‘SUPREME GREENS’ INFOMERCIAL PRODUCER SENTENCED FOR FILING FALSE TAX RETURN AND DISTRIBUTING MISBRANDED DRUGS
BOSTON, Mass...A Plymouth man was sentenced today in federal court for subscribing to a false tax return and causing the introduction and delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of a misbranded drug, Supreme Greens.
DONALD W. BARRETT, JR., 36, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns to one year probation, three months of which BARRETT will be confined to a community correction center. For another three months of that probationary period, BARRETT will be confined to his home and subject to electronic monitoring.
BARRETT pleaded guilty on May 2, 2011, before Judge Stearns. On November 14, 2004, BARRETT willfully made and subscribed to a tax return that failed to include $573,724.94, a substantial portion of his 2003 income. BARRETT was an owner of an infomercial company, Direct Marketing Concepts, Inc. (“DMC”). An unaffiliated third company, Triad, processed credit card transactions on behalf of DMC from the sale of a product called Coral Calcium. Under this arrangement, Triad was responsible for providing 50% of the Coral Calcium net profits to DMC. In pleading guilty, BARRETT admitted that he asked Triad to send DMC’s share of the net profits directly to him rather than to DMC and that, in 2003, Triad sent BARRETT the $573,724.94 in Coral Calcium profits that he failed to include in his tax return.
On April 8, 2004, BARRETT caused the introduction of a bottle of Supreme Greens pills into interstate commerce, and that the bottle had been misbranded because it lacked directions for adequate use for the treatment of cancer or diabetes, two illnesses which a BARRETT-produced infomercial claimed Supreme Greens could prevent.
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz; Mark Dragonetti, Special Agent in Charge of the Food and Drug Administration, Office of Criminal Investigations; William P. Offord, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation in Boston; and Robert Bethel, Inspector in Charge of the United States Postal Inspection Service made the announcement today. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gregory F. Noonan, Gregg D. Shapiro, and James E. Arnold of Ortiz’s Health Care Fraud and Affirmative Civil Enforcement Units, with the assistance of Mark Josephs, Assistant Director, Consumer Protection Branch.
