Jared Wheat (pictured, left), CEO and founder of Atlanta supplement maker Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, was sentenced to 50 months in jail earlier this month for illegally selling prescription drugs online. Wheat and his co-defendants must also relinquish $3 million in proceeds.
Under a plea deal, three other defendants were sentenced to jail terms of 16 to 27 months; the judge found the 37 months for Wheat suggested in the plea was not harsh enough for his actions. During plea negotiations, prosecutors dropped allegations of racketeering, spiking supplements with ephedrine alkaloids and conspiracies of blackmail and murder.
In an odd twist, the family of one of the convicted Hi-Tech executives has sued the federal prosecutor on the case claiming he drove the executive’s wife to suicide by threatening to indict her to get her to incriminate her husband. The lawsuit, lawsuit filed last week in Atlanta, contends former prosecutor Aaron Danzig kept Jessica Holda “in a state of terror and dread.”
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, two years ago, Holda took a .40-caliber Ruger pistol and shot herself in the head. The lawsuit contends she killed herself after Danzig threatened to prosecute her for selling a luxury car that the government had targeted for seizure if she didn’t assist in the federal investigation.
I do not know the merits of the case against the prosecutor, but no one can argue the degree of prosecutorial abuse that is tolerated today. The government is destroying everyone in it’s path and does so with the backing of sanctioned violence and imprisonment. Most Americans are simply fools who believe that bureaucrats are kind people who act in similar manner to those in the private market. Unfortunately, the incentive structure for bureaucrats is such that they can only increase their power and position by expanding the reach of the state. Of course any expansion of the state means a concomitant rise in threatened violence against private citizens as all laws are enforced at the barrel of a gun.
Anyone working in dietary supplements, who believes the FDA is an ally in the quest to bring reason to the industry is a complete a fool. While Jared Wheat might be a con man and a no-good loser, he engaged only in voluntary transactions with like minded people. In their zeal to prosecute him, the government made threats, backed by force, against anyone who dare question their actions. Such a situation does not bode well for the future of our industry or our people.