American Greed: The Promescent Affair | CNBC Prime

this is the American greet podcast presented by CNBC my name is dr. Ronald Gilbert and I'm here to introduce Perm essent a treatment for premature ejaculation men are starting to by promesa not to treat PE but just to last longer now who knows where it will all in 52 year-old dr. Ronald Gilbert was shot and killed at his medical office just before 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon sex drugs money and murder a case of greed on an international scale I'm CNBC special correspondent Jane wells and I'm Chuck Shafer executive producer of the CNBC original series American greed on this podcast special the whole mess and affair the drug promises to be a game-changer in the bedroom for millions but after its discovery comes money and a murder and a David versus Goliath battle ensues over its billion-dollar secret to great sex this is the American greed podcast welcome everybody to the latest American greed podcast special the promise an affair promise n't ya I am joined by CNBC special correspondent Jane wells hello and Jane what's promising okay it's uh if you're in the car you can't see it it is this it's a little bottle that has I don't know a couple fluid ounces in it it's a spray that men spray on their private parts for a condition known as premature ejaculation or PE so we're talking about putting this tiny bit of spray right on your on a man's private parts on an erect penis no yes exactly it's the opposite of Viagra so PE is the opposite of Edie Edie is when you can't get the party started PE is when the party is over before you even get going did we mention this is for adults yes um we're gonna have a lot of bedroom talk a lot of private part - okay yeah everybody in the car yep so now you've been warned so this it's a it's considered a far more widespread problem people think it could potentially be a very very large market and there's also not just men who suffer from PE but men who might just want to extend their performance time because historically there is a gap between arousal between a man and a woman and an orgasm and this is supposed to help close the gap and I think I read 64% yes prohm essent makes the claim that it can extend demands performance up to 64% longer so if you're two minutes you know now you're like 3 minutes and 20 seconds that sort of thing there have been many products on the market for years that sprays this is a lidocaine brace base spray that have been on the market stud 100 and a couple other things what is unique about promesa and whites the number one seller on Amazon is it has a patented protected absorption formula where it is absorbed by the man to desensitize him to extend performance without be impacting his partner so whoever he's having sexual relations with will not be affected by this will not feel numb correct okay correct without getting too personal what got you involved in the story well in 2013 in October 2013 the story came across I don't even remember how it came across but this sort of campaign for this new sex drug it was a big splash and and I thought it would be a an interesting story to do just because I'm always looking for weird stories and then I found the back story about its creator which was pretty fascinating as well 2009 is when it went to market dr. Ron Gilbert was the urologist in Orange County California who he had seen many patients come in for years saying that they suffered from PE and either current products didn't work sometimes people prescribed antidepressants and you didn't wanna be on a mechanic medication and he thought if he could create an effective over-the-counter inexpensive accessible way this could market could be huge I mean Edie viagra was already a billion-dollar drug and why why couldn't this be again not just for men suffering from but men who wanted to extend performance we called it a billion-dollar secret to great science exactly so the market is there right even if you don't have PE I bet men and women out there know that there is a gap between when he's happy and when she's happy usually and this was too short sort of close that gap okay so he was he developed it how did it really come to market how'd it get in the bottle well so dr. Ron Gilbert worked and worked for years very popular successful urologist in Orange County creating it spending money and then in 2009 he launched it with a company called absorption pharmaceuticals and tried to you know he wasn't a businessman mm-hmm and so he came out actually in 2010 with a YouTube video where he's in it explaining what the drug does and it's got some kind of sort of cheesy like who's the man I'm the man sort of ad campaign this the man I'm introducing per method a safe and easy to use topical strength that helps you temporarily slow the onset of ejaculation she's the man come to me my name is dr. Ronald Gilbert and I'm here to introduce perm essent and then around 2011 he brought in his very good friend Jeff Abraham who was his patient they had become friends and Jeff was a retired executive and he said you know will you come on board and help me