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05-11-2014, 01:23 AM
#126
Re: Herbalife News Stories
The NY Post is reporting:
Bugs found in Herbalife headquarters: report
Herbalife has found multiple hidden listening devices — bugs — in its Los Angeles headquarters, according to a report on Friday.
The bugs, discovered over the last year, were “non-governmental,” according to the report on Fox Business Network, which cited unidentified sources.
Fox did not say how Herbalife or its sources knew the bugs were placed by a private entity.
Herbalife has been locked in a heated battle with hedge fund activist Bill Ackman since December 2012. Ackman’s Pershing Square has bet more than $1 billion that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme and that it will be shut down by regulators and that its stock will sink to zero.
Herbalife, a multilevel marketer of nutritional shakes, strongly denies the allegation.
“Clearly the company feels it’s been spied upon by outside forces that are not the government,” FBN’s Charles Gasparino reported.
Gasparino later tweeted that Ackman denied any connection to the bugs.
“We have no idea and we are uninvolved in the listening devices found at [Herbalife] headquarters,” Ackman told FBN, according to the Gasparino tweet.
Herbalife shares rose slightly on Friday to close at $61.70 a share.
You can read the original report on NY Post.com
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
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05-13-2014, 09:56 PM
#127
Re: Herbalife News Stories
Originally Posted by
littleroundman
I'm not going to rule out the possibility that Herbalife planted them themselves and then "newsworthily discovered" them at this point.
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05-13-2014, 10:01 PM
#128
Re: Herbalife News Stories
Originally Posted by
JustTooMuchTime
I'm not going to rule out the possibility that Herbalife planted them themselves and then "newsworthily discovered" them at this point.
I just assumed they did. lol
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05-14-2014, 10:30 PM
#129
Herbalife Ltd. Probe Creates Friction Within LULAC
"An article published by the National Institute for Latino Policy (NILP) from La Opinion indicated that the Herbalife investigations are causing friction within the leadership of LULAC. La Opinion learned that at least nine presidents of LULAC expressed in their letters to lawmakers that they feel their leadership did not represent their positions regarding the issue on Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF)."
Full story:
Herbalife Ltd. Probe Creates Friction Within LULAC
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05-14-2014, 10:34 PM
#130
My Herbalife Job Interview - The Salty Droid
"Coach Carl told me that if I didn’t want to bother with the GETFIT GETHOT exercise :: I could become a “mobile wellness coach” instead. Mobile wellness coaches loiter around in public spaces asking people to participate in “free wellness evaluations.” The evaluations invariably indicate that the participant could benefit from the lifelong consumption of Herbalife’s dramatically overpriced chemical soy isolates. “We’re generating lots of great leads like that …” Coach Carl told me."
Full story:
The Salty Droid – My Herbalife Job Interview
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05-14-2014, 10:46 PM
#131
Re: Herbalife News Stories
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05-20-2014, 01:13 PM
#132
Herbalife Ltd. (HLF): Nothing But ‘Snake Oil,’ Says Regal Point
"New short thesis on Herbalife
Regal Point issued its short thesis on Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) last week. The firm states that Herbalife’s business model is not sustainable and that while recruitment is vital to success, it becomes difficult to recruit while regulators are scrutinizing the company. Marolia’s firm also points to the recent ABC News investigation into the controversial company, increasing regulatory probes, and sell-offs of Herbalife stock by institutional investors."
New short thesis on herbalife document is here - All You Need To Know In 3 Slides:
https://www.hvst.com/post/content/11391
"Regal Point Capital maintains short
exposure to Herbalife.
The best stocks to short are those of
companies involved in fraud, fads, or
failure. We believe that Herbalife fits all
three categories
.
The risks for Herbalife shareholders are
huge and growing as regulators, media
outlets, and institutions come to
understand the facts."
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05-26-2014, 02:08 PM
#133
Anonymous, influential Herbalife blogger unmasked
"As it turns out, the anonymous blogger is neither an insider nor a finance pro but Jeffrey Gardner, 37, a cancer researcher at New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering, an investigation by The Post and research by Pershing Square, shared with The Post, has shown."
"While it is clearer why Ackman (huge profits and an ego boost) and Herbalife (a fight for its survival) are battling, why would Gardner devote so much time and effort to boost Herbalife and keep his identity secret?
