Complaint Review: scott Connelly

MET-RX FOUNDER DR. SCOTT CONNELLY FINAL ACT OF FRAUD AND DECEPTION

Dr. Scott Connelly, the self proclaimed famed scientist fancies himself as the worlds leading authority in the field of sports nutrition and metabolic science. His claims include the invention and manufacturing rights to rare dairy bioactive fractions found within milk proteins. Connelly claims these fractions, which can be delivered orally in the form of medicinal chocolate milk, will heal bones and tissue in half the time, and he has the science to prove it. At least thats what he told more than thirty-five Midwest farmers and cattlemen, in order to bilk them out of more than $1M dollars.

For more than twenty years Scott Connelly has been reinventing these claims, starting with unsubstantiated science that his former company, Met-Rx, was a miracle cure for burn victims. Unfortunately for Connelly the only legacy he can substantiate is a long list of lawsuits for fraud, breach of contract and malpractice, to include multiple crackdowns form the Federal Trade Commission.

Rather than being a credentialed scientist, it appears that Scott Connelly is more likely the Bernie Madoff of the sports-nutrition industry, as he is referenced in recent court filings. And like Madoff, while allegedly having great wealth (selling his former company MET-Rx for $108 million), Connelly decided to prey on investors from Americas heartland for his latest caper. Bernie Madoff, unlike Scott Connelly,  never lied about his education. Connelly bilked investors by claiming to be a scientist with a protein that heals bones, yet Connelly is not a PhD, but an anesthesiologist with an undergraduate degree is in Psychology.

Sued once again by the company he recently founded, Connelly adds insult to injury by rewarding his loyal investors with a recent series of hate mailings. Scott Connelly finds merit in hijacking the companys database, encouraging both customers and investors to abandon the company and its products, where oddly Connelly is the single largest shareholder. While Connelly promised to make billions for his investors, evidenced by two legally recorded conference calls, he goes on to sabotage his investors by establishing a competing company with the intent to bankrupt the company so that he can keep all the profit for himself. Connelly even told one investor he would sell his private jet to fund bankrupt the company, and bragged about what he referred to as the companys obituary notice.

Scott Connellys Fraud Rampage

Scott Connelly has misrepresented himself for years in publications, in connection with his products, as court documents prove. This is evidenced by FTC rulings that Connelly was more of a drug dealer than a credentialed formulator, having been found guilty of spiking his products with illegal substances and steroidal compounds.  He has defrauded the public, the Federal Trade Commission, and has been sued by his business partners for fraud and breach of contract more than twenty-one times, and was actually found to enter into agreements without any intent to perform. His lifetime legal accomplice, Samuel Krane, of Krane and Smith, holds title to Connellys epic losses, complicit in his misdeeds and pattern of practice.

In the 1990s Scott Connelly defrauded the public and failed to produce any promised science for his metabolic reaction, aka MET-Rx.  Back then he claimed to be a Harvard trained nutritionist and that MET-Rx took him 20 years to develop. This formula (MET-Rx) he claimed literally brought critically ill patients back to life, and that over 20 hospitals used it for standard nutritional protocol, but over a period of 5 years he never substantiated the marketing claims. That is what led Lisa M. Kreiger, the Examiner Medical Writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, to write an expose entitled Miracle Food or fad? detailing Connellys lies in the MET-Rx marketing materials. Her research leads her to question whether he really graduated from Harvard Medical School and shows that the 20 years of Connellys alleged work amounted to zero published scientific studies on Metamyosyn or MET-Rx.

So how did Connelly do it? By aggressively spinning pseudo-science advertorials as credentialed publications.  In 1990 Connelly came up with MET-Rx, and joined forces with a great marketer named Bill Phillips, who went on to create EAS, sold to Abbott Labs for $320M. Bill had the trust of the consumers at the time because of his Anabolic Reference Guide, Natural Supplement Review, and then Muscle Media 2000. The ARG earned Bill trust in the sports nutrition space as he wrote about how to spot counterfeit steroids and even how to smuggle them into the country. In the 1990s steroids were prevalent in society and sports. The NSR was a book which provided lab analysis of all the supplements in the space, and was pitched as a consumer watchdog that would have unbiased reviews aimed at protecting them from bad supplements. The first issue was legit, but low and behold, the second issue spoke of the wonders of MET-Rx. MET-Rx was claimed to cause nutrient partitioning so that calories went to building muscle instead of putting on fat, and MET-Rx was anabolic and anti-catabolic just like a steroid. Nobody knew at the time that the magazine was actually just a clever front for marketing MET-Rx through what appeared to be 3rd party analysis. Later it was revealed that Bill Phillips was actually a partner of Connelly's, and the two were making substantial profit from these unsuspecting consumers.

This time around, instead of MET-Rx and the magical ingredient, Metamyosyn (which he paid someone to formulate both), he now uses Body-Rx and Whey Growth Factor Extract (WGFE), an ingredient that the foreign manufacturer hes in bed with, Murry Goulburn Nutritionals, is dumping in the trash by the metric ton. Why would a such a specialized, Nobel-level super-protein be tossed in the garbage? Because, like Connelly, WGFE is not what it is represented to be, and after years on the market with dismal sales, Connelly has attempted to rescue it from the trash by once again packaging his pseudo-science pitch.

In David Lightseys book Muscles, Speed and Lies, the author commits a whole subchapter to MET-Rx, which details how Scott Connelly tried to fabricate the science.

In the 1990s Scott Connelly also tried to launch Caf-MET-Rx, marketing protein-fortified, healthy pizzas, waffles and pancakes, but soon went broke. And today here he is again, trying to package that idea as new and novel under the Body-Rx banner, in direct contravention of his fiduciary duties to the other company he founded with the investors he defrauded. Connelly served as CEO and chairman of the board until his resigned on April 27, 2010, after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Connelly and his lawyer Sam Krane claim that Body-Rx does not exist, and that Dr. Connelly would never do anything to harm his own company, short of trashing it on radio shows and sending hate mail to investors and customers, disparaging its management and products.

Yet recently another lawsuit came up, filed by Ultimate Nutrition, where the issuance of a Temporary Restraining Order found that Body-Rx, Bakery Barn, Percon Protein Solutions Inc. (Perich/Connelly), whatever the name of the non-existent company is, was found to be marketing to the sports-nutrition and bodybuilding market. This stands contrary to claims by Connelly and his partner, Sean Perich, CEO of Bakery Barn, that they are merely making protein-fortified fruit loops and pizzas for soccer moms and obese children. As part of that suit, a marketing piece, listed as an exhibit, reveals Scott Connelly in his signature 20-year old Met-Rx gym pose, only this time with Body-Rx superimposed on the shirt. The Temporary Restraining Order was issued to stop Eric Howard, an employee stolen from Ultimate Nutrition, formally a client of Bakery Barn, from working for Body-Rx, to Launch Dr. Connelly back into the sports nutrition business, directly quoted by Eric Howard on his LinkedIn profile. Funny, because the 35+ investors who put their life savings into Connelly's other business were under the impression that THEY were the ones launching him back into the sports nutrition business.

In addition to corporate claims brought by PDB, Inc., the Company he founded and its affiliate entities, the investors are now joining by filing a class action complaint in Missouri. The causes of action include: fraud, breach of contract, and breach fiduciary duty, to list a few. Although Connelly attempted to settle his preferred method of legacy sanitation, PDB and its investors refused, realizing that after 20-years of fraud, Scott Connelly needs to pay.