Wire Fraud—Salad Dressing

Two Chicago-area men have been indicted on charges of wire fraud, product tampering, and misbranding consumer food products.^[1] According of the US Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois, Ross Marks and Charles Farinella “illegally relabeled 1.6 million bottles of salad dressing to say they expired a year after they really did.”^[2] Allegedly postdating labels “on eight- and 16-ounce bottles of assorted varieties of Henri’s salad dressing,” the two men allegedly sold the bottles for $546,000 to stores across the region and country.^[3] The labels the two men allegedly used were “sticky enough that when peeled off, they would destroy the label underneath.”^[4]

According to the indictment, Mr. Marks was the President of Division Sales [hereinafter DS], an LLC in the Chicago area which “was in the business of buying merchandise and food products, then reselling them to discount stores and wholesale distributors throughout the United States.”^[5] Mr. Farinella was the President of AMG, which “was in the business of buying merchandise and food products, then reselling them to discount stores and wholesale distributors throughout the United States,” and AMG subleased space from DS.^[6]

Mssrs. Marks and Farinella allegedly “bought approximately 1.6 million bottles of Henri’s salad dressing from ACH Food Companies … located in Memphis, Tennessee, in exchange for $50,000. … At the time of the purchase, ACH advised [Mr.] Farinella in writing of the expiration dates on the salad dressing and warned that ACH could only guarantee the freshness of the products for 180 days past the ‘sell-by’ dates on the labels.”^[7] Mr. Marks allegedly “instructed his assistant at [DS] to type a letter falsely stating that ACH had granted permission to relabel the Henri’s salad dressing bottles with [fake] expiration dates. … [He] further instructed his secretary to photocopy the letter over a genuine letter from ACH so that the ACH letterhead appeared at the top of the phony letter.”^[8]

The alleged wire fraud, which is criminalized by 18 U.S.C. § 1343, occurred when the defendants wired money from Chicago to a banks elsewhere.^[9] The FDA violations, under 21 U.S.C. §§ 331(a) & 333(a)(2), allegedly occurred when the bottles were distributed with false and misleading expiration dates.^[10] And finally, the product tampering, prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1365, allegedly occurred when the defendants tampered with the labeling and shipping containers.^[11]

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[1] Natasha Korecki, Feds: Salad Dressing Should Have Been Tossed, Chicago Sun-Times, Jul. 13, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Angela Rozas, 2 Charged in Sale of Expired Salad Dressing, Chicago Tribune, Jul. 13, 2006.
[5] United States v. Marks, Indictment 1 (N.D. Ill. 2006).
[6] Id.
[7] Id. at 2.
[8] Id. at 3.
[9] Id. at 5-7.
[10] Id. at 9.
[11] Id. at 10.