SEC, DOJ End Hampton Creek Investigations

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have reportedly ended their investigations into Hampton Creek’s alleged sales­-inflation buyback operation, in which employees purchased jars of the company’s Just Mayo product then sold the jars back to the company. Bloomberg initially reported that the company had expensed $1.4 million for “Inventory Consumed for Samples and Internal Testing” while reporting $1.9 million in sales during the same period, but a forensic consulting team with an accounting firm commissioned by Hampton Creek apparently found that the company spent less than half of one percent of sales on the buyback program. Additional information on the Bloomberg report appears in Issue 613 of this Update. See Fortune, March 24, 2017.

Issue 629