If your BS detector doesn’t already go off when you watch commercials for Enzyte “Natural Male Enhancement,” then listen to what a former vice president of the company that manufactured the product had to say about it:

James Teegarden Jr., the former vice president of operations at Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, explained Tuesday in U.S. District Court how he and others at the company made up much of the content that appeared in Enzyte ads.

He said employees of the Forest Park company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back up claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

“So all this is a fiction?” Judge S. Arthur Spiegel asked about some of the claims.
“That’s correct, your honor,” Teegarden said.

The company’s founder, Steve Warshak, is on trial, facing 20 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines if convicted. More goodness from the VP:

When customers ordered a product, the company’s goal was to keep charging their credit cards for as long as possible, Teegarden said.

He said first-time customers were automatically enrolled in a “continuity program” that sent Enzyte to their homes every month and charged their credit cards without authorization.

“Without continuity, the company wouldn’t exist,” Teegarden said. “It was the sole profit of the business.”

If customers complained, he said, employees were instructed to “make it as difficult as possible” for them to get their money back. In some cases, Teegarden said, Warshak required customers to produce a notarized statement from a doctor certifying Enzyte did not work.

“He said it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small penis,” Teegarden said.

What a jackass. Here’s the worst part. In order to keep the company from losing its ability to accept credit card payments, they would make small unauthorized charges on their customer’s credit cards. This made it appear to Visa and Mastercard that a smaller percentage of their transactions were resulting in charge backs, and allowed them to keep accepting new customers. Evil.

Former exec: ‘Enzyte’ ads all lies [Cincinnati Enquirer via Fleshbot (NSFW)]

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