Fake urine merchant sentenced to probation in Pittsburgh court

An Ohio man decided while studying the human body in college decades ago to help friends who needed a way to defeat retailers' employee drug tests, he said Monday in Pittsburgh federal court.

“When I started this business, I had no intention of breaking any laws,” David Neal, 62, of Middletown, Ohio, told U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti.

Neal pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to defraud the federal government and to introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.

Conti sentenced him Monday to five years of probation, with the first six months on home confinement, and fined him $7,500.

The judge also ordered the forfeiture of the drug paraphernalia the government seized from his now-defunct business, ACS Herbal Tea Co., and the two websites he used to market synthetic urine and various detoxification drinks, capsules and shampoos that are supposed to help people beat urine and drug tests.

Neal opened the business in 1993 and operated it for two decades, his attorney said in court documents. In each of the past five years, he made between $16,710 and $28,808 in net income from the business, said Paul Laufman, his attorney.

The government pursued the prosecution because pilots, truckers and others whose jobs affect public safety use the products to get around drug tests, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tonya Goodman.

Laufman said Neal cooperated with the government, shutting down even the legal parts of his business and turning over the websites. Saying it was probably an overstatement to call his client “an old hippie,” Laufman said Neal “did have blinders on to the far-reaching impact” of the products he sold.

Neal said he never considered that until a federal agent came to his house.

“I probably never looked at it like I should have before I talked to him,” he said.

Brian Bowling is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-325-4301 or bbowling@tribweb.com.