Source: United States v. Young Living Essential Oils — Federal Criminal Docket (2017)

Summary

The docket of USA v. Young Living Essential Oils, No. 2:17-cr-00541 (D. Utah), PACER case 106989, before Magistrate Judge Dustin B. Pead. Filed 2017-09-18, terminated 2017-09-21 — a criminal case that opened, took a guilty plea, imposed sentence, and closed inside four days.

Young Living, the Utah County essential-oils direct seller and one of the state's largest direct-selling employers, pleaded guilty to both counts of a misdemeanor information and was ordered to pay $500,000 to the Lacey Act Reward Account, $125,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and $135,000 in restitution to the Government of Peru. This is the primary record of a criminal conviction of one of Utah's largest direct-selling companies, and it exists in the corpus because the U.S. Attorney's press release about it cannot be captured (see Reliability Notes).

Two documents on this docket carry the underlying facts, and only one of them is out of reach. The Misdemeanor Information (entry 1) does have a text layer and is now a page of its own — the charging document — which supplies the statutes, the plant, and the Peruvian law that this docket omits. The 46-page Statement in Advance of Plea (entry 5) is an image scan with no text layer, so nothing can be quoted from it without OCR. The docket's own entry text is what this page rests on.

Useful Claims

• Young Living Essential Oils pleaded guilty on 2017-09-18 to counts 1 and 2 of a misdemeanor information in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah; the court accepted the pleas and sentenced the company the same day.
• The sentence: a $500,000 fine payable immediately to the Lacey Act Reward Account, $125,000 payable within 30 days to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $135,000 in restitution to the Government of Peru, and a $250 special assessment.
• The company was also ordered to "abide by all conditions set forth in the compliance agreement discussed in court and included in the Statement in Advance of Plea."
• Judgment was signed 2017-09-21 and the case closed the same day; the defendant is recorded as terminated 09/21/2017.
• The docket lists "Jared Bennett and EleanorColburn" as attorneys for the plaintiff. Read against the charging document's signature block, that is AUSA Jared C. Bennett together with Elinor Colbourn, Senior Counsel for Wildlife Programs in the Justice Department's Environmental Crimes Section — main-Justice wildlife counsel rather than a second Assistant U.S. Attorney, and a name the docket both misspells and runs together.
• Young Living was represented by Craig D. Galli of Holland & Hart in Salt Lake City, with Gregory E. Goldberg appearing as counsel; the docket shows his motion for pro hac vice admission (entry 3) but no order granting it.
• This docket does not state the statutes charged, the conduct, or a probation term — the dollar figures and the payee (the Lacey Act Reward Account) are the only signal on this record of what the counts were. That gap is now filled by the charging document, not by inference.

Verbatim

"Sentencing held on 9/18/2017 for Young Living Essential Oils (1), Count(s) 1, 2. Fine: $500,000 to be paid immediately to the Lacey Act Reward Account and $125,000 to be paid within 30 days to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Restitution: $135,000 to Government of Peru. SPA: $250 total payable immediately." — Entry 4, Minute Entry, 2017-09-18

"GUILYT plea is entered to counts 1 and 2 of the Misdemeanor Information. The Court makes findings on the record and accepts the GUILTY pleas." — Entry 4, Minute Entry, 2017-09-18 (the clerk's typo is in the record)

"Defendant company shall abide by all conditions set forth in the compliance agreement discussed in court and included in the Statement in Advance of Plea." — Entry 4, Minute Entry, 2017-09-18

"JUDGMENT as to Young Living Essential Oils (1), Count(s) 1, 2, Fine: $500,000 to be paid immediately to the Lacey Act Reward Account and $125,000 to be paid within 30 days to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Restitution: $135,000 to Government of Peru. SPA: $250 total payable immediately. Defendant Termed. Case Closed. Signed by Magistrate Judge Dustin B. Pead on 9/21/2017." — Entry 6, Judgment, 2017-09-21

Reliability Notes

A federal criminal docket is primary tier: it is the court's own record of what was charged, pleaded, and ordered. What it is not is a narrative — docket text records outcomes, not conduct, so the familiar account of this case (rosewood oil harvested in Peru, spikenard from Nepal, CITES permits, retail value of the products involved) is nowhere in this capture and is not asserted from it here. Part of it is, however, in the record: the charging document names spikenard, the missing CITES re-export certificate, and the Peruvian decree, and it is captured on its own page. The distinction to keep is between what a document is silent about and what the case file lacks — an earlier version of this page implied the second when it meant the first.

The copy quoted here is a mirror, not the court's own file. The captured document is the RECAP Archive's copy on archive.org, uploaded from PACER by the Free Law Project. Nobody is obliged to preserve it, so treat the mirror as the weak link in an otherwise primary record; the court's own copy is retrievable by anyone with PACER access using docket 2:17-cr-00541. RECAP dockets are also only as complete as the last contributor's fetch — this copy ends at entry 7, dated 2017-10-05, so later filings may exist without appearing here.

No press-release account of the sentencing is cited, deliberately. The U.S. Attorney's release would be self-reported tier and, in any case, cannot be captured: justice.gov returns an Akamai bot interstitial rather than the article, and the Wayback Machine holds no snapshot of it. The court record is both stronger evidence and reachable.

Related Pages

• Source: United States v. Young Living Essential Oils — Misdemeanor Information (2017)
• Utah's Direct-Selling Industry