There are business owners who accumulate glowing customer testimonials, industry awards, and inspiring stories about entrepreneurial success.
And then there is Ron Kilgarlin, whose business history includes a $14.7 million federal consumer-protection judgment, a disastrous pandemic-era sales operation, a multimillion-dollar bankruptcy, and a federal appeals court opinion that reads like an extended indictment of how not to treat customers.
The FTC Judgment
Federal consumer-protection judgment against American Screening, Ron Kilgarlin Jr., and Shawn Kilgarlin.
Entered January 31, 2023. Affirmed on appeal June 27, 2024. The defendants were held jointly and severally liable. The judgment amount does not establish how much was ultimately collected.
Kilgarlin founded American Screening, a Shreveport-based medical-supply company that sold drug tests, diagnostic equipment