Introduction
Lifevantage (LV) announced that, at the unanimous recommendation of its Board of Directors, it has terminated for cause its relationship with Jason Domingo and Ovation Marketing Group, Inc., one of the Company’s lead distributors. The Company also announced that it has filed suit against Mr. Domingo and Ovation in Federal Court in the State of Utah for breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets. See typical market report.
The detail (see link below) shows that LV made $10.9m in 2010 and $208m in 2013 – this is despite the investigative activity into Protandim, LV’s main product, by LazyManAndMoney and others…! Distributors were paid $91m from which $2.6m went to Domingo. They say he was the lead distributor.
The Detail in the Lifevantage Case
The case details are on PACER – summarised here:
Case details:
2:13-cv-01037-DB Lifevantage v. Domingo et al
Dee Benson, presiding
Date filed: 11/19/2013
Date of last filing: 11/19/2013
Assigned to: Judge Dee Benson
Demand: $775,000
Cause: 28:1332 Diversity-Breach of Contract
Court Filings of Lifevantage v Jason Domingo
You can view the court documents (19 pages) on the attached file:
Jason Domingo,President, Ovation Marketing Group, Inc.
Domingo has been in business for many years. This letter of his to the FTC is dated May 28, 2006 and he states he’s been in network marketing for 14 years, meaning he started back in 1992. Chillingly, he quotes a Dr Charles King that by 2016 one in two Americans will be involved in network marketing. Thankfully, we don’t appear to be treading that path.
The Court Case
The letter of his makes good reading, especially with regard to the free market and in comparison to the Lifevantage court case…. In this, they claim he:
- Has been laying the groundwork for setting up a competitive business
- Disparaged the company
- Is setting up a competitive business
- Used his disposal of 90% of his stock as proof of these claims
- Sent an email to Randy Haag disparaging the company where he said “there is no statement too strong that speaks to the malfeasance of this management team. Greed and ego has gripped my (sic) beautiful company by the throat.” – Stirring stuff indeed!
- If Domingo had worked properly, they’d have paid out tens of millions more to distributors.
In total there are three main actions, divided into a myriad of clauses.
- They want a 12 man jury public trial.
- They want all costs.
- They want $775,000
Malfeasance
Domingo used the word malfeasance to describe the LV management team. I had to double-check the meaning. It means:
The commission of an act that is unequivocally illegal or completely wrongful.
In detail, it means:
Intentionally doing something either legally or morally wrong which one had no right to do. It always involves dishonesty, illegality, or knowingly exceeding authority for improper reasons. Malfeasance is distinguished from “misfeasance,” which is committing a wrong or error by mistake, negligence or inadvertence, but not by intentional wrongdoing. Example: a city manager putting his indigent cousin on the city payroll at a wage the manager knows is above that allowed and/or letting him file false time cards is malfeasance; putting his able cousin on the payroll which, unknown to him, is a violation of an anti-nepotism statute is misfeasance. This distinction can apply to corporate officers, public officials, trustees, and others cloaked with responsibility.
Well. Most of what I have seen about LV fits into that. It’ll be interesting to see how this case pans out. I suspect it’ll not come to court.
Comments
24 responses to “Lifevantage Terminates and Sues Major Distributor”
JUST ANOTHER baby AMWAY here yesterday , GONE TODAY !!!!
Jason Domingo is a complete dick if you ask me. An mlm jumper who now started his own company Yevo that from what I can see sells 85 dollar oatmeal. Lifevantage sued lazy man , and I think both him and LV had to take some shut off their website.
They both took stuff down off their websites is what that should read.
Thank you and Bravo for pointing out the various snake oil scam that seem to permeate the State of Utah. Since moving here in 1975, I have seen 30 or 40 of these MLM businesses cone through my neighborhood . They prey on their friends, families, church member all to benefit their bank accounts. They sell hope in the form of a pill, potion, capsule to those desperate for a cure. Sadly it causes more harm than good as real therapies are shunned. Keep fight the good fight with truth and vigor.
