Sitesh Patel is president of California-based S. K. Laboratories.
AB Wire
More damning evidence, through e-mails retrieved by federal prosecutors, reveal that an Indian American manufacturer based in California, Sitesh Patel, allegedly conspired to dupe the public into buying dietary supplements which were loaded with dangerous and unsafe chemicals from China.
Last November, an 11-count indictment was brought against USPlabs LLC, a Dallas firm that formerly manufactured highly popular workout and weight loss supplements. The indictment charged USPlabs, Sitesh Patel, the president of S.K. Laboratories Inc. and their operators with a variety of charges related to the sale of those products.
Jacobo Geissler, 39, of University Park, Texas, the CEO of USPlabs; Jonathan Doyle, 37, of Dallas, the president of USPlabs; Matthew Hebert, 37, of Dallas, responsible for product packaging design at USPlabs; Kenneth Miles, 69, of Panama City, Florida, the quality assurance executive in charge of compliance at USPlabs; S.K. Laboratories, Inc.; Sitesh Patel, 32, of Irvine, California, the president of S.K. Laboratories; and Cyril Willson, 34, of Gretna, Nebraska, a consultant to USPlabs, were charged in November with various counts associated with the unlawful sale of dietary supplements.
Additionally, USPlabs, Geissler, Doyle and Hebert are charged with obstruction of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proceeding and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Justice Department.
Along with the arrests, FDA and Internal Revenue Service special agents seized assets in dozens of investment accounts, real estate in Dallas County, and a number of luxury and sports cars.
The indictment alleged that USPlabs engaged in a conspiracy to import ingredients from China using false certificates of analysis and false labeling and then lied about the source and nature of those ingredients after it put them in its products. According to the indictment, USPlabs told some of its retailers and wholesalers that it used natural plant extracts in products called Jack3d and OxyElite Pro, when in fact it was using a synthetic stimulant manufactured in a Chinese chemical factory.
The indictment also alleges that the defendants sold some of their products without determining whether they would be safe to use. To the contrary, as the indictment notes, the defendants knew of studies that linked the products to liver toxicity.
The indictment further alleges that USPlabs and its principals told FDA in October 2013 that it would stop distribution of OxyElite Pro, once the product had been implicated in an outbreak of liver injuries. The indictment alleges that, despite this promise, USPlabs engaged in a surreptitious, all-hands-on-deck effort to sell as much OxyElite Pro as it could as quickly as possible. It was sold at dietary supplement stores across the nation.
Now, federal prosecutors have released some e-mails by Patel, which show his complicity in the scheme.
“Lol, stuff is completely 100% synthetic,” Patel said about a dangerous and illegal stimulant, dimethylamylamine, known as DMAA, in the supplements.
Patel sent the email to Jacobo Geissler and Jonathan Doyle, owners of USPlabs. Patel’s California lab worked with USPlabs and manufactured some of its products, reported the Dallas Morning News.
“Please send as green coffee samples…and don’t label the individual bags. Label as green coffee sample 1,2,3, etc.,” Geissler told a Chinese chemical supplier in an email.
“Please use fake COA,” Geissler told a different Chinese chemical company.
COA refers to a “certificate of analysis,” which is a standard certification of a product’s ingredients that is shipped with the product.
Geissler referred to the DMA in his products as a “questionable powder,” the indictment said.
“Retails might be more open if they see it’s an extract,” Patel said in an email to Geissler and Doyle. “China can just doctor us a COA stating it’s an extract.”
Several people needed liver transplants to save their lives, the 37-page indictment said. Professional athletes who took the supplements hoping to build muscle or lose weight failed doping tests and were banned from competition. They include a tennis player and a sprinter from Texas.
The owners earned $400 million from the scheme, according to the indictment.