The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ladd McNamara, a high level distributor for Usana Health Sciences Inc. has quit the company’s medical board following a report by Barry Minkow and the Fraud Discovery Institute that McNamara lied about his medical credentials.

The article states in part:

The incident was the latest in a series of credentials issues for Usana, a Salt Lake City vitamins maker that has grown rapidly but is facing much investor skepticism following a March report that questioned its business model and sales ethics.

The distributor leaving the medical board, Ladd R. McNamara, is one of the foremost of Usana’s 160,000 sales associates and was featured in an audio recording that the company used for recruiting on its Web site. In the recording, Dr. McNamara identified himself as a “licensed medical doctor, board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology.” He said he had been recommending Usana’s nutritional supplements to his patients since 1995.

But the investigator who wrote the March report, Barry Minkow, revealed last week that Dr. McNamara no longer had a medical license. Dr. McNamara voluntarily surrendered his license in Georgia in 2004, in response to allegations that he improperly prescribed medication to a family member, according to Usana spokesman Joseph Poulos. His board certification as an obstetrician expired in 2005, according to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. And, this April, Dr. McNamara agreed to be banned for life from practicing medicine in Ohio, according to that state’s medical board.

This is just one of several problems with the credentials of people affiliated with Usana. The first was the revelation by Minkow that board member Denis Waitley did not have the credentials claimed in Usana’s SEC filing. The second credential problem relates to Dr. Timothy Wood, who Usana claims has a PhD in biology, when the degree is really in forestry.

Get caught up on the Usana drama by reading these posts.