Thanks for the kind comment Jack. Protandim, for one, is on the way out since they continue to follow the trend of these “pop and drop” businesses. See the charts and article here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2987996-serious-concerns-for-lifevantage
It’s a minor blessing because of the whack-a-mole nature of these creeps, yet watching the death throes gives me and others some comfort at least. It is all being documented and discussed here:
https://www.lazymanandmoney.com/lifevantage-protandim-statement/#comments
Herbalife, Monavie, Visalus, Google Treasure Chest (in all its incarnations), Jesse Willms and his host of scams…. the connections through UTAH, Nevada, Cyprus, Phillipines, Panama, various W. Indies islands and then finally finishing up in the City of London, now the scam capital of the world.
It’d be a nice exercise if you could remember these 3-40 MLM businesses for me. My experience is that the same names keep popping up in the background, and we could then see what we will see.
5 years later Protandim is still here and LV stronger than ever. Boy, you’ve been proven wrong, haven’t you?!
It’s your money and time to waste Lewies. I guess 280plus.com wasn’t worth the effort. Stick to praying and bot-making.
Meanwhile, since I wrote the piece LV has yet again been warned by the US FDA (Food & Drug Admin) to stop illegal representations of their products. This one from 2017. Eventually, as in the case of Jesse Willms, Pacific Webworks, Monavie and others, either the FDA, fed-up former distributors or other buisinesses have had enough and sue, leading to closure and financial ruin for any investors.
Your choice Lewies. I see nrf2science’s landing page is still showing the unproven claims that the FDA letter warns about….?
I just want to say there are many companies out there with products that do help people, I have been a distributor for L.V for about 4 years i have seen with my own eyes what this amazing vitamin (Protandim) has done for me and my family…And witnessed this product helping other’s as well. The pharmaceutical companies and Doctors push products on us that can do more harm to us with them not even knowing much about the product , but alot of us trust’s them in their knowledge cause they are Doctors. And 6 months down the road there is usually a lawsuit for a” drug ” of some sort that has killed someone cause no one took the time to do the research, everyone’s body makeup is different! I’m only 1 person, im not rich , I’m very thankful that 4 years ago someone approached me and introduced me to Protandim.And i’m very thankful that i have had people come to me crying and thanking me for caring enough and sharing information about a “vitamin” called Protandim and it helping change their lives or one of their loved ones!:)
You said,
…and thank you for saying it! I haven’t laughed so much for ages. You have a pure cognitive dissonance at failing to recognize the absurd incongruity within your statement about drugs while at the same time saying that Protandim is better and different,
Let’s face the fact that, even though you understand that this company might have use some questionable marketing strategies or give wrong information to the general public, and moreover, the sales representatives may not be precisely well paid, the fact is that you are talking about a real break through in the healing field.
I get to know about protandim when I ask for a neighbor that was extremely sick, and after being seeing him bed recruited for a long time, there he was, in front of me, enjoying a beautiful day at the beach. Several weeks before he was sent back home to die, the doctors didn’t have any other treatment to help him. His wife called the family and did the funeral arrangements, as the doctors recommended. The same week she received information about protandim and he started treatment. Several weeks later he was on foot, and extraordinarily recovered.
A couple of weeks after this encounter, my father was diagnosed a cancer metastasis. The doctor told us that he was so bad that we should not put him into chemotherapy or radiotherapy, he said that would probably extend his life for two more months, but at which price? So I remembered my neighbor and looked for the Protandim in the Internet. Fortunately for me, there was a friend who knew a guy that was selling Protandim and she brought me the pills. My father started the pills and the health improvements started very soon. My father started eating by himself, walking, with a walking device, but walking, and he was no longer talking nonsense, he was in control of his mind again. He was diagnosed, among a lot other things, Parkingson, and the uncontrolled movements of his hands are totally gone by now (two months ago). Sugar is controlled, it was terribly distorted those days. And he continue improving each day.
My point is, I don’t know if there is anything that LifeVantage should regret, but neither would this be important to me. What is really important is that I have been seeing many people around me getting well from different disorders, which means that Protandim indeed work, as it is being discussed in many forums. People these days need hope, and this type of information, again, true or false in not the issue, is just killing those hopes. This is my humble opinion, I may not be an expert in anything, but my heart experienced the blessing of a dearest one healing and I understand that you can not judge the content of a great book based just on the cover. I wish you great success in your life.
Unless the supplied email address is spoofed, @Luz Malaret is in Life Insurance in Puerto Rico and is also into Reiki (a hand-on “healing therapy”) plus almost every “alternative” thing on the planet. It’s like being in Glastonbury all over again.