really scale this company so Jeff came on as CEO in 2011 to try and scale look try so he was the businessman who would bring this tomorrow absolutely okay and how did that work out the goal was to build it and prove proof of concept and then sell it to a huge conglomerate who could then scale it like viagra okay and things were working out well but how where's dr. Gilbert today dr. Gilbert is dead he was murdered in cold blood shot ten times On January 28 2013 as he opened the door to an exam room dr. Gilbert had been married for 24 years to Elizabeth Gilbert and they had two sons and that morning she was in New York for a hearse they had a son in New York and she went to a friend's wedding and they had spoken on the phone that more and they were just he was driving to work and they were kind of at a place where life is good that afternoon she said she did something she always loves to do and she told us about this she always liked to walk down Madison Avenue issues in New York and it was a cold windy day all of a sudden I felt like my my soul was leaving my body I was so I cannot describe it it was just so bizarre so different than anything I could even walk it was like literally I had to make such effort to take a step so I got back to the apartment I'm laying in bed and I just I don't something was missing him in me you know like seriously my soul was not there and and I I was too getting all these phone calls and I couldn't answer I didn't have the strength to answer the phone and then the partner called and then I realized something's happening so I pick up the phone I answer him and he just said you know patient came in later she returned the phone calls and found out that at the moment she could no longer walk was the moment her husband was murdered Wow what a connection yes and she was devastated even flying back she didn't know who who would kill he was the head of the synagogue he was head of his department at the hospital he didn't seem to have an enemy in the world this just she couldn't understand mm-hmm why would somebody want to kill him was it over this was it over this this is the weirdest story and this is one of the weirdest parts of this whole saga dr. Gilbert was killed by a van a 75 year old man named Stanwood alkis who 21 years earlier had a botched prostate surgery at the VA where dr. Gilbert worked at the time Ron Gilbert did not do the surgery but the surgery did not go well and Stanwood Elka's for years said he was incontinent he couldn't have sexual relations with women and that he discovered later that he actually didn't need the surgery and he blamed Gilbert for this and held this grudge that grew white 21 years who knows why even though dr. Gilbert was the man was not the man who conducted the surgery and so leading up to January 28 2013 he got his will and order he started to make arrangements he was telling people neighbors they might not see him anymore and he made an appointment to see dr. Gilbert at his office that day under an assumed name Allan Gould was the name and he goes up to the receptionist and she asked for his ID and he says oh I left it in my car he goes into the exam room he had purchased a weapon a clock earlier the month before and as soon as Gilbert opens the door he just shoots him in cold blood he tells chording the police and prosecutors he tells the office staff who hear these shots call the police I'm insane hands them his weapon the police arrived and Gilbert died right there in the hallway so he shot this man he went to trial what was his defense that he was insane that he had was taking antidepressants his meds were off and he was his mental capacity was increasingly diminished and then he lost his mind but the fact that he had bought them well how did gonna ask you how did the prosecution knock that theory down they showed that he had been planning this for months if not longer and that he had put his affairs in order that he had gone and bought this weapon that he had apparently been researching a driving in snow not near the doctor's office how to get to the doctor's office 15 miles or something yeah and yeah and so they the jury believed that he that this was not in the act of an insane man but that's someone who would with a sound mind had planned this for a long time and to make things even a little more poignant about the company about the friendship Jeff Jeff sent a text to dr. Gilbert that morning yeah another sad twist that very morning that very morning Jeff Abraham texted Ron Gilbert they'd had an offer come in again they wanted to sell this company he had sent me a text message 43 minutes before he was murdered and said hey thank you very much you know we got that offer you know the things are going well and the future is really bright and I said I texted him back and I said fasten your seat belt the rides just getting started and to have to go from that euphoria to him literally being dead 46 minutes later it's hard to grasp so you hate to say after murder moving on but it's a company moving on well this was a big deal for Jeff what does he do you know the company the product was Ron's dream