Herbalife

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Probert, the president and chief operating officer of Herbalife

Ltd., was caught embellishing his academic credentials by a fraud

investigator who has bet against the company's stock.

Herbalife, a Los Angeles marketer of weight-loss products, has said Mr.

Probert received a Master of Business Administration degree from California

State University, Los Angeles. It mentioned the degree in at least 19

filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But Mr. Probert never finished Cal State's M.B.A. program, where he took

classes in the early 1980s, the university said. The disclosure came after a

critic of the company, Barry Minkow, hired a private investigator to verify

Herbalife executives' biographies.

In response, Mr. Probert, 51 years old, said he nearly completed an M.B.A.

at Cal State, but " the truth is that my vanity prevailed and I did not take

action " to correct Herbalife's biography of him " even though I was aware it

was not accurate. "

" I suppose that some of us who have been blessed with a certain degree of

good fortune are tempted to see the paths we took in romantic versus

strictly factual ways, " Mr. Probert wrote in an email. " I was wrong for

succumbing to my vanity and apologize for doing so. "

Herbalife sells products to a network of at-home distributors who, in turn,

recruit other distributors. Its business model has been under intense

criticism from Mr. Minkow, of San Diego, who has bought " put " options in a

bet Herbalife's shares will fall.

Mr. Minkow served jail time in the 1990s for stock fraud and later became a

Christian pastor. He founded a company that hunts for other fraud and has

won praise from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Full article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120908803557643829.html?mod=todays_us_marketplac\

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--

Ortiz, RD

" Be careful of reading health books

You may die from a misprint "