Article states Lions Not Sheep and Sean Whalen ripped out tags and put in Made In America tags to defraud people, but that's not what Sean Whalen (the business owner) says how it happened.
What he says about being allowed to remove the "blanks" tags is correct. Blanks are basically blank apparel made & sold for apparel printing businesses and you can rip out the tags and put your own brand information onto the product, as a matter of fact some tags comes perforated to make it easier to rip them out yourself. You can have the company you purchase your blanks from take out the tags for you, but it will cost extra, so lots of businesses either leave the tags, print on them and sell like that or they take the tags out themselves to put their brand info on. Usually printing them on, instead of sewing them in.
However, that is not what the FTC had issue with, but they changed their policy/regulation on what constitutes as "Made In America" products, and if the businesses missed their announcement on the FTC's website (apparently they don't send out notices to businesses about these changes) then they can get investigated and fined.
Sean Whalen admits because he didn't know the policy changed, he was out of compliance for 6 weeks, and said that he wanted to fight the fine, but he had to choose between them possibly shutting down his business and everyone that works for him would be out a job and it could take as long as 5+ yrs and cost millions of dollars, so he chose to pay the fine.
Below is the article I first saw about this, below that link is the link to the FTC's letter/article about their decision to fine the company, and below that is information to Lions Not Sheep & Sean Whalen's social media pages and to a video he put out today explaining how all this went down.
Utah-based company ripped out 'Made in China' tags, replaced with 'Made in USA,' officials say
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2022/08/08/made-china-made-usa-tags-swap/10264036002/
Federal Trade Commission Finalizes Action Against “Made in USA” Offender Who Ripped “Made in China” Tags Out of Apparel, Replacing Them with “Made in USA” Tags
Lions Not Sheep Owner Sean Whalen must Pay $211,335 and Cease Made in USA Fraud
Lions Not Sheep website:
https://www.lionsnotsheep.com/
Sean Whalen on youtube explaining what happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsUC1HayYs0
Lions Not Sheep FB page:
He's a cool dude, at least from what ive seen. Hes done a handful of podcast runs and he l's always shared good insights, comes off as a genuine character.
Thanks for posting btw, just was a bit unexpected.
Imo never purchased his goods but this wouldnt change my mind on the guy. Im sure most "made in usa" followed the same guidelines as he did for a long time.