By The Planet.Com Ripoff, Give out credit card and bank information to other websites and companies!! Gainesville Florida

The new bytheplanet.com website (legal name: By The Planet, Inc., a Florida corporation based in Gainesville) was taken over by YourBodyNaturally.com, which is owned by By The Planet, Inc.'s biggest vendor, Lotus Light Enterprises, Inc. About 70% of By The Planet, Inc.'s products are from Lotus.

If Lotus bought them out or if By The Planet, Inc. went out of business is not clear at this time. By The Planet is past due in filing their 2007 annual business report with the Florida Division of Corporations, and their regular phone numbers have been disconnected so the odds are they are out of business, which doesn't surprise me.

As a former employee, I can tell you, and that I saw with my own eyes, the President of By The Planet, Inc., Anthony McKnight is one bad person. His behavior in business included: not paying vendors on time or not at all, keeping double books, skimming off the top, using corporate monies for personal expenses, tax evasion, failure to file tax returns and pay tax, filing of fraudulent tax returns, pocketing employees witheld federal witholding, social security and medicare taxes instead of paying it to the IRS, failure to pay overtime to employees, falsifying financial statements to get capital from investors, and use of illegal pirated and cracked software. In addition, alcohol and drug use were rampant on the job.

By The Planet was sued a total of five times, Mcknight was sued four times. The IRS has tax liens against By The Planet totalling $68,985.62. By the planet has been audited by the IRS, the FL Dept of Revenue, and the U.S. Dept. of Labor. All this is a matter of public record.

When payments were received in cash, of course McKnight would pocket it and not report the income. Even worse, when people paid by credit card over the internet or by phone, people's credit cards, their credit card information was left wide open for anyone who just sat down in front of a computer of theirs to access and see. It's no surprise some were stolen.

Looks like Anthony McKnight is now being held accountable and suffering the consequences for his bad behavior. Good.

Do yourself a favor, avoid By The Planet like the plague.