and just he's devastated as well here's his good friend and he thinks what do we do with this company so I thought if I stayed and made this successful it would do two things it would give him a legacy which I thought he deserved and it also would provide for Ellie and the boys right then sales were like one point yeah one and a half million for that year so they were but they were there were scrappy guys who were like making a website and trying to sell and get this thing going to show that it proof of concept so he debated whether or not to just throw in the towel and move on but then Jeff Abraham said that every time he would Google his friend it would come up dr. Kiehl by crazy guy yeah and he told me I don't want that to be his legacy and he also wanted to provide money for the family so he decided to pursue this and we'll get back to that later the wife and two kids the wife the widow and two kids at this point and who were in you know they're in their prime there was no way that they should have something like this happened to him so he decided to go ahead and continue with the company try to scale it and try to sell it so that they could all walk away there were also about a dozen or plus other investors that had put in money so that they could all walk away into the sunset and have left dr. Gilbert a legacy including on their web page was a part dedicated to him and what kind of person he was to try to counter all this doctor killed by crazy guy headline stuff and then this is when I found out about the company so Ron Gilbert is murdered in January in October of 2013 so you know nine months later I get wind of this story and I do a story for CNBC where I talk about move over viagra there's a new sex drug in town at that point they were doing one and a half million dollars in sales and and you know there were Jimmy Kimmel was joking about these products and all this kind of momentum was growing for it and that's when I first spoke to Jeff Abraham Jeff is an unusual man he's now 61 he has the energy of an 18 year old he suffers from lupus and diabetes he he's he's a a blue-collar guy from Pittsburgh who still got that street fighter in him who moved to California in the 80s because he wanted to go to California I never been outside the sort of area where he grew up andrey rivers yeah exactly and started a tech company and it always been just kind of this Stryver he's a fighter and he's so full of passion and this drug is the greatest thing this product and we're gonna sell it and we struck up a professional friendship over the years where he would always contact me and I always said look when you to a big company I want to break the story and he's always been all once in a while we're getting close we're talking to so and so we've gotten so and so but nothing was ever quite closing so what happens after that well the next year in 2014 they get the dream interest from a company called Reckitt Benckiser which is also called RB it is a major UK household goods conglomerate they did about 16 billion dollars in sales last year I think their market cap on the foot seas around 60 billion dollars there they're kind of like I don't know what would you call them like Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson type company they had they owned Lysol and mucinex and earwig Air Wick and they also owned Durex condoms and KY which they had acquired so they hired a guy a consultant in Europe named Stefan Dupree who is a famous veteran acquisitions guy his RB buys companies so they said look we've got KY and directs now why should go out and find something for us to buy to help boost the brand and he did his research and he found this product promising he saw that it was the number one seller on Amazon he investigated the company he tested it out he became a huge believer and he said I think I got the perfect thing for you so he goes to RB and then with all this information and so that's when RB contacts Jeff Abraham about possibly doing a deal ok so they start they become they begin discussions they begin and Jeff Abraham at one point flies to New York to meet the head of Arby's sexual wellness division a guy named Volker Sydow to have their first face-to-face meeting and Abraham told us it was the sort of meeting you dream about it was one of those meetings that if you have a company for sale you dream about the he was immediately impressed and at the end of that meeting the first day he literally shook my hand and pulled me close to him said we're gonna get this done in 30 days we're gonna acquire you in the next 30 days and he actually named the project project speedy so they wanted to test the product and so Jeff gave them a bunch of Pro messin for their top executives allegedly and he ends up getting an email back from this Volker Saito @rb in all caps saying it works great this is fantastic and so he thinks well you know money's coming in pretty soon we're gonna get this deal done RB had a couple of concerns they wanted to know how big the market was they wanted to know if the product worked well he thinks after he got the all-caps email saying it