A love story
One possible answer is Sandy Chin.
Chin, 40, is Gardner’s longtime girlfriend, domestic partner and, throughout most of Gardner’s 15-month tweet-athon, an equity analyst with Visium Asset Management, a Manhattan hedge fund that owned Herbalife stock."
Full story:
Anonymous, influential Herbalife blogger unmasked | New York Post
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06-10-2014, 09:19 PM
#134
he Doxing of Michelle Celarier
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06-10-2014, 09:27 PM
#135
Ackman Believes Arrests Are Coming In The Herbalife Story
"Bill Ackman was guest host of CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, and following a question about what happens next with Herbalife, Ackman said: "I believe the government will start arresting people."
Read more: Ackman Herbalife Arrests Are Next - Business Insider
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06-25-2014, 07:13 PM
#136
William Keep Letter to the FTC on Herbalife and other MLMs
Professor William Keep, dean of The College of New Jersey's School of Business, says in light of the BurnLounge ruling, regulators should take note of one possible warning sign about Herbalife.
William Keep Letter to SEC Chair Mary Joe White
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06-25-2014, 07:41 PM
#137
Re: Herbalife News Stories
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
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07-07-2014, 12:09 PM
#138
Retiree With Sixth-Grade Education Says Herbalife Shakes Cost Him $30,000
"Miguel Calderon is a retired construction worker with a sixth-grade education. He says an Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) distributor tricked him into squandering $30,000 in life savings on weight-loss shakes."
"Proving Herbalife did anything wrong won’t be easy, said Joel Winston, a former FTC lawyer who now works at Hudson Cook LLP in Washington.
“It’s not clear what responsibility Herbalife would have for what its distributors would say,” he said. “It really comes down to what evidence is there beyond individual consumers saying a distributor told me xyz. Can they show a pattern? Can they show that this happened routinely?”
Ummm. Really?
Full story...
Retiree With Sixth-Grade Education Says Herbalife Shakes Cost Him $30,000 - Bloomberg
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07-07-2014, 12:12 PM
#139
Ackman Targets Herbalife Distributor Russel Gain
"Gain on guaranteed money via Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF)
Gain apparently boldly claimed that his “proven step-by-step system” can teach new recruits how to make up to “$2,500/month part time” or “$5,000 or more per month” full time. It is unclear how a sales system can guarantee success in a forum that is indifferent to the independent sales skills of those reading the ad."
Full story:
Ackman Targets Another Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) Distributor
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07-07-2014, 03:43 PM
#140
Re: Herbalife News Stories
Retiree With Sixth-Grade Education Says Herbalife Shakes Cost Him $30,000
By Duane D. Stanford Jul 7, 2014 4:13 PM ET
Miguel Calderon is a retired construction worker with a sixth-grade education. He says an Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) distributor tricked him into squandering $30,000 in life savings on weight-loss shakes.
At the same time, Calderon says he signed an agreement after reading very little of it or the marketing documents that detailed Herbalife’s policies and pay structure.
“There was a small doubt in my mind always,” Calderon said in an interview, speaking Spanish. “But because you have a desire to work and make better, I continued.”
Calderon, 68, is one of at least 16 Latinos in the Chicago area who’ve filed consumer complaints with the Illinois attorney general, saying Herbalife duped them into buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of products they couldn’t sell. Herbalife, a direct seller that relies on independent contractors to distribute its wares, said it enforces inhouse rules governing distributors, investigates all claims seriously and welcomes “the opportunity to help the people mentioned in this story.”
Opening a business doesn’t guarantee success. Not all entrepreneurs work hard, while products wax and wane in popularity. About half of small businesses fail in the first five years, according to the Small Business Administration. The question for Illinois investigators, who can file criminal charges or a civil lawsuit, is whether the complainants were victims of false promises or didn’t prosper because they failed to follow Herbalife’s marketing plan.
Ackman Claims
Herbalife has spent the past 19 months warding off hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman’s claims it’s an illegal pyramid scheme. In their simplest form, pyramid schemes take money from new participants to enrich those at the top, independent of any product sales. Ackman has accused Herbalife of prospering on the backs of often undocumented Latinos, using products as a front for what amounts to illegal recruiting fees. Those with little English and a basic education are susceptible to scams, he has said.
