated Press:
USANA will withdraw its lawsuit against Minkow and his Fraud Discovery Institute in the U.S. District Court for the district of Utah. In turn, Minkow and the Fraud Discovery Institute will not trade in USANA’s stock, will remove information within their control regarding USANA from the Internet, and will not publish any further statements about USANA.
Usana has basically accomplished their main goal: To stop a man who has uncovered billions of dollars of fraud at other companies from talking about them. Why? Because he’s obviously so on-the-mark with what he says that they’re scared.
29 Jul 08 at 5:07 pm
Hopefully USANA will finally get what is coming to them. Berry did a lot of work to prove what they were doingis wrong but the many lemmings following behind the company do not realize that one day their will be no one to recrute and the company will faulter. Hopefully people like Terminatedramp will continue thier fight and show the public that what the company is doing is scamming innocent people into believing they too can acheive finacial freedome without having to hold a real job.
29 Jul 08 at 11:43 pm
why would Barry remove all the findings from his research? Is he being paid a nice sum to keep quiet?
30 Jul 08 at 7:14 am
I don’t know. I’m not a party to this agreement and the settlement is confidential.
11 Aug 08 at 7:27 pm
Ken wrote: “why would Barry remove all the findings from his research? Is he being paid a nice sum to keep quiet?”
He is being paid, but all his findings are public. Many of them right here.
23 Aug 08 at 10:29 am
But not anymore.