really works they think it's great that's fantastic oK we've solved that problem then came the issue of how big is the market well to prove to them that it was big and they wanted no profit margins they wanted to know how the how Pro medicine was formulated they signed according to him non-disclosure agreements and we can't open the kimono he saying business Jeff Abraham claims he showed them profit margins he showed them the formulation for Pro messin and most importantly he showed them market research who was buying the products and how often they were rebind the products because if you have customer retention that shows that the product was working and popular so he claims he shows all this information for them then they keep wanting more there are more questions suddenly they wanted 15 kilos of Pro mesen according to Jeff Abraham that's 33 pounds yeah it's great it's a pound of that's for sure for testing through their consultant stefan de pret tree and then RB still came back mean this went on over months and then RB according to Jeff came back and said we're gonna do our own survey to see how big this market is and he said fine you know can I see the results of the survey and he says they told him yes they did a survey allegedly they came back to him and they said you know what we think according to him we think this markets only worth around 20 million dollars we're gonna take a pass he said twenty million dollars you've got to be kidding me can I see the results of the survey and he said he was told no and that he said hey we had an agreement and that they said no you're not gonna see it never saw it they didn't quite close the door so now we're into 2015 things are kind of still dragging into 2016 originally according to Abraham they were first talking about a deal where they would pay him 20 million dollars and a 6% royalty to acquire the company and the product and in fact they talked about how there was an agreement on the desk of the global CEO in London Rakesh Kapoor not just some CEO of US sales but on the top dog for the entire company this is what he says he was told they say they have emails that that can prove this but Jeff Abraham became so suspicious that he finally asked someone at RB are you getting ready to knock me off and he was said he was told no no no no we don't make products we buy product please knock me off I thought he meant like murder well I know I realized this is American greed image oh yes exactly but you mean knock off his prom knock off the product he went to them he said are you gonna knock off promesa and they said no we don't do that we we don't make products we buy products trust but verify yes so then came the fall of 2016 mm-hmm he had gotten wind here or there that there was something in the works and it was making him nuts I would occasionally get a phone call or an email like you won't believe what's going on it's sort of a preview of what was to come one night in the fall of 2016 Jeff Abraham and a date go to see the Pet Shop Boys in concert in Las Vegas where he was now living at this point Pet Shop Boys of West End girls opportunities absolutely he was now living in Nevada he'd relocated the company there maybe for tax reasons also he said he wanted to get out of Southern California cuz you everywhere he went he was reminded of his murdered friend yeah so they go to the Pet Shop Boys concert in a venue and they come walking out on the strip afterwards and across the street is a huge electronic billboard like they on the strip when you know different ads or things that go by and the ad on this billboard says last longer than a Vegas marriage so it's very catchy and his girlfriend looks at it or his date looks at it and she sees that it's a spray and it has something to do with the bedroom and PE and she says hey I think that's your product whoo and so he looks up and in his own hometown it is not promising it is a new ad for this product called duration by KY which is made by RB a lidocaine based spray to treat premature ejaculation that sounds familiar it sounds very familiar yeah he looks up and he told us he felt sick he thought he was gonna vomit because his worst fears had come true he felt he was still negotiating in good faith he felt the door had not been shut completely he was afraid they were knocking off his product and he was concerned that the non-disclosure agreements he says that they both agreed to were not being honored and he felt here was proof in the biggest way possible that they had brought a competing product onto the market into his market after four years talking to him and he had told them everything trade secrets that's the key to this case when is a secret a secret a trade secret legally speaking is something that you know your company knows that the public does not know and could not find out now often in these negotiations you reveal trade secrets because you've signed non-disclosure agreements when a company rips you off allegedly and steals your trade secrets you have to prove that it was actually a secret in other words that you didn't have a sales man a Salesman blab somewhere yeah