“Ask yourself why poor Latinos would purchase overpriced nutrition products,” Ackman said in a March webcast hosted by his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management LP.
In February, the League of United Latin American Citizens, America’s oldest Hispanic civil-rights group, flew with Calderon to Washington to lobby Federal Trade Commission Chairman Edith Ramirez. The following month, the company confirmed the FTC was probing its business. LULAC has since forwarded some of the Illinois complaints to the FTC.
Most of the complainants are undocumented, said Julie Contreras, who directs a local Illinois LULAC chapter and coordinated the filings.
Simple Narratives
Bloomberg News obtained copies of nine of the complaints. Filed between December and February and dating as far back as 2008, they include simple narratives, roughly a paragraph long, and supporting documents, such as order receipts and bank records. In general, the complainants say Herbalife deceived them, defrauded them of their money and should be shut down. The personal information was redacted.
Both Calderon and another former Herbalife distributor named Martil Palma granted interviews, saying they filed complaints with the attorney general. The men declined to provide unredacted versions of the documents, saying they feared jeopardizing the investigation. Cesar Caballero, the 49-year-old Herbalife distributor who worked with both men, also agreed to speak on the record.
Needed Work
Herbalife declined to provide details of its interactions with the men, except to say that each placed multiple orders over at least six months. The company says it provides needed work to Latinos. The FTC’s Ramirez, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Ackman declined to comment. The shares rose 0.1 percent to $66.18 at the close in New York.
Calderon lives in Waukegan, a working-class city about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago. As often happens, he learned of Herbalife from a friend. In 2008, Calderon met Caballero at his nutrition club, a storefront where Herbalife distributors hand out samples, provide nutrition and weight-loss advice and encourage customers to order products for regular use or become distributors themselves.
For three mornings, Calderon said, he sampled shakes, herbal tea and an aloe concoction. On day three, he said, Caballero asked Calderon if he was ready to start a business. Calderon decided to open his own nutrition club. Under Herbalife rules, distributors get a discount of as much as 50 percent for such products as Formula 1 protein shake powder, Liftoff energy drink dissolving tablets and Cell-U-Loss herb pills. Selling at full retail, they can potentially double their money.
‘I’m Poor’
“I felt excitement and said, ‘OK, I’m poor and since I don’t have work, I’m going to do this,’” Calderon said.
Calderon said he paid an initial $1,300 for mostly protein shake powder, as well as a sample pack and a marketing DVD. From there, Calderon paid Herbalife $7,000 plus $1,500 a month for about a year, he said.
To market the products, Calderon said he outfitted a nutrition club thinking customers would buy the Herbalife merchandise as soon as he made it available.
“‘I would put a lot of spirit into trying to sell the product,’’ Calderon said. ‘‘In the snow we would go out and put up flyers.’’
He took training, as well, to learn how to recruit others into the business. The few people he approached wouldn’t listen, so he concentrated on retail sales instead, he said.
Too Expensive
As he poured money into Herbalife, containers of protein shake powder stacked up in the nutrition club, Calderon said. Customers trickled in or sampled shakes daily without ever ordering for home use, saying it was too expensive, he recalled. Calderon said the $30,000 in losses before he got out after about a year and a half included rent and supplies for the modest shop.
Calderon says he never questioned what he was told and signed his Herbalife distributor contract based mostly on Caballero’s explanation.
‘‘They weren’t easy to understand carefully without trouble, so I believed what he said,” Calderon said of the documents, published in English and Spanish. “I read the parts that I thought were most related to me.”
Palma, the second complainant who agreed to speak on the record, said he lost $16,000. Palma said he attended a sales meeting at a luxury hotel in downtown Chicago, where at least one speaker boasting of flying in for the meeting by helicopter.
“I thought to myself, ‘All these people can’t be making a mistake,’” Palma said in Spanish. “I was so impressed to see so many people.”
Signed Contract
Palma also said he signed a contract without reading it and doesn’t recall seeing a marketing plan.
“Yes, I did sign,” he said. “They put it in front of me and I signed it.”
He said he called the company to request a refund and was told one wasn’t available. At the time, Herbalife allowed distributors to return merchandise, less a 10 percent restocking fee and shipping charges, the company said.
