Zac Bissonnette at AOL’s BloggingStocks nailed it on Usana’s conference call yesterday! He easily pointed out that none of the analysts asked any tough questions and everyone accepted Usana’s “move along, nothing to see here” explanation about all the fraud and misrepresentation uncovered by Barry Minkow, Fraud Discovery Institute, yours truly, and several other highly respected professionals.

I wonder what Zac would think if he knew that there was one person on the conference call yesterday who was prepared to ask some tough questions. But the moderator did not allow her to speak. (Yes, that was me. They didn’t let me ask my questions. Not that I was surprised.)

Here are a couple of great points from Zac’s post today:

Fast-forward to Wednesday’s conference call. Every question asked seemed to have a bullish slant, and assumed that the company was innocent. Questions centered around whether the company has seen an impact on sales from Minkow’s report, and whether the company saw this as an opportunity to buy back more shares. I spoke with Barry Minkow about the conference call and he said, “I don’t believe one thing they say” and also pointed out that “There was not one tough question allowed to be asked during the conference call.”

And my favorite part: the company described director Dennis Waitley’s resignation as due to an “inadvertent error” which Mr. Waitley had tried to inform them of but they had missed the memo, apparently. Here’s why this is funny: according to the Minkow’s report on the matter, Mr. Waitley reported an M.A. degree from the Naval Post Graduate School and a PhD. from La Jolla University. They were unable to find a record of La Jolla University as an accredited institution and it is believed to have been a “diploma mill.” And on the Naval Post Graduate School: “When contacted by our investigators, a representative of the school was unable to locate any record that the search subject graduated with the stated degree, and as such, it would appear that this assertion is untrue.”

It’s hard to understand how you would accidentally claim to have graduated with a degree you didn’t graduate with from an institution that you didn’t graduate from. It’s also hard to understand how one would mistakenly claim to have a PhD. from an unaccredited diploma-mill that no longer exists. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Zac’s got some other great coverage of the Usana matter here and here.