about your secrets you had to prove that you took reasonable measures to protect your trade secrets Jeff Abraham insists that he did what's interesting is then when they launched duration by k-y that fall of 2016 according to ad age it was the largest ad launched by that RB had ever done since purchasing KY from Johnson & Johnson it was a massive they did billboards there were stories there were ads which seems an awful lot of money for a market that you only think is worth 20 million dollars so he's now out of luck you know out of millions out of what I mean he's he's hurtin Jeff Abraham is one of the most unusual people I've ever met he fights and he decided to sue our be suing them for a hundred and fifty million dollars which is about one percent of their revenues for 2018 and Jane it's important to note that you've tried multiple times to get our be on the record for an interview but they've declined and the company also denies Jeff Abraham's claims suing for 150 million dollars is one thing but suing the lawsuit couldn't wouldn't a big company just wait him out or hit him with paid worker so he hired a high-priced attorney and accused them of fraud sued them for theft of trade secrets and also for unlawfully using their clout in the marketplace to harm Prohm essent their product and we can get into that in a minute I mean there were several things that were going on but he has also done this before in 1999 Jeff Abraham sued Hyundai in a very unusual case which made the CBS Evening News and Forbes at that time he owned one of the top engineering technical headhunting firms in the country he was based in Los Angeles employment he would find engineers Hyundai was building a new factory or plant or something in Oregon and he got the lucrative exclusive contract to source engineering executives and text for them he started doing that then he got a call from his liaison who said I got word from the bosses here do not send us any more women or minority candidates we don't want them so he is this is 1996 is when this actually hit me so he's a bit taken aback by this I could have followed their instructions and no one would have known because I'm the only one who had the jobs so someone's not aware they're being too terminated against if they never know what job exists because they had me working on these jobs but I didn't feel what's right so he went over this his liaisons headed Hyundai and talked to the president of the operation and said you can't do this this is you know this is the United States of America we don't operate this way this is wrong and that he said he was told you're right we'll take care of it next day his contract was terminated he was fired and then they were not gonna pay him so they did take care of it picked it but they also learned who Jeff Abraham is he went out and sued them and it took a while for him to find a lawyer who was willing to take on Hyundai in this case but he did I talked to that lawyer Steven Hodge they went to court and at a certain point Steven Hodge told me hyundais attorneys high-powered attorneys came to him in first settlement talks because it was actually getting close to trial mm-hmm and at that point he said Jeff told him yet I could settle for $100,000 so he says to Hyundais attorneys will settle for $100,000 literally the attorney laughed in his face and that was the last settlement talks they've ever had so they go to trial the jury awarded Jeff Abraham fourteen point seven million dollars Hyundai appealed and they later reached a confidential settlement and in one of the greatest ironies in this story the same defense firm which defended Hyundai Shepherd Mullen back in the late 90s against Jeff Abraham is now defending RB right now against Jeff Abraham and what are they saying about his claims well he claims several things against fraud that they defrauded him trade secrets which we'll get to in a minute but one of the other fascinating things about this case is he's also accusing them of unfairly using their clout in the marketplace to harm him now competition can be fair or it can be illegally unfair the day before duration owned by RB KY was launched the allegedly knockoff product right Pro messin Jeff Abraham's product was being profiled on the CBS show the doctors one of the doctors on the show they had a joke about a hey let's let's talk about this new product for premature ejaculation this is the day before ok and one of the doctors takes it home and he and his wife were in bathrobes and they're joking about it then they filmed it and they filmed it but they didn't film the music but they filmed them you know doing their little you know give it a test drive well we'll report back he comes on the show and he says it's amazing and as he begins to say the name of the product he gets the pee out it's put on the audio cuts out and when they cut to a close-up of the product his hand is covering up the name the next day this launches from a company which is a major advertiser in the United States it's a product called duration by KY owned by RB coincidence I reached out to CBS and the producers of the doctors