A Cedar Rapids man who admitted to making false on-line claims about a former employer faces up to 10 years in prison. Court documents show 40-year-old Luke Truesdell pled guilty to one count of communicating false information that a consumer product had been tainted and one count of making a false statement to the FDA.
Truesdell admitted in a plea agreement that on January 26, 2012 he was fired from his job in Linn County. He then called the F.D.A. and told them he was a Hepatitis-B carrier and falsely claimed he had bled into batches of an FDA. regulated consumer product made by his former employer.
Truesdell also admitted to posted the same false claim on the Facebook Page of one of his former employer’s customers. Court officials have not released the name of the product or identity of the employer.
Truesdell is now awaiting sentencing with the maximum possible sentence being 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.