Once a CPA, Not Always a CPA

The chief financial officer of a public company has come under fire for claiming to be a CPA, even though he let his license lapse years ago, according to published reports. Gil Fuller, the CFO of Utah-based vitamin maker and multi-level marketing company Usana Health Sciences Inc., let his CPA license lapse in 1986, according to state records, but continued to identify himself as such, even though state regulations don't allow that. Responding to a story originally published in The New York Post, Fuller told the Associated Press, "I say 'Gil Fuller is a CPA.' That is, in my view, an accurate statement. I should have gone on to say I let my license to practice public accounting expire." A Utah Department of Commerce spokesman said that the department was looking into the matter. A number of other Usana executives have recently been forced to revise their resumes, including a medical advisory board member who called himself a licensed doctor, but acknowledged that his medical license had been suspended; and a vice president whose Yale degree was in forestry, not biology, as he claimed.