Business

Herbalife warns distributors about ‘lead’ seller

Herbalife has reined in one of its top producers — a longtime distributor who runs an online lead generation business.

Distributors for the LA-based distributor of nutritional products have been told not to buy any leads from Online Business Systems, a business run by Shawn Dahl, who claims on the company’s website to earn $396,000 a year as an Herbalife distributor, The Post has learned.

Dahl is one of the elite Herbalife distributors in the so-called “Chairman’s Club.”

The Herbalife directive came in a Feb. 14 advisory — a copy of which was seen yesterday by The Post.

The advisory also told distributors not to “sell, endorse, recommend, promote or use leads or advertising services provided by OBS” — apparently based in Vancouver.

Herbalife distributors have complained about losing money on purchased leads that went nowhere. Some complaints — which specifically mention OBS — were filed with the Federal Trade Commission and made public after a Freedom of Information Act request by The Post.

Herbalife said it issues such advisories from time to time.

The OBS memo and the move to clean up part of Herbalife’s multi-level marketing business comes as the company battles an accusation by hedge-fund activist Bill Ackman that it’s a pyramid scheme.

The company denies the allegation.

Dahl is not unknown among those in the multi-level marketing world.

The OBS site, which shows people enjoying fancy homes, cars and yachts, links to a separate site, IncomeAtHome.com. That site was also mentioned in the FTC complaints.

There, folks looking for extra income while working from home are asked to give their name, address and phone number.

In a 2010 YouTube video, Dahl extols the good life Herbalife has afforded him and his wife. Dahl said his wife’s parents, who were making $30,000 per month working for Herbalife, got him into the business.

“I saw the income they were making and the tremendous lifestyle,” he said. His wife, Nicole, chimed in that “you feel like you’re on top of the world” with Herbalife.

In 2004, Dahl’s mother-in-law, Deborah Jane Stoltz, and her business partner, Marilyn Thom, were fined $150,000 by Canadian authorities after pleading guilty to running a pyramid scheme through a company called Global Online Systems.