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In filings on January 30, 2024, the firm representing Spartan Mosquito in its SLAPP against me requested permission from the judge to withdraw as counsel. The stated reason was failure to pay. Alan L. Frank Law Associates (Jenkintown, PA) has been representing Spartan Mosquito since 2019, so the unpaid bills could have been substantial. Here’s the withdrawal motion:

If Spartan Mosquito doesn’t come up with a new attorney by February 28th, the judge can issue sanctions and/or dismiss the charges against me (see order, below).

This will be an interesting year for Spartan Mosquito. Most states in the country still allow sales of the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator (active ingredient: table salt), but regulators aware of the class-action settlement might decide that it’s finally time to enforce state laws and ban the scam. E.g., states are not supposed to allow sales of pesticides that make false claims about efficacy (e.g., “table salt kills mosquitoes”) but dozens do.

Word of the class-action settlement is also likely to turn off some consumers, too. I think the company will always have a core number of true believers but likely not enough people to float a company as large as Spartan Mosquito.

I also see resignations in the company’s near future as salaries and bonuses are cut and employees realize they are working for a company that is based on fraud. Some of the employees now have “Open to Work” badges on their LinkedIn profiles. And then there are the people who don’t even list Spartan Mosquito as their employer on LinkedIn, a group that now includes Jeremy Hirsch (co-founder, chairman of the board), Chris Bonner (co-founder, vice president), Anthony Brett C onerly (president), Karen Bonner (secretary), and Josey Hood-Hirsch (treasurer). The CEO, Christopher Spence, left the company in November, 2023, and deleted all mention of Spartan Mosquito from his profile (he was there for four years). Rats, sinking ship.

If you want more details on the company’s tubes, I’ve listed my past posts here.

Below are some documents that detail regulatory actions against Spartan Mosquito (AC2T, Inc.), a Mississippi company that markets tubes filled with sugar, yeast, water, and either table salt or boric acid. Most are letters denying or revoking registrations to the Spartan Mosquito Eradicator, one is a Notice of Warning from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one is a fine for selling illegally (in California), and one is a denial of registration for the Spartan Mosquito Pro Tech (also by California). I am still trying to obtain denial letters from Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. In addition, there could be other states that have denied registrations but have not disclosed that fact to the public.

I am posting these documents on my website so that state and federal regulators can see what concerns different agencies have had with the company’s pesticide products. This is needed because there is no formal procedure by which one state informs all other states that a pesticide product is violating the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), a problem especially important for pesticides that manufacturers claim are exempt from EPA regulation but are not. Similarly, when the EPA warns a company that it is not in compliance with FIFRA, that notice is apparently not forwarded to states that might be selling the flagged product.