# Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals: biggest crooks in the supplement industry



## Arnold (Feb 9, 2011)

*Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals: biggest crooks in the supplement industry*
_by Anthony Roberts_

Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals has a history of  producing tainted supplements, products that do not meet label claims,  misleading consumers, and perpetrating every known type of fraud on the  nutritional industry. They???ve had goverment seizures on their finished  products as well as their raw materials, and they have faced numerous  criminal and civil charges, brought by everyone from the FDA to the FTC to other nutritional companies. 

*The indictment*  was 55 pages long, and had 46  separate counts.

Because of the company???s long history of criminal acts,  Jared Wheat,  the owner (and recognized as a ???career criminal??? by the United States  government) earned himself a 50 month prison sentence, where he was  joined by enough of his employees to hold regular board meetings (or  field a company softball team???).

 Jared Wheat???s sentence memorandum,  after a very generous  plea deal, was only five pages long; light reading compared to the 36 page motion the  prosecution filed to oppose his bail (*allegations that Wheat conspired  to kill an FDA agent was the most interesting part of that particular  document). And while the government took the most serious of charges off  the table and recommended 37 months in prison, the sentencing  judge decided that the deal was over a year too short. Originally, it  could have been 20 or more years???







 And of course, many of Jared???s  Hi-Tech co-defendents ultimately agreed to snitch on him ??? which says a  lot about the character of the people working for the company.

 Hi-Tech had been manufacturing their bathtub brew nutritional  supplements in an unsanitary lab in Belize, where they took every  possible opportunity to spike their products with everything from A to Z  (and by ???A to Z??? I mean everything from Ambien to Zoloft, including  steroids, GHB, and a bunch of other stuff). They were also running a  ???Canadian Pharmacy??? out of Belize as well, lying to their customers  about the country of origin for their generic prescription products.

 Most respected names in the nutritional industry (who I???ve spoken  to), believes that Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals is a mediocre company, in  terms of their retail products. And truthfully, I believe the company  itself knows this to be true ??? they can???t formulate an  effective sex pill, so they spike theirs with Viagra ??? they can???t  formulate a muscle building product, so they spike theirs with steroids.

 And then there???s the fake Ecstasy (with no MDMA)???which is actually  the saddest part of the Hi-Tech story, because it shows that even when  they are engaged in a wholly criminal enterprise (drug dealing), with a  tremendous tax-free profit margin,  they still feel the need to rip  their customers off.

 There is no honor among these thieves.

 It???s pretty astonishing to see a company telling so many simultaneous  lies to their customers, on so many different (and illegal) levels ???  I???m uncertain that the company has ever been anything less than  completely deceitful. When judging a nutritional company, it???s rarely  easy to find one that is rotten on every level, from the founder to the  sales associates. In the case of Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, the opposite  is true ??? it is difficult to find a single redeeming quality in the  whole business.

 And most people don???t realize this, but many products that do not  carry the Hi-Tech name, are produced by the company ??? and many higher  profile supplement companies still use their services both for sourcing  raws as well as bottling and capping the end product.

 Hi-Tech Raws is the manufacturing arm of the company, handling not  only their own products, but contract manufacturing and sourcing for  numerous other companies. Although we???re not even 50 days into 2011, US  Government imposed fines for companies who work with Hi-Tech Raws are  now in the six-figure range. They have also been the manufacturer of  several products that have been involved in some of the largest  FDA recalls in recent history.

 Last year, I was involved in a project to design a supplement for a  company I very much wanted to work with. All of the NDAs were signed,  and we were getting things off the ground with all of the usual  conference calls and emails, until one day, a guy appeared on the email  chain with an address from Hi-Tech Raws.

 To me, the entire project was over at this point, because I was very  familiar with their reputation. I had always knew about the company???s  criminal record, but just to make sure, I did a background check on  their civil record ??? not counting bankruptcy or criminal charges,  Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals has over 30 civil lawsuit records associated  with their name:






 And of course, the CEO of the company was involved in many of those  lawsuits, as well as a few others within the nutritional industry:






 I not only pulled the plug on my involvement with the project, but in  the past few months, I have delined to accept advertising from multiple  companies who use Hi-Tech as their contract manufacturer.
 In 2008, the company was on the wrong end of a lawsuit filed by  the Federal Trade Commission, to the tune of a  
$15,882,436 judgment???meaning, even after  their CEO was sitting in a Georgia prison, the company continued to  operate in voilation of federal guidelines.

 Hi-Tech continued their pattern of flagrant contempt for the  truth, earning themselves (yet another) FDA spanking, this time for  their attempt at profiteering off the H1N1 scare:

Clearly this is not a company who  has purged itself of a few bad apples, and continued on with their  legitimate business. Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals have shown themselves to be  the biggest crooks in the entire supplement industry, and I can???t  imagine that this pattern will be changing any time in the future.

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