• Herbalife Does Not Track Retail Sales

    This little gem is courtesy of Shortzilla, a Seeking Alpha contributor. In a 1986 Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction against Herbalife in California, the company agreed to the following: B.  defendants shall be in compliance with this Section 5, as […]

  • Bill Ackman on His Herbalife Short

    Herbalife (NYSE: HLF) has been hit by a short seller again. Earlier this year it was David Einhorn simply asking questions about the business. This time it is Bill Ackman calling Herbalife a pyramid scheme and laying out his case. […]

  • Multi-Level Marketing or Pyramid Scheme?

    Recently Bruce Craig, a retired lawyer from the Wisconsin Department of Justice in the area of consumer protection, published an interesting article on multilevel marketing: An Investor’s Guide To Identifying Pyramid Schemes. The controversy surrounding Herbalife (NYSE: HLF), and initiated […]

  • Multi-Level Marketing Companies and Pyramid Schemes

    For decades, muti-level marketing companies like Amway, Mary Kay, Herbalife, Avon, and Usana have fought against being labeled as pyramid schemes. They say that pyramid schemes are illegal, and that their MLM business format is perfectly legal. My definition of […]

  • Herbalife: Important or Not Important?

    Questions posed to Herbalife earlier this year by David Einhorn sent the stock price down quickly. Einhorn simply wanted to know about customers… actual consumers of the Herbalife products. One has to assume Einhorn has done lots of research on […]

  • Similarities Between Herbalife and Pyramid Scheme BurnLounge

    In March, the Federal Trade Commission entered an order against multi-level marketing company BurnLounge, prohibiting the company and its founders from making certain misrepresentation and requiring them to disclose certain things in the future. Over the last few months, the […]

  • Fortune on Herbalife and David Einhorn

    Two weeks ago the big news was Herbalife’s earnings call, and questions asked by David Einhorn. Stephen Gandel, senior editor at Fortune Magazine wrote a great article on the Herbalife questions and their significance. I was quoted relative to the […]

  • A New Look at Herbalife

    Yesterday the stock of Herbalife (NYSE:HLF) dropped 20 percent when David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital began asking questions during the company’s earnings call. Herbalife is a multi-level marketing company which sells vitamins. The company describes itself: We pursue our mission […]

  • Wondering Why Frauds at Public Companies Aren’t Being Pursued by the Feds?

    Consumers are often left wondering why the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t heavily pursue allegations of fraud against public companies like Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK), Usana Health Sciences (NASDAQ:USNA), Herbalife (NYSE:HLF), and the like. I’ve always said the answer is simple: There […]

  • Failure Rates in YTB and Other MLMs

    Noted MLM expert Robert FitzPatrick did a recent blog post on the YourTravelBiz.com lawsuit filed by the California Attorney General. He has a nice analysis of how and why YTB is nothing more than a pyramid. These multi-level marketing companies […]