In an interview, Caballero said Palma and Calderon failed to follow Herbalife sales methods despite attending training. He spoke mostly Spanish, which was translated by his adult son, who also sells Herbalife and runs fitness classes. Caballero said he doubted Calderon lost $30,000.
“It’s impossible,” Caballero said. “There are two stories to everything.”
Caballero has sold Herbalife products for about seven years and is part of Herbalife’s Millionaire Team, meaning his network of distributors has generated that much in retail sales. Inside his Waukegan nutrition club, a big-screen television plays Herbalife videos. Photos show Caballero, his wife and children on Herbalife trips to such exotic locations as Hawaii.
Hard Work
Caballero said his distributors who work hard succeed. One is Ismael Hernandez, who opened a nutrition club in 2008 and was able to quit his job as a dispatcher for a temp company after six months.
Hernandez says his club has between 80 and 150 members, 80 percent of whom aren’t distributors themselves, he said. They pay $5 a visit, take Zumba fitness classes and order product for home use, he said. Hernandez recently opened a second club.
“When you know the marketing plan, it’s easy,” he said, referring to a 124-page document that describes how wholesale profit, commissions and royalties are paid to 18 levels of distributors, all based on so-called volume points that vary depending on the product being sold.
What Evidence
Proving Herbalife did anything wrong won’t be easy, said Joel Winston, a former FTC lawyer who now works at Hudson Cook LLP in Washington.
“It’s not clear what responsibility Herbalife would have for what its distributors would say,” he said. “It really comes down to what evidence is there beyond individual consumers saying a distributor told me xyz. Can they show a pattern? Can they show that this happened routinely?”
Today, Calderon’s nutrition club is closed. He gave away and sold for pennies on the dollar some of the leftover Herbalife merchandise. He said he lost his house.
“We feel that this has been like a fraud that has come to us,” Calderon said.
His dream of making it big in the direct-selling business didn’t end there. Calderon became an authorized representative for a direct seller of cookware, until his children persuaded him to get out.
Retiree With Sixth-Grade Education Says Herbalife Shakes Cost Him $30,000 - Bloomberg
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07-14-2014, 11:29 PM
#141
White Collar Crime Expert Slams Herbalife: An Exclusive Interview With Sam Antar
"- Sam Antar is a convicted felon and former CFO of Crazy Eddie's.
- He's gone from running organized crime under the guise of a public company, to assisting the government with unmasking white collar crime, accounting fraud and securities fraud.
- Mr. Antar concludes that Herbalife is "predatory capitalism" at its best and a bona fide scam at its worst; he claims CEO Michael Johnson sells fantasy to exploitable people."
Full story:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2313...with-sam-antar
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08-01-2014, 10:43 AM
#142
Ackman Says ‘My Bad’ on Herbalife Presentation
"It was a PR failure,” Ackman said. “I think we raised expectations. People were looking for the dead body and the smoking gun and instead what they got was a three-hour detailed regulatory presentation.” "
‘Conscripted Consumption’
Last week, Richard and Ackman said distributors at Herbalife clubs use false promises of riches and a fraudulent training program to force poor Latinos to buy weight-loss shakes one at a time. Programs such as Club 100 create a kind of “conscripted consumption” of its meal-replacement shakes, teas and aloe drinks, generating artificial demand, Richard said.
Richard alleges such programs are pervasive within Herbalife’s 4,000 nutrition clubs in the U.S. and many more overseas, mostly in Latino neighborhoods and countries. Pershing Square’s undercover investigators looked at 240 clubs, mostly in the U.S., as well as in Mexico and South America, according to a spokesman for the hedge fund.
Stopping the training programs would severely crimp sales, Richard said. Herbalife will eventually collapse under its own weight and should be shut by regulators now, Ackman has argued.
“It seemed like the presentation got so crushed by the stock-market response,” said Richard, who issued a press release earlier this week standing by her research. “That sort of gave people permission to say, ‘Ah, there must be nothing here because the stock market tells me so.’”
Full story:
Ackman Says
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08-06-2014, 09:57 AM
#143
Herbalife - Conscripted Consumption
"Club 100 :: a subsystem which combines Nutrition Clubs with a rigorous conscripted consumption based “training” program … dominates Herbalife’s operations in Central and South America. It was so effective :: and so brilliant at ******* over poor people … that it was basically internalized by Herbalife corporate and spread worldwide.
