Three make first court appearance in Nu Skin theft case
PROVO — Elizabeth Johnson Craig was Miss Utah 1991 and a popular youth speaker with two talks on CD sold through Deseret Book. Scott Lazerson founded an international charity, Interface Foundation, partnering with celebrities like Paris Hilton to eradicate hunger and poverty, reduce child mortality, combat HIV/AIDS and more. Brady Harper announced big plans to buy and develop Bridal Veil Falls in 2008.
That was then. Now, all three have been arrested on charges of theft and money laundering involving Nu Skin products. Craig’s CDs, “It’s Not the Dress, It’s the Girl in the Dress” and “The Power of a Plate of Cookies,” published in 2009, are no longer listed on the Deseret Book Web site. Harper, who pleaded in abeyance to a Class A misdemeanor of attempted securities fraud last year, has a hearing in the case Monday.
Lazerson’s attorney said his client was surprised when he was arrested last week.
“All I have is my client’s recollection of the facts, and based on what he’s told me, I can’t see anything criminal that he’s done,” Andrew Peterson said.
The three made their first court appearance on Friday morning. They are accused of stealing more than $500,000 in goods from Nu Skin and selling it online, making $20,000 to $30,000 monthly.
All three have been charged with a pattern of unlawful activity, theft by receiving stolen property and money laundering, all first-degree felonies, and selling articles bearing a registered trademark violation, which is listed in the court records as a first-degree felony but may be only a Class B misdemeanor.
The next step, Peterson said, is a waiver hearing on March 15, when the defense attorneys will decide if they want to have a preliminary hearing and make the state prove it has probable cause that these people committed these crimes. At this point, they do not have police reports or all of the information the state has, so he does not know what they will do.
“There could be reasons why we don’t want to put any evidence on at this point,” Peterson said.
Patricia Glenn, Craig’s attorney, declined to comment on any evidence matters because she has not been able to gather much of what the police have collected. The next three weeks will be spent doing discovery.
“This is just the beginning of the process,” she said.
Provo police Capt. Cliff Argyle said Lazerson was allegedly getting the products from two employees at the Nu Skin distribution center in Provo. Corporate security interviewed the two employees, who believed the company was donating products to Lazerson’s charity, Interface Foundation. Police believe Lazerson knew enough about the company’s operations and the right people’s names to sound legitimate to the employees. They believed he had authorization from Nu Skin, but the employees never corroborated his story with company authorities, Argyle said.
The interviews and investigation to this point indicate the employees were unaware that they could not give out the products, and Argyle said they have not been arrested and police are not looking to charge them at this point.
“How exactly he approached them and sold them on the idea right now is not clear,” he said.
Police also are looking into Lazerson’s charity to determine whether it is legitimate and if it was involved.
Argyle said police believe through interviews that the three knew what they were doing. They were selling the products online at a significantly marked-down price, he said, so the products were moving fast.
Police are looking through their records to ascertain how much money was coming in and going out.
“They had a pretty good business going,” he said.
Kara Schneck, the senior director of corporate communications for Nu Skin, declined to comment.
“It would be best to talk to the police about the investigation; it seems that they had enough evidence to make their arrests,” she said.
Craig and Harper allegedly were helping to package and sell the products, using the Nu Skin label, which is one of the charges.