to try and get comment they wouldn't they would not respond but the wait there's more hmm as duration was hitting the market promising Jeff Abraham's product absorption pharmaceuticals product was the number one seller still is on Amazon suddenly as this product duration by KY comes on the market promising starts going behind an adult curtain they call it on the website when you try to search for it in other words you need it doesn't come up right away you have to go behind some sort of filter whereas other PE products including one called literally do me long and hard was not being put behind the adult curtain and duration wasn't promising was now Amazon was accounting for the bulk of their sales at the time right so this would hurt and this only started happening when duration came to market according to Jeff Abraham so they'd have to argue with Amazon to get it back out from behind there turns out coincidentally perhaps the head of Amazon's vendor relations for these sorts of products is a man named Rahul batula who just came over to Amazon a few months earlier after working three years at RB RB says he never had anything to do with either product amazon says he has nothing to do with either product we tried to reach out to him individually and could not get any comment from him but wait there more then there's target heading into 2016 Jeff Abraham said he had a verbal agreement hmm with target to put promesa in 1600 stores and various SKUs various sizes that he spent four hundred thousand dollars to create the appropriate packaging to be on the shelves Jeff Abraham claims all of a sudden he was hearing from Target oh you know what we're not that interested we're gonna pull back we're not gonna use you there too many products in the market he says he flew to Minneapolis to target headquarters at that point and screamed and screamed and said we had a deal we've spent all this money target agreed to put one SKU of that in their stores but there's much more duration in their target not commenting saying vendor relations are confidential so all these companies are saying they really can't comment mm-hmm including RP so all we have is Jeff's word and well we have Arby's counterclaims which finally came out in the in the lawsuit I have to say over the last several months i I've had a few conversations with RB nothing on the record and I've really only can on the record tell you what they put in their counter suit to him hmm they call him a liar they said he's lying among other things about all the interests all these companies had to buy Pro messin to by absorption pharmaceuticals that he was hyping it to them and so that they were felt under pressure to spend money in time to investigate the product jeff denies this his attorneys deny this but they also point out that even if he did lie that's irrelevant to whether or not they ripped him off and stole his trade secrets so we get to their key claim trade secret new trade secrets there's an interesting thing about trade secrets lawsuits they've taken off in the last couple years since Congress passed a federal law the defense of trade secrets Act it's much easier to now file a lawsuit alleging theft of trade secrets that it is to go file a patent spend all that money to get your product patent protected and then file a patent infringement suit so you've seen a lot more according to Peter Turin who's an expert lawyer in this told you've seen like this 30% jump on the first year in trade secrets lawsuits what's interesting about promesa is it does have patent protection and that is the one thing they are not accusing Arby of stealing and I'm gonna get in the weeds here okay the patent protected part of this is in the absorption and there is an ingredient and an ingredient in it called final-final which is basically thyme oil okay there is debate now RB is arguing that that ingredient violates the FDA paper from the 70s on what can and cannot be in here they're saying that that's not an acceptable ingredient there oh that's why they couldn't make a deal with him that's why they're saying we wouldn't buy this product cuz we were concerned it would violate the FDA protocol for this thing and so we walked away and we decided to make our own product that didn't have thymol in it we'll get back to that in a minute they hire two consultants RB did according to Jeff Abraham's attorneys one set that I malls not a problem and the other one said I don't know it could be a problem Jeff Abraham's attorneys at Cross scour Jonathan Weiss went out and hired a PhD from Caltech and chemistry an expert witness who says this is absolutely not a problem so that is the heart of the issue one of the hearts of the issue is look we walked away because we could we were concerned if we bought the product we wouldn't be able to get in trouble later with the NDA when it came to the theft of trade secrets the only thing that I could see in the paperwork is that they are B as claiming that the secrets had been told somewhere else before including in a podcast so that they were no longer secrets now they don't specify what kind Jeff Abraham is