Club 100′s ubiquitous branding represents a two-sided progression :: one side is about training and building daily consumptions … the other about club duplications. The oft promised reward for following the dual path to its completion :: the $300,000+ per year of the President’s Team … is an unattainable lie."
The Salty Droid – Conscripted Consumption at Club 100
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08-15-2014, 11:32 AM
#144
One way Herbalife could show it’s not scamming customers
"It isn't too late for Herbalife to fix the problem. The company could offer new salespeople a choice between the current model and an alternative membership program that offered discounts, but not cash commissions. For the 78 percent of distributors without recruits, this alternative program would be preferable. They don't earn any commissions anyway, and they wouldn't have to sign a lengthy contract.
Versions of this kind of program are familiar in multilevel marketing. Companies including USANA Health Sciences, Nu Skin and Melaleuca offer something called a preferred-customer option. Their preferred customers can sign on as full members whenever they like. Generally, however, the firms do not disclose the percentage of their members who are only preferred customers. Herbalife would have to do so to assuage investors' concerns.
If this preferred-customer option were popular, the numbers would support Herbalife's case. It would allow the company to distinguish itself from the multilevel marketer BurnLounge, which sold music online and had a preferred-customer option. Only 3.2 percent of BurnLounge members chose the discounts instead of the cash, which was part of the reason that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the company a fraudulent pyramid scheme earlier this year. Almost all of BurnLounge's members had hoped to make money by bringing their friends and their friends' friends into the business, it seemed."
Full story:
One way Herbalife could show it’s not scamming customers - The Washington Post
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08-29-2014, 12:02 PM
#145
The Absolutely Insane Life And Death Story Of Herbalife Founder Mark Hughes
Crazy stuff.
"After the wives were paid off, Mark's estate was still worth an estimated $300 million at the time of his death. Mark's sole heir was his son Alexander Hughes, who was eight years old at the time."
"According to a court-ordered audit, in 2005, the value of 13 year old Alex Hughes' trust fund had grown to $400 million. Unfortunately for Alex, he wouldn't be able to touch the money until he turned 35, in the year 2027. In the meantime, he would receive an estimated $250,000 stipend every year which would some day grow to $2 million per year"
"Tower Grove, the impressive property Mark bought from Merv Griffin in 1997 for $8.5 million, was recently valued at $120 million. If at some point the land sells to a developer, Alex Hughes stands to make a massive profit."
The Absolutely Insane Life And Death Story Of Herbalife Founder Mark Hughes | Celebrity Net Worth
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08-29-2014, 01:26 PM
#146
Re: Herbalife News Stories
wonder why none of his own wonder products couldn't help him sleep and not be depressed.
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09-11-2014, 11:58 PM
#147
Christine Richard Weighs In On Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) Clubs
"The investigators pulled back the curtain on a scam that forces those seeking to open Nutrition Clubs, and their family members and friends helping them pursue their dream, into conscripted consumers. These scamming club owners forced aspiring club owners to perform expensive and time-consuming tasks such as touring Clubs and paying to consume at every club, working for free in an upline distributor’s Club and being required to consume while working, as well as “practicing” making hundreds of shakes that family members or friends are expected to buy and consume."
Full article:
Christine Richard Weighs In On Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) Clubs
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09-22-2014, 05:34 PM
#148
Shares of Herbalife Fall Sharply
"Shares of Herbalife, which have been falling steadily in recent months, tumbled by 10% to $40.21. Ackman has called Herbalife a pyramid scheme and his Pershing Square hedge fund has made a big bet against the company. Herbalife’s stock has now dropped by nearly 50% this year, fueling the very strong performance of Pershing Square, which in 2014 is outperforming just about every hedge fund on the planet. At one point on Monday, Herbalife’s stock hit a 52-week low of $38.63."
Full story;
Shares Of Herbalife Fall Sharply - Forbes
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10-06-2014, 07:49 PM
#149
Herbalife hires former U.S. regulator to head compliance team
"Herbalife said it named Pamela Jones Harbour, who was an FTC commissioner from 2003 to 2010, as senior vice president, global member compliance and privacy. She will be in charge of the company's 300-member compliance team and coordinate global compliance."
Full story:
Exclusive: Herbalife hires former U.S. regulator to head compliance team
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10-06-2014, 11:42 PM
#150
Re: Herbalife News Stories
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