Ongoing Legal Issues

Texas Resident Pleads Guilty to Illegally Importing Counterfeit Vaping Products On July 27, 2020, the Department filed a civil lawsuit against MyLife.com and its founder, Jeffrey Tinsley, seeking injunctive relief, redress, and civil penalties under the FTC Act, Telemarketing Sales Rule, Restore Online Shoppers` Confidence Act, and Fair Credit Reporting Act for unfair and deceptive conduct in the sale of subscriptions in line to consumer background reports and for the sale of background reports without complying with legal requirements in this regard. The complaint alleges that defendants market their customer service by often falsely implying that wanted individuals have criminal or sexual criminal records that can only be accessed by purchasing a MyLife subscription. According to the complaint, the defendants also made false statements or failed to disclose the essential terms of these subscriptions, including the fact that a lump sum is paid in advance, subscriptions are automatically renewed, and subscriptions can only be cancelled by calling a customer service center that prevents and prevents cancellations or refunds. Defendants also sell background reports, though they do not comply with laws that require defendants to ensure reports are as accurate as possible, determine who buys the reports and how they intend to use them, and educate buyers on how to legally use the reports. Dailey pleaded guilty on January 8, 2019, to bringing mislabeled drugs into interstate commerce and importing goods against the law. As part of her plea, Dailey agreed to withhold $1,000,000 in illegal products. In addition to two years in prison, Judge Judith E. Levy also sentenced Dailey to three years of supervised release. In February 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an ongoing outbreak of salmonellosis in the United States was directly attributable to peanut butter produced at the company`s plant in Sylvester, Georgia. The company voluntarily ceased production at the plant on February 14, 2007 and recalled all peanut butter produced there since January 2004. The CDC eventually identified more than 700 cases of salmonellosis linked to the outbreak with the onset of the disease beginning in August 2006.

The CDC estimated that thousands more related cases have gone unreported. The CDC has not identified any deaths linked to the outbreak. On April 29, 2021, Omar Cuzcano Marroquin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire transfer fraud related to a number of Peruvian call centers that used internet calls to contact Spanish-speaking consumers in the United States to threaten and defraud them. Cuzcano admitted that he ran and supervised call centers operated under the program, in which the defendants and their associates falsely claimed to be lawyers, court officials, federal agents and representatives of a so-called “misdemeanor court.” According to court documents, Cuzcano and his co-conspirators falsely told the victims that they were contractually obligated to pay for and receive products, and that they had caused legal problems for themselves and others by allegedly not doing so. The appellants also falsely threatened victims with lawsuits, negative credit report ratings, imprisonment or immigration consequences if they did not immediately pay for the allegedly delivered products and handling charges. Thousands of vulnerable victims paid money to the conspirators because of these threats, which cost victims in the United States more than $1 million in losses. Cuzcano is the first of the five defendants in the case to plead guilty. Two other accused remain in Peru and are awaiting extradition. The case is before U.S.

District Judge Robert N. Scola. On February 19, 2016, Joseph Dallal was sentenced to 33 months in prison under two separate prescription drug diversion programs. The court also ordered Dallal to confiscate $250,000 in ill-gotten gains. Dallal has previously been charged in Puerto Rico County and southern Ohio County for selling illegally obtained prescription drugs linked to two different drug diversion programs. Dallal obtained the drugs from several illegal and unauthorized sources and sold them to co-conspirators without the required genealogical record indicating where Dallal had purchased the drugs. In both cases, Dalpal`s co-conspirators then sold the drugs to wholesalers and pharmacies across the United States with false genealogical records that did not reveal the true sources of the drugs. The cases were consolidated for pleading and sentencing purposes in Puerto Rico.