denying that he ever revealed things like a customer tension repeat sales marketing profit margins all these sorts of integral secrets that you wouldn't want to tell anybody except in due diligence so there they're saying basically he's a liar the product wouldn't pass FDA muster and his secrets were not secret that's their defense at this point and his team denies all of those this look all corporations get sued but this is an Army's first lawsuit correct there's also a case where they were sued and it also involves another American small startup company and it also involves a bathroom I'm going to show you a book here this is called the whoo of poo and it's written by a woman named Susie batise and entrepreneur in Dallas who started a company I think in 2007 called poo pourri I actually profiled her I've done a story on her too not even knowing the our paths would cross mm-hmm she poopourri is a spray-on toilet spray you spray it on the water and it's oil-based and it's supposed to not let the smell of number two the smell of poo escape into the room it's something she hated she worked for years you spray it on your poo goes in the gaseous state trapped there's no smell whoa oh it's amazing by the way have you a reason I will save marriages saved her mm-hmm she did what I interview to the Uriah day she had 30 million dollars in sales and she had a viral hit on YouTube where a proper young woman with red hair and with a British accent is sitting on a toilet saying I just dropped the mother lode okay and so was sort it was a very very funny popular ad well a couple years later another product came on the market in Europe called VI poo by air wick which is owned by RB hmm and it had an ad campaign about a well-dressed woman who goes and sits on a toilet Wow now this was for a UK product but they had filed the paperwork to perhaps market it in the US so she sued they settled terms undisclosed she can't talk about it right but she wrote this book the whoo of poo the copy I have before they settled an India in it she talks about once upon a time there was a big chemical company that fell in love with poo pourri [Music] they were obsessed with us they took our sales and marketing materials and convinced themselves it was okay to claim those trademark properties as their own since they couldn't be us they decided to rip us off and she called the company wicked err wicked Airwick and okay yeah yeah so they settled but but Abraham found out about this lawsuit as he was pursuing his own as as proof that they have a history of ripping people off and their claim that it's a coincidence well they've got a comment on a paparika by the way Eric now sells it I think it's called a via Air Wick VIP in the US so they are marketing after they have settled with Susi parties they won't comment on that or they won't comment to me on this at all but they can deny they deny everything and it's important to remember Chuck that this case has not gone to trial yet yeah and we don't know what a jury will decide mm-hmm Jeff is a marketer so there was always a bit of showman in that or what can you say about that I mean is there anything that just just doesn't ring true to you or doesn't or his you know where are we with him as a character or as a witness in this trial here are the issues I see one of them relevant actually here the issues I see and I'm not sure how relevant either one of them are mm-hmm one is what kind of offers was he really getting on the table and again auxiliar jumpin II made an offer allegedly in 2012 they have a term sheet I asked repeatedly to see the term sheet I'm told I can't is this by both sides the pharmaceutical company and Jeff's sorry the story well RB isn't telling me anything I only know auxiliary yes zillion went radio silent they've been purchased by endo right I called email nada but Jeff's attorney says I can't see it at the moment because it's been designated highly confidential under the discovery order I've asked repeatedly to see some sort of proof that there was an offer made the other thing is he said one of the reasons why he wanted to keep the company is so that he could eventually sell it or at least the profits of it go to help Ron's Widow and two sons right they have not received any money from the company yet how does she feel about that she trusts she told me we have an interview with her where she says she trusts Jeff implicitly Jeff is I mean very few people are left in this world that I like him you know there's a reason why my husband attached himself to him I think he keeps his word and then after runs that he has been by our side from day one and she supports this lawsuit jeff says that there has been no money to go to any of the investors that he has actually himself loaned the company hundreds of thousands of dollars if they've tried to scale it and now they've got to pay a very high-priced lawyer Jonathan Weiss from Proskauer to prosecute well not to press it to bring this claim and she supports the lawsuit and we have her saying this as well saying it's a matter of integrity that the big guy cannot do this to the little guy and she