Another vitamin maker official must revise resume

SALT LAKE CITY – Another executive at Utah vitamin maker Usana Health Sciences Inc. has been forced to revise his credentials.

Gil Fuller, Usana’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, has been described as a certified public accountant but let his license to practice public accounting lapse in 1986, long before he joined the company.

Utah authorities are investigating because state law doesn’t let people call themselves a CPA unless they renew their license periodically with proof of continuing education credits.

“We’re looking into it,” Utah Department of Commerce spokesman Jennifer Bolton said Tuesday, declining to reveal who brought the matter to the state’s attention. “It could be an administrative action, a possible fine, any number of actions the department can explore. But, at this point because it’s early, we couldn’t really guess.”

The discrepancy was first reported Tuesday by the New York Post.

Fuller said he didn’t mean to mislead anybody and that he had listed his CPA title as part of a biography in annual reports and proxy statements.

“I say Gil Fuller is a CPA. That is in my view an accurate statement,” Fuller said Tuesday. “I should have gone on to say I let my license to practice public accounting expire.”

Fuller said he took out a license in 1970 and by 1986 let it expire for other career pursuits. He joined Usana in 1996.

“My view is it’s a tempest in a teapot, but we’re happy to respond,” he said.

Fuller is the fourth company official to have to revise his resume recently.

Usana sales associate Ladd R. McNamara, who called himself a licensed medical doctor, quit the company’s medical advisory board last week after the Wall Street Journal reported his medical license had been suspended in Georgia and Ohio.

“He had stopped practicing medicine for some time, but the important thing to remember about Ladd is he was on a non-decision making board – really an idea board,” Fuller said.

Other Usana officials have claimed degrees they didn’t have.

In March, Denis Waitley resigned as a director after acknowledging he didn’t have a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., that proxy statements claimed was his.

And Timothy Wood, vice president of research and development, changed his resume to show his Yale University doctorate was in forestry, not biology as he had claimed.

Fuller said Wood’s dissertation was on a topic of biology and that he found it easier to describe his education by saying his degree was in biology.

Usana has come under repeated attack by a San Diego investigator, Barry Minkow, for its network marketing business model and once-soaring share price.

Minkow, who served time in prison for stock fraud and later started the Fraud Discovery Institute, has acknowledged he was shorting Usana’s shares, hoping to profit from a drop in the stock price. Usana says it has sued Minkow for defamation, but Minkow says he hasn’t been served any legal papers.

Usana shares, which peaked at more than $60 earlier this year, rose 58 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $41.36 Tuesday.