She gave none of her background and just spurted out un-corroborated evidence. To help others decide what Luz is on, this is Luz:
Handily, the FB page also supplies another webpage which takes us to some of @Luz’s other interests.
http://toquedeluzyamorpr.webs.com/cursos.htm
This last one is translated from Spanish as follows (sorry for any errors):
Strangely, no mention is made for selling snake oil to gullible people.
Now before Luz gets upset, she may want to refer to the terms and conditions of this website, where I say:
Q. Should I address @Luiz’s drivel?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you need to see my reply?
A. Only you can be the judge of that…
Q. How bad actually do I rate that?
A. Ab-so-fucking-lute-ly bad, that how bad.
as she says. In fact, most studies have either financial collusion from the subjects and/or piss-poor science on a miniscule dataset. One was quite well done and Protandim fared worse than placebo!
– https://www.lifevantage.com/products/protandim/
– Lifevantage has all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme. It has flawed science as proof. It has has top distributors hopping from one snake oil scam to another and even been sued for “stealing” distributors and their downlines – http://archive.sltrib.com/printfriendly.php?id=14059464&itype=NGPSID . It has a unique synergy that is supposed to make it work – yet in Japan they have to have another unique synergistic blend – total bollocks around the word unique, eh? The emphasis at meetings and in much of the LV literature is that the way to make money is to recruit, recruit, recruit. If this isn’t important to you, you’re a shit
….Now there’s a thing. There’s a huge amount of hopeful people around who have been conned out of their money on this protandumb scam. A huge amount. The mathematics of pyramid selling make this so. You and your ilk are selling hope through this faux MLM activity. You yourself are also selling hope with all the myriad of dubious therapies you sell. What other ones are you involved in? How long before you hop onto the next bandwagon?
Finally, @Luz, why on earth would you come to a post about a Lifevantage distributor getting sued by Lifevantage and spout statements with no proof? Why? Are you mad? It is totally off-topic and I’d normally ditch a comment like yours because of it.
Instead I’ve gone with it.
Maybe it’s because I’m a Buddhist and you somehow thought that I’d like you because you do Buddhisty sort-of stuff? If you did, you are dead wrong. Buddhism is care and your collection of dubious healing therapies look like the actions of someone scraping money together by using anything they can, even giving people false hope. Dream catcher – bollocks.
My advice to you is stick to life insurance. Drop the MLM snake oils. Drop the faux new age bollocks. It doesn’t matter now nicey-nicey in your heart you think you are. It’s actions that count and one of yours is a downright lie. Buddhism is action and good actions are needed by you right now and stop all the fibs. Karma will bite you back if you don’t.
Lifevantage’s Distributor Policies & Procedures should be read by @Luz Malaret – this is them:
https://www.lifevantage.myvoffice.com/pdf/en/distpp.pdf
Check section 8.3.2 – Product Claims
I’ve emphasised the key bit for Luz. Perhaps she should also check out section 8.5.1 – General
Oops, @Luz. Missed that bit I emphasised. [As an aside, I wonder what line the insurance industry takes on false claims? Actually, I know, as does every person around.]
Another oops (well several really) is this one:
8.5.3.3 – Other Internet Use
The fact that you would reference Brian MacFarland aka “LazyMan” is all I need to know to exit your blog. He pulled the same “SCAM” on MonaVie. He like you makes money from affiliate marketing thereby you nor him qualify as objective. Surya makes valid points on both sides of the argument and positions himself as a much more credible source than yourself.
That’s funny @Steve F. And untrue.
@Steve F – you are the weakest link. Goodbye.
http://youtu.be/FI6gZxLnwdw
I’m glad you’ve fucked off and are not returning, but in case you didn’t get the message – just fuck off and do the walk of shame.
@Surya – I’m not “lost on attacking Protandim and LifeVantage” – there are many devilish functions in the world and this is just one. Until LV change their ways I’ll continue to be an anti-LV outlet and information point.
I’m not certain what you’re getting at, overall. You seem to be plugging a mould inhibitor with highly allergic skin reactivity, i.e. Tecfidera see here. Because of this and other issues it’s totally banned in Europe, at least in furniture etc. NICE has also decided not to use it medically for people with MS, as you’re suggesting the US has allowed.