supports Jeff 100% the evidence that I've seen in the court papers includes an email from arbie's head of sexual wellness saying this is fantastic the product really works that's the one thing I have seen hard and fast in the evidence other things about like him being told they're gonna pay him twenty million dollars and a six percent royalty that there's a deal a contract on the desk of the CEO I have not seen that however in a very unusual move and a huge win for Jeff's side the judge in this case ordered that the global CEO of Reckitt Benckiser of RB be deposed in this case in London okay not the head of North American sales no the top guy rock Kesha Kapoor hmm because the judge said in her ruling that his fingerprints are all over this thing if in fact these charges are true so Jeff's lawyers went to London and deposed Kapoor mm-hmm coincidentally the same week he announced he will be stepping down by the end of the year Oh coincidentally so the end of 2019 he's out correct okay so Jeff Abraham seems much like RB has been in court more than once he's also gone to court on a few times what what is he I asked him that I said you you know you sued Hyundai you're suing our B there's also a small company in Florida called Endor which was another p/e product he sued because they were making false claims and he won that and he points out to me and he told us this he's never lost and no one's ever sued him so they're calling Jeff Abraham a liar in one part of the case they are they're claiming that he has made false claims of superiority of permanent over other products in the market including theirs and RB actually wants monetary damages for that true and because it's a big market will it be a lot of money they are not putting up they're not putting a figure on it whereas Jeff has put 150 million dollars they have not put they just want damages for that to send a message from their perspective and they even say this in their court papers here was this startup which had no track record of ever selling a health care product before and the way they paint the picture it was kind of a mess he brought in an outside investment banker to try to clean everything up for them so why bother with them why bother with him why why buy it yeah you know why buy well you're a mess we'll go out and make our own product where does Jeff fault if Abraham fall and the idea of was just so naive to just give us away when do you think if someone's asking for 15 kilos of your product and you don't have a term sheet yet that something tells you I shouldn't be doing this so I asked him I said where do you you know dumb I've thought about that quite a bit because in hindsight you always want to kick yourself but looking back on it no since these are to what they claim different products why is there a case trade secret law I talked to a couple of different experts in this that doesn't matter that can still be considered theft of trade secrets and even if you don't have a non-disclosure agreement courts can still find that you stole trade secrets it's an interest the key to this case if it ever makes it to trial mm-hmm and we don't know yet if it will will be did they steal information from him whether or not they used it and was it really a secret so right now we wait for a trial we wait we wait if there is a trial it probably will not happen until next year there's always a possibility of a settlement Geoff Abraham has vowed that he wants to go to court I want my day in court I want people to know what happened I want I want this to not happen again I want companies to realize just because you're 20 billion or 40 billion dollars or whatever and you see an entrepreneur with an idea you can't go why buy it if we can just steal it it's not right we'll see we will see how this all turns out and we should follow you to find out how and how do we follow you Jane at Jane wells on Twitter I will continue to follow the case and send updates as they come in and I'm sure CNBC will be quite interested in the story too and we'll bet we'll have to come back and do a follow-up when it's all finished I agree so you can also follow us at at American greed TV and I hope you do thank you one I want to thank Jane wells for joining us today thank you and I'm Chuck Shafer executive producer of American greed and thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time and remember don't get taken thanks for listening to the American Reid podcast presented by CNBC you

Channel: CNBC Prime

Views: 135,267

Rating: 4.4182639 out of 5

Keywords: CNBC Prime, CNBC, American Greed, Greed, Scoundrels, Suckers, Schemes, Broken Dreams, American True Crime, True Crime, True Crime TV, True Crime Documentary, Stacy Keach Jr., The Fugitives, Justice, Money, American Greed show, American Greed podcast, American greed interview, promescent affair, promescent affair cnbc prime, promescent affair american greed, jane wells, chuck schaeffer, jane wells american greed, jane wells american greed podcast, cnbc prime podcast, AG podcast

Id: VNzil-ptDlU

Length: 45min 12sec (2712 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019