Poison Ivy Remedy Zanfel: A $20 Million Product That Does More Than Stopping the Itch

PEORIA, IL. – The customer buying the popular poison ivy remedy Zanfel likely has no idea that the product has financed far-right religious organizations, Republican politicians and lawsuits, including one that could destroy the product’s patent.

A decade ago, Zanfel’s developer, Peoria resident William Yarbrough, was hustling his poison ivy remedy Zanfel at local county fairs.

Today he’s a secretive multi-millionaire, spending his money on charities, religious proselytizing, Republicans and lawsuits against rivals and his own neighbors.

People who know Yarbrough, who has remained in Peoria despite his new wealth, are reluctant to talk about him.

“You’ll be stonewalled every place you go. I’ve seen people fired for admitting they knew him,” said former Yarbrough associate Jim Phillips, a Peoria minister and therapist and executive director of the Youth Farm, a not-for-profit agency that helps troubled boys.

“He takes things personal,” Phillips said.

Yarbrough, 51, a former audiologist, has not responded to interview requests. In 1999, he initiated a brief telephone conversation and predicted that Zanfel would make him rich. He was right.

Since 2003, Zanfel has grossed over $20 million, a federal court document states.

Zanfel removes the oily toxin called urushiol from the skin. That’s the substance on poison ivy, poison oak and other plants that causes an allergic reaction and the itching that drives people to spend lots of money on anything that might stop it.

Zanfel is sold without a prescription, and carried by drug stores and a Web site, www.zanfel.com.

People praise its effectiveness, though a few on websites say it didn’t help them and complain about its high cost.

Legitimate researchers have run clinical tests of Zanfel showing that it works. But Zanfel paid for the testing.

Yarbrough patented the Zanfel formula then sued one of his own distributors, Rite Aid Corporation which operates drug stores, for patent infringement, for developing a generic product for poison ivy relief that competes with Zanfel.

A small Chicago company, CADE Laboratories, was added to the lawsuit. CADE makes a similar product and produces the generic product for Rite Aid.

The lawsuit, working its way through U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, offers details about Zanfel’s beginnings:

According to these documents, in 1997, Yarbrough worked as a sales representative for a company that manufactures, distributes and sells “Mean Green,” a hand cleaner.

The documents allege that Yarbrough copied the Mean Green formula for Zanfel.

In the lawsuit, Yarbrough has denied copying the formula, but he also has told how he contracted poison ivy after venturing into the woods, used the hand cleaner and therefore discovered a new use for it and improved it.

The documents relate the story of how “because Mr. Yarbrough was orphaned as a child and homeless for a time, a portion of Zanfel’s profits have been earmarked for charitable purposes.

“To this end Yarbrough established (a foundation) dedicated to helping pregnant mothers and the homeless.”

The lawsuit that Yarbrough filed could come back to bite him and threaten the profits Zanfel generates. If the defendants win in court, the product apparently cannot be patented.

They also are alleging that Yarbrough withheld information on the patent application, but he has denied it.

CADE Laboratories president Cadey O’Leary Hershoff said the lawsuit has become “a nightmare,” but would not comment further.

Lawsuit documents state that she worked for Yarbrough to market Zanfel before setting up her own company.

Yarbrough alleges she copied Zanfel’s formula “down to the last detail.”

While the expensive federal court lawsuit poses a threat to Zanfel’s future, a small-time lawsuit in Peoria has already alienated Yarbrough from his neighbors, all living in the scenic 9300 block of Picture Ridge Road.

Three years ago, Yarbrough sued his neighbors Robert and Kathy Brown and John Schurtz over a 120-square foot piece of land.

This neighborhood feud began after Yarbrough built an 8-foot privacy fence that exceeded city zoning requirements of six feet, blocking his neighbors’ view of the woods.

City zoning officials required Yarbrough to lower the fence to the permitted six feet, but not until a dozen neighbors complained publicly about the fence at a city hearing.

Then Yarbrough sued the Browns and Schurtz over ownership of a strip of land adjacent to his residence. Legal fees now are higher than the value of the property.

The case continues, and none of the defendants would comment publicly on it.

Yarbrough also has been sued by others. In 1996, a bank sued him in Chicago and won a judgment of more than $118,000. The case finally ended last year after a lawyer threatened to have Zanfel stock sold at auction by the sheriff to collect the judgment, court records show.

As he was predicting future riches, Yarbrough said he planned to use Zanfel profits to set up a foundation to support missionaries from his fundamentalist church.

He set up the foundation, and the federal lawsuit states the Zanfel patent is licensed to the foundation, which is its sole owner.

The foundation’s tax returns are public records. Its purpose is “to support organizations which provide care and education to children, youths and young adults who may be neglected, abused, abandoned; to assist pregnant women with alternatives to abortion; to educate communities to basic Christian tenets.

The William M. Yarbrough Foundation had net assets of $5.6 million, according to its most recent tax return, for the year ending June 30, 2005.

The foundation had revenue of $1.7 million that year, and spent $593,850 on “program services,” and $387,390 on “management and general.

The largest donation of $250,000 went to Ministries of Mercy USA, 2229 N. Linn, Peoria, where Jim Phillips lives.

Phillips said he helped set up Ministries of Mercy USA, which began a program to feed the homeless that continues today in Peoria through the Salvation Army.

Salvation Army Major Merle Heatwold said Ministries of Mercy provides the funding for a Friday night dinner, which typically feeds up to 70 people at the organization’s Sylvia Fites Family Services Center in Peoria.

Heatwold would not confirm that Yarbrough’s Foundation provides the funding.

“Some people choose not to have publicity, and if that is the case we do our best to honor what they want,” he said.

Phillips, who once served as executive director of the foundation, said he resigned two years ago to pursue his private therapy practice, Associates in Christian Counseling.

Yarbrough became enraged and now refuses to speak with him, Phillips said. “His response was adversarial.”

Ministries of Mercy USA received $147,175 for the year ending in June 2004, out of $383,675 donated to various groups, none in Peoria.

But the following year, Peoria groups aside from Ministries of Mercy received a total of almost $25,000.

The largest donations went to the Youth Farm, where Phillips is executive director, which got $16,000. The Boys and Girls Club, an agency working with urban children, mostly African-American, received $3,000.

Leslie Matuszak, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club said she does not know Yarbrough and does not recall the donation.

She searched the group’s records and could not find anything from the foundation, but said the donation may have come under some other name.

The second largest donation of 2004-05 of $81,500 went to New Life Revival International, Inc., of Port St. Lucie, Fla. The founder of that organization is Henry J. Walker, who also was listed as secretary of Yarbrough’s foundation.

Walker’s Web site, which terms him a “prophet,” mentions his involvement in various radio and television shows and ministries including one in St. Louis, Mo.

His group received $37,500 the previous year.

Yarbrough has donated generously to Republican candidates and the Republican Party.

Since 2004, Yarbrough and his wife have contributed $21,000 to state Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Schock, 25, rose rapidly in Peoria politics from the School Board where he won with a write-in candidacy to become the youngest member ever elected, to the state legislature, where is also is the youngest member. In a close and expensive race in 2004, he defeated a Democratic party incumbent in a Democratic district of Peoria.

Schock was reluctant to talk about Yarbrough, describing him only as “a very private person,” and “a very hard worker, an entrepreneurial-minded person, very busy with his company.”

Asked whether Yarbrough socializes with local Republicans, Schock responded, “he’s a financial contributor of mine but does not attend all of my events.”

State Rep. Dave Leitch, R-Peoria, a long-time incumbent, has received $2,000 from Yarbrough.

“He’s very private. He’s quite a story but I don’t think he likes publicity,” Leitch said, adding “he’s a very nice guy.”

Most of the Yarbrough contributions have gone to candidates outside Illinois.

Since 2004, Yarbrough and his wife Dianne, a homemaker, have contributed more than $100,000 to Republican candidates for Congress and Republican campaign committees throughout the U.S., according to records from the Federal Election Commission.

Since 2004, the couple has been giving $25,000 annually to the Republican National Committee.

Dr. Eric Reinertson, a physician in nearby Pekin, Il., was one of Yarbrough’s early backers and investors. Reinertson’s comments about the effectiveness of Zanfel remain on the product’s Web site.

Like others who have known Yarbrough, Reinertson declined to comment or say whether his investment in the poison ivy remedy has paid off for him.

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