Herbalife has found multiple hidden listening devices — bugs — in its Los Angeles headquarters, according to a report on Friday.
The bugs, discovered over the last year, were “non-governmental,” according to the report on Fox Business Network, which cited unidentified sources.
Fox did not say how Herbalife or its sources knew the bugs were placed by a private entity.
Herbalife has been locked in a heated battle with hedge fund activist Bill Ackman since December 2012. Ackman’s Pershing Square has bet more than $1 billion that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme and that it will be shut down by regulators and that its stock will sink to zero.
Herbalife, a multilevel marketer of nutritional shakes, strongly denies the allegation.
“Clearly the company feels it’s been spied upon by outside forces that are not the government,” FBN’s Charles Gasparino reported.
Gasparino later tweeted that Ackman denied any connection to the bugs.
“We have no idea and we are uninvolved in the listening devices found at [Herbalife] headquarters,” Ackman told FBN, according to the Gasparino tweet.
Herbalife shares rose slightly on Friday to close at $61.70 a share.