U.S. Food and Drug Administration
FDA Consumer magazine
November-December 2000
Table of Contents
By Tamar Nordenberg
Some parents who paid extra money to feed their milk-sensitive babies a special infant formula instead unwittingly fed them a potentially dangerous milk-based formula. Two southern Californians recently pleaded guilty to the crime of trafficking counterfeit goods and are paying back an infant formula manufacturer more than $200,000 for a scheme that landed mislabeled baby food in grocery stores in their state.
Shane Thompson, who also went by the last name Devisser, and Margaret M. Thompson, who sometimes used the last names Devisser and Bell, bought regular infant formula called "Next Step," which cost $7 to $9 per can, and replaced the cans' labels with glued-on photocopies of labels from the hypoallergenic "Enfamil Nutramigen" that cost three times as much. The husband-and-wife team milked their profits by returning the disguised cheaper baby food for the high-end refund.
"Here were two individuals presumably out to make a quick buck," says Jud Bohrer, a special agent in charge with the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI). "And the victims were the most vulnerable population, babies who had no choice in the matter."
Feeding a milk-based formula to infants who are sensitive to cow proteins can cause fever, vomiting, skin rash, and diarrhea. Says Bohrer, "Several mothers who unknowingly fed their infants the wrong formula had to rush their babies to the emergency room."
OCI special agents began investigating the sale of counterfeit Nutramigen infant formula in October of last year after getting complaints from Mead Johnson Nutritionals, Evansville, Ind., which makes both Nutramigen and Next Step. Consumers had reported to the company that the so-called Nutramigen looked different than in the past and appeared to be making their babies vomit or refuse to eat.
That October, OCI agents interviewed more than 100 duped consumers and store employees who had encountered the mislabeled product. The agents collected the counterfeit cans, which could be identified because they lacked the marking "NUTRAM" that was embossed on the bottom of the genuine cans.
Meanwhile, Mead Johnson notified major grocery store chains in southern California and area consumers to look out for the counterfeit cans, and FDA asked stores to check the driver's license or other photo identification of anyone who requested a refund for Nutramigen formula.
Within a month, the manager of a grocery store in Anaheim Hills, Calif., told FDA about a woman who had sought a refund for three suspect cans of Nutramigen. The woman's driver's license identified her as Anaheim resident Margaret M. Thompson.
The mere fact that Thompson was returning Nutramigen cans did not incriminate her because many concerned consumers were returning the counterfeit formula as well, Bohrer points out, adding, "We had already gotten dozens of ghost leads that led nowhere."
But this time, the I.D. checks yielded their reward when the U.S. Secret Service's forensics laboratory found fingerprints on the returned Nutramigen cans, underneath the fake label, that matched Margaret Thompson's fingerprints on file with the government in connection with a prior job application. "It certainly helped the Secret Service in quickly identifying the prints that Thompson had shown her real I.D.," Bohrer says.
Store employees who had seen Margaret Thompson trying to return the counterfeit product were also able to pick her out of a photo line-up of similar-looking women.
Other fingerprints lifted from the cans collected during FDA's investigation proved to be a match with those of Margaret's husband, Shane Thompson, who had committed crimes in the past.
"Many of the hundreds of cans we had picked up from stores had carried the Thompsons' fingerprints," Bohrer says.
In November 1999, OCI agents arrested Shane Thompson as he picked up his mail from a North Hollywood post office box. The following month, his wife voluntarily surrendered to OCI agents.
Based on their guilty pleas to three counterfeiting-related counts, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in July of this year handed down the Thompsonsí sentences: seven months in prison for Shane Thompson, which he has served out, and five years probation for him and Margaret Thompson. The two are jointly responsible for the restitution amount of just over $203,000.
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