St. Pete company faked tests on kid-proof lighters

For more than 11 years, a St. Petersburg company hired to perform child safety tests on cigarette lighters falsified the tests and submitted fraudulent reports to federal regulators, court documents show.

In at least one instance, the tester covered up evidence that children had been able to ignite a lighter, meaning a lighter that did not meet federal safety standards might have been approved for sale.

"You'd have to have kind of a sick mind and a devious mind to do this," said David Baker, general counsel for the Lighter Association, the national trade organization for the cigarette lighter industry, which helped devise the child safety standards. "You're really threatening the safety of children."

The discovery of the fraud prompted federal regulators to order more than a dozen lighters off the market until they were retested and passed. It's not clear if any of them failed.

Two people, including Karen Forcade, the president of the company Youth Research, have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges; a third, who worked for a Tampa-based market research company, is under indictment. Youth Research is now defunct.

Relying on the fraudulent tests, the Consumer Product Safety Commission approved 97 different lighter models between 1994 and 2005, according to court papers. That number includes models similar to those tested, which were given expedited approvals because of the tests.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission implemented lighter safety standards after research showed children under the age of 5 playing with cigarette lighters had ignited an average of 5,900 residential fires resulting in 170 deaths and 1,150 injuries each year between 1986 and 1988.

"The safety of our lighters is critical," Baker said. "So when you have somebody fraudulently producing test panels, it's extremely bad, and of course it throws doubt into all the testing."

Baker said he worked with two companies that had tests done by Youth Research. As a result of the fraud, the firms had to have the lighters retested; they were found to be safe, Baker said. He would not identify the companies but said one has since gone bankrupt.

Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the Consumer Products Safety Commission, said officials don't know if any of the lighters that were retested failed.

The commission withdrew approval to import or sell lighters from companies that did business with Youth Research, Wolfson said. The companies were given the option to retest, and only the ones that were tested again and passed were allowed back on the U.S. market.

The commission would not be notified of any lighters that failed tests because companies would not submit them for approval for sale, Wolfson said.

The tests are supposed to involve panels of 100 children of specific ages and genders who are given dummy lighters that make a sound if activated but don't light. Federal guidelines spell out standards for the tests - for example, limiting the number of tests that can be performed by a specific tester.

For a lighter to pass, children must fail to activate it 85 percent of the time.

"If a lighter went on the market that's only 65 percent, somebody could have gotten burned," Baker said.

Wolfson said the fraud was discovered when a scientist noticed pecularities about the data submitted by Youth Research.

"He found similar handwriting on data collection forms from different testers, misspellings in the signed names of testers, and similar handwriting on all of the parental signatures on the handful of informed consent forms available for review," Wolfson said.

Through the fraud, Forcade, 61, gained between $120,000 and $200,000, her plea agreement states. Her attorney, Jack E. Fernandez Jr., would not discuss the case because she has not been sentenced.

Forcade has been called a pioneer in youth marketing research. She and her company were profiled in the New York Times in 1989 in an article describing how large corporations hired her to help them sell their products to young people by using their slang. The article described a seminar she gave at Campbell's Soup headquarters, providing guidance for an upcoming ad campaign for pickles. Youth Research was then based in New York.

It was not clear how Forcade and her company - which went bankrupt in 2005 - transitioned from consulting for pickle commercials to performing safety tests.

Baker said there are no requirements that companies that conduct such tests be certified or licensed. "I think anybody can get a business license and set up to do it," he said.

Baker said he was shocked to learn about Forcade's background from a reporter, adding he had thought she came into the business by working for another testing company and learning the ropes.

From at least as early as March 1994 through August 2005, Forcade either conducted or paid others to perform tests on lighters, according to court papers, including Forcade's plea agreement. Lighter manufacturers paid Youth Research $15,000 for each model that was tested.

Acting as the tester, Forcade altered birth dates, genders and schools to make it look like her data complied with regulations. In some tests, she took the data for children who tested one set of lighters, altered their birthdates by as much as five years and submitted the data for a second lighter test, according to court documents.

In one test in May 1998, she fabricated data for 96 of the 100 children who comprised a panel. She also changed the names of schools and testers to get around regulations that limit the number of tests in a school and the number given by an individual tester.

In February 2003, Forcade eliminated evidence on test sheets that a number of children had activated a lighter so that the lighter would pass the child resistance testing, according to her signed plea agreement.