In the 1960 and early 70s Schlitz battled with Anheuser Busch for top of the beer market. It was said that Schlitz and not Miller was the beer that made Milwaukee famous. So, what happened to this top brand and why do we not hear about it anymore?

Numerous factors occurred which pushed Schlitz into obscurity. First, they made a poor decision to change the way it made its beer and the alternative was not received well, second, they had an ill-advised in your face advertising campaign that not even a young and beautiful Terri Garr could save, and third they bribed their way to market share and disguised the cost of bribing the market. What resulted was the firing of numerous executives starting with the VP of Marketing and including the Direct of Field sales. Schlitz plead no contest to federal charges and paid a $761,000 in penalties. But its executive talent was drained.

Recently, Esther Mobley’s piece in the San Francisco Chronicle summarized a federal criminal complaint alleging that Jessica Goebel, owner of J. Go Events in California, was the fifth person charged in complaints pertaining to a pattern of illegal behaviors where producers and wholesalers were bribing retailers to take on their products. The federal complaint names two people, Matthew Adler and Bryan Barnes, as the figures directing Goebel to bribe retailers with gift cards in exchange for product.

Further, the complaint alleges that expensive luxury goods and super bowl tickets were some of the offerings tendered to retailers to induce them to buy a specific supplier’s product.

And the complaint seems to insinuate that Ms. Goebel’s firm was used to funnel gifts through and the firm held proceeds in a bank account that employees of a supplier, wholesaler, or retailer could use.

What is really going on?

The question is not whether this happened but how high did this go up and who knew about this alleged illegal scheme. If one thinks that Jessica Goebel was out on her own island and Matthew Adler and Bryan Barnes were rogue actors, then you would have believed in 1972 that the Watergate scandal was limited to a handful of disaffected Cuban exiles.

To setup third parties to funnel the alleged activities through and as a source of funding in order to conceal activities, does not happen without the consent of higher ups. I don’t think it is a stretch to say someone in the C Suites approved or some lawyer designed this plan and their finger prints are all over it. Whether someone from the legal field or C-Suites gets implicated in an illegal scheme remains to be seen.

What will happen?

The federal government’s filings are dribbling out, first Patrick Briones from Albertson’s, now Jessica Goebel, but the picture gets clearer with each filing.

Will we have the Daley scenario in Chicago, where the top guy is never charged while his schmucks take the fall and go to jail, or will the feds as Schlitz liked to say, go for the gusto?

I guess a lot depends on how the smaller fish like Mr. Briones and Ms. Goebel cooperate and how important of a cog they were in the wheel.

In the Schlitz case nobody was charged, and the entity paid a fine on the criminal charge. Here it remains to be seen whether anyone will face criminal charges. Based on history, criminal charges will probably not be filed against the offenders. But what remains to be seen is whether members of the C-suite of major alcohol companies will be schlizted in the coming year and handed their walking papers.