"Magazine and radio ads for Enzyte made the “male enhancement” pill sound like a sure thing.

The ads featured a glowing customer satisfaction survey, testimonials from happy Enzyte users, a promise of better sex within 30 days and a claim that a Harvard doctor developed the pill’s formula.

But a company executive who helped sell Enzyte says there was a catch:

None of it was true.

James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District Court how he and others at the company made up much of the content that appeared in Enzyte ads.

He said employees of the Forest Park company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back up claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

“So all this is a fiction?” Judge S. Arthur Spiegel asked about some of the claims.
“That’s correct, your honor,” Teegarden said.

Teegarden’s testimony is key to the case federal prosecutors are making against Berkeley and its founder, Steve Warshak, who is accused of orchestrating a $100 million conspiracy to defraud thousands of customers.

Warshak faces up to 20 years in prison and millions of dollars in penalties if his trial ends with a conviction.

Several other company employees, including Warshak’s mother, Harriet, also are charged with participating in the conspiracy.

Teegarden, who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors, said Warshak oversaw the phony ads and every other aspect of Berkeley’s business.
“He was intimately involved with all of it,” Teegarden said. “He knew what was going on in the departments all the time.”

Teegarden said Warshak told him to create two spreadsheets of data to support claims Berkeley was making in Enzyte ads.

One spreadsheet purportedly showed how the pills increased penis size by an average of 24 percent, when in fact no customers had reported such results. Instead, Teegarden said, he made up the numbers.

Another report he created showed customer satisfaction ratings of 96 percent for Enzyte customers. But prosecutors showed jurors an e-mail from Warshak that they said asked Teegarden to fix the numbers.

“Here’s the spreadsheet you wanted,” Teegarden responded via e-mail. “Let me know if you want me to doctor it up some more.”

Jurors saw several magazine ads for Enzyte and other Berkeley products with titles such as “Maximize the Pleasure” and “Harder Than Chinese Arithmetic,” all promising to enhance the sexual experience.

When customers ordered a product, the company’s goal was to keep charging their credit cards for as long as possible, Teegarden said.

He said first-time customers were automatically enrolled in a “continuity program” that sent Enzyte to their homes every month and charged their credit cards without authorization.

“Without continuity, the company wouldn’t exist,” Teegarden said. “It was the sole profit of the business.”

If customers complained, he said, employees were instructed to “make it as difficult as possible” for them to get their money back. In some cases, Teegarden said, Warshak required customers to produce a notarized statement from a doctor certifying Enzyte did not work.

“He said it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small penis,” Teegarden said.

Warshak’s lawyers will not get a chance to cross examine Teegarden until sometime today and they declined to comment on his accusations. Warshak, however, said he did nothing wrong.

“I’m absolutely sure that no crimes occurred at Berkeley,” he said.

Teegarden, however, said Warshak also tried to manipulate data that banks use to determine whether companies should be allowed to accept payment via credit cards.

He said Warshak artificially inflated total sales to offset the high number of customers who sought refunds from credit card companies, a process known as “charge backs.”

If more than 1 percent of its customers sought charge backs, Berkeley could have lost its ability to do business via credit cards.

To avoid that, Teegarden said, Berkeley began making small, unauthorized charges to thousands of customer credit cards. The charges were later refunded by the company, but they temporarily boosted total sales and reduced the percentage of charge backs.

Teegarden said the continued use of credit cards was so important because Berkeley relied almost entirely on them.

Without them, he said, “we would be out of business.”"

I thought this was hillarious:

I hope they publish the names of the idiots that bought the shit. That would be funny.



Insecure idiots.

This explains much.

At this moment there are 3 threads ...

1 in the Cage & 2 in AWOP.

Maybe as a bonus the judge could give 20 years to Ron Jeremy--Not for those other penis pills he used to hawk on tv, but for those horrible movies he made for Leisure Time in the early 90s when he couldn't get arrested in this town.

Update:

"Judge Orders Enzyte Parent to Forfeit $500 Million
Company founder also faces 20 years in prison

By Steve Javors
Wednesday, Jul 16, 2008

CINCINATTI — U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel has ordered the maker of the Enzyte male enhancement pill to forfeit more than $500 million after being convicted of massive fraud earlier this year.

Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals founder Steven Warshak said the judgment could put his company out of business if the order stands. Warshak’s lawyers have asked the judge to delay the forfeiture order so they can appeal the ruling. The order is preliminary until Warshak’s sentencing in August.

Also incorporated in the forfeiture order is some of Warshak’s personal property including homes, cash, a $10,500 spa membership, a Segway, two grand pianos and his 5 percent stake in Fathead, a sports memorabilia manufacturer.

Judge Spiegel maintained that Warshak and other chief executives engaged in fraud, money laundering and deceptively promoted bogus claims about the product’s effectiveness. The fraud was so widespread that it “tainted almost every dollar the company earned during its most profitable years” so federal prosecutors believe the company should have to give up almost all of its revenue.

Berkeley attorney John Phillips contends that the total amount of the forfeiture order represents the company’s gross revenue across all its product lines — not just Enzyte — which was the main thrust of the criminal case. He claims profits were a fraction of the $500 million.

Phillips said that Berkeley’s learned from its mistakes and has restructured its operations.

“Berkeley has made a real turnaround,” Phillips said. “The question is, is the jury’s verdict going to keep it from operating in the future?”

In other news related to the case, Warshak challenged the Stored Communications Act of 1986 in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in which he claimed his conviction should be thrown out because the government unlawfully read his emails without first obtaining a warrant. The court ruled 9-5 on July 11, upholding the law.

The majority ruled that Warshak would have to wait to appeal the ruling until after his sentencing. The dissenting minority claims the government acted unconstitutionally by reading Warshak’s email.

The law allows law enforcement to get permission from a magistrate or judge to read someone’s emails, instead of obtaining a search warrant.

Warshak faces 20 years in prison."

http://www.xbiz.com/news/96670

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Man, those Enzyte ads were classic! Everybody knows there is no such thing as a penis enlargement pill. They should be allowed to keep the cash, just for coming up with ads so effective they convinced rational people to order anyway.