Georgia – After a six-week federal trial, a Georgia businessman with a long criminal past and the company he headed were found guilty of running a multimillion-dollar fraud operation that involved fake paperwork and fraudulent promises of product safety. The jury found Jared Wheat, the founder and CEO of Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, guilty of wire fraud because they believed he had been deceiving clients for years by making up certifications that showed his nutritional supplement company matched industry requirements for making products.
Federal prosecutors said the plan had been developed and had a wide reach. During the trial, it was shown that Wheat, who had already been convicted of two separate federal charges, chose to make fake certifications instead of fixing major safety problems at his company’s Norcross factory. A prominent independent audit agency found seventy-five problems during an examination in 2010. These included poor cleanliness, structural holes that may let pests in, and testing methods that weren’t good enough for both ingredients and finished products. Wheat didn’t do anything about these facts; instead, he made a fake certificate saying he was fully following federal Good Manufacturing Practices.
The Department of Justice noted in its press release that the certificate looked like it had come from an outside audit company called PharmaTech Consulting. PharmaTech wasn’t independent at all. Wheat controlled it, it didn’t check out Hi-Tech, and it was run on paper by one of Wheat’s old lawyers in Belize, whose signature was forged to make the paperwork look authentic. Hi-Tech then changed the real audit report by altering every failing mark from “Not Acceptable” to “Acceptable” and replacing the name of the real auditor with PharmaTech’s.
The false records didn’t stop there. Hi-Tech sent fake audit reports, GMP certificates, and changed FDA export documentation to customers in the US and abroad again and over again between 2011 and 2013. A lot of those consumers sent the fake papers to regulators in other countries, who used the assertions to let Hi-Tech items be sold there. During this time, the company made more than $4.7 million from customers who thought the certifications were real.
Federal officials stressed how dangerous this kind of fraud is for consumers. FDA and IRS prosecutors and investigators said that companies that sell FDA-regulated goods have a duty to be honest about how they make their products. They said that it took years of organized investigation work to figure out the scam and follow the money trail.
Wheat, 53, was found guilty of wire fraud on November 21, 2025. This crime carries up to 20 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and money laundering. The company could be fined around $10 million and put on probation for up to five years. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg will establish the sentence at a later date.
The FDA Office of Criminal Investigations and the IRS Criminal Investigations worked together on the case.