For the pubmed links you’ve provided about McCord on Protandim – this is all fully documented here on Lazyman’s consumer-focussed website (say) and doesn’t need repeating here. There were about a dozen in total, most having financial collusion between the experimenter, the subjects and the financial backers of the product. They were mostly in vitro and the only reasonably performed experiment fared worse than placebo as you’ve said. Nrf2?
You also seem to think Nrf2 stuff is a sort of wonder panacea? Just add Nrf2 to the things I don’t care a toss about. For me it is irrelevant.
The relevance of my talking here on this topic is the continuing shadiness around LV that hurts ordinary people in desperate situations. For me, this is not a forum to wonder aloud about what the next wonder drug is and how its stock price is faring. I don’t care. You can continue all you like, with whoever you like, but if I find it’s turning into a promo show for charlatans, I’ll pull the plug.
I also talk about other things on my blog here. I do what takes my fancy. It’s my blog. This is sort-of described here.
awesomely put
Where would we be without criticism? I for one applaud this website and others that go to considerable distance to report on companies with a history of running scams, MLM or not. I myself was quite taken by all the “proof” of how bad the company LifeVantage is and how phony the product Protandim is. I’m sure if we critiqued most other companiess, MLM or not, the way we’re attacking this one, you’ll come out with just as many skeletons and foul play if not more. Not everyone is a publically traded company sharing their private details with the world. I’ll give LifeVantage a little credit for the sometimes uncomfortable chore of transparency. After chaining myself to hours and hours then days and days of grueling research I’ve come to this conclusion.
1. LifeVantage exaggerates at least some of their marketing.
2. LifeVantage needs more human clinical studies to substantiate some of their product claims.
3. The Nrf2 science that their products hinge on is a rapidly growing field of study with currently over 4,000 research abstracts and growing steadily. Nrf2 is what sparked my attention the most.
So I went digging down this Nrf2 rabbit hole some more. I found a new drug, recently approved March 2013 by the FDA and made by Biogen. It’s called “Tecfidera” (dimethyl fumarate). It has A LOT of human clinical studies. It had to for FDA approval. Claims to help relapsing sufferers of multiple sclerosis. Guess what…it acts on the same Nrf2 pathways that Protandim claims to “activate”. If you’re a research nut, have fun cause there’s so much around this one drug and Nrf2 you’re gonna overdose! LOL. Never mind all the other research being done around Nrf2.
That’s the just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t believe me? Check out this one article link by Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/
Now look at the pricing for that drug. $54,900 PER YEAR PER PATIENT! A big pharma like Biogen spent some big money for this thing and they aren’t selling it cheap. Someone with a deep pocket not only saw the value of Nrf2 science, they funded a whole project to come up with a pill to help MS patients. Enough human clinical studies to drown in, some still on going for finding out more about its side effects, etc.
Put all the other crap being said about Protandim aside and focus for a moment on its possible connection to Nrf2. I found 16 research abstracts that mention Protandim. Of those only ONE was a human clinical trial and like a lot of the criticism says, was a fairly small group.
Here’s a link to that trial’s research abstract as published in PubMed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16413416
The other human clinical trial, as the scam busters report, failed to conclude Protandim was any more effective than placebo.
Here’s a link to the failed research abstract on PubMed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22268125
Ok so not enough human clinical trials agreed. Meanwhile LifeVantage parades around claiming that Protandim will help with aging and a host of other diseases and ailments.
Of the 16 studies published having used Protandim in their research, two of them are human clinical, the rest are animal/human cell in vivo or ex vivo. Of those 14 studies, 13 of them relate the induction of Nrf2 signaling pathways with Protandim.
Now we move to the so what? We induced Nrf2 in animal and human cells. That’s not proof of anything. I agree and certainly not enough to go on saying that it will help us fight the battles of aging. However, we must pay attention here. Those 13 studies were with research organizations, some of them completely independent of LifeVantage in terms of funding and their then chief science officer Dr. Joe McCord. Other institutions are studying Nrf2 science in combination with Protandim. What about just Nrf2 science without the use of Protandim? That’s where the 4,000 plus research abstracts come into play. 89 of them with studies involving phytochemicals (another word for Protandim’s herbal ingredients).
So what I’m saying here? don’t get too lost on attacking Protandim and LifeVantage. There is without a doubt something significant about this Nrf2 science. It needs to be evaluated more closely and more openly. The induction of cell nucleus gene expression from things that we eat is an amazing field of study in itself. It deserves attention. Don’t miss out! Whether it’s Protandim or some other supplement or drug, someone is gonna hit it on the head and it’s going to be huge. Ticfedra has already launched Biogen’s stock price LOL.
Thank you Strangely Perfect for providing this free and open forum to discuss new ideas and scrutinize existing ones. May the greater picture reveal itself to us someday and may we all marvel at it’s glory.
You don’t really know what’s going on do you? The company bought $5,000,000 of their stock back and invested $30,000,000 in Salt Lake Real Soccer team. Call me if you have any questions 301 337 7508, IBA
Cheers @Isaac for that insight. Unfortunately, you’ll need to supply more information to join the dots up for me. This post is about the legal proceedings twixt Jason Domingo and Lifevantage. If LV wish to run football teams instead of flogging a patented herb and spice mix then that pleases me. If they choose to do both, then it’s still SNAFU.
Launder as I thought !!! PUBLIC STOCK you deal with the FDC
I wonder why LAZY MAN is able to report on the World WW what is said W/O being sued if not true about a PUBLIC a company.
In addition just why is the stock in the toilet, where is a clinical scientist to P/U where J. McCord left LFVN hanging.
I am only 70 y o , Not my first party, but I see the Dirs. lining their pockets at the cost of the Reps Hipe, BEFORE THE CRASH !!!!!
LOOK IN THE TOILET, THERE IS MY STOCK AND THE MAJORITY OF US INDEPENDENT REPS. OF LIFE VANTAGE THAT ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN FOR THE COMPANY MGMT. AND OTHER PUBLIC STOCK HOLDERS, BEFORE THE LIGHTS GET TURNED OFF IN SANDY UT.
Mr Haney. Firstly, thanks for pointing out that my contact form was fucked up (I saw your FB posting on it). It’s now fixed. Also, sorry for the delay in moderating – I’ve been away from my machines.
Secondly, the truth is how you see it. I’ve just reported the state of play vis-a-vis LV & Domingo, with my general opinions. As I said, my hunch is that they’ll kiss and make up, much as Myhill & LV did. If I’m wrong, the subset of humanity that actually cares will be small. The LV word games will continue much as they’ve done in the past.
I don’t have a hidden agenda – it’s all here in plain sight. Whether it is “bad” news as you seem to think, is up to the reader to decide, obviously.
Thirdly, on the subject of facts. Your LinkedIn page reveals you to have been a LV distributor for less than a year. Your “summary” also cleverly states,
I’m assuming that this is Protandim you’re talking about. You should know that the protandim studies were flawed, with a mix of:
In fact, the only decent study, in humans, proved Protandim to be worse than a placebo! This is all methodically documented on LazyMan’s website, which you, as a Lifevantage distributor are naturally so very keen to dis. Well you would, wouldn’t you?
– see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-radical_theory_of_aging
With the above in mind, you should be very careful when blindly stating:
..because it hasn’t been proven! To date, a placebo works better than Protandim.
If you’re not talking about Protandim since cleverly, you don’t actually state it though you do state that you’re a LV distributor , then the above is just words.
Fourthly. Rapid growth of a business does not make it good. It just means that it has grown fast. That’s all. Herbalife and Enron grew fast. So do housing bubbles. So does cancer. None of them are good.
So, you are the bearer of the “the truth?” Well, let’s see: 1st you say. “this is despite the investigative activity into Protandim, LV’s main product, by LazyManAndMoney and others…!” To use “Lazyman” and “investigative activity” in the same sentence is disingenuous and wrong.Nothing of what he says trumps 29 major university studies, 15 peer reviewed studies at http://www.pubmed.gov and the real life benefits gained by Protandim users including me and my family. Then you say: Well. Most of what I have seen about LV fits into…” malfeasance? You, who are a common blogger with just opinions, unable to provide facts and proof to back up your statements know nothing about growing a publicly held (NASDAQ) company from $12 mil to $208 mil in four years. 2nd fastest growing company in the industry according to the DSA and 61st in the world. You are just another bad news broadcaster with a hidden agenda much like Brian McFarland who is himself the object of a lawsuit.
http: // www . youtube .com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IgAq6RJBo8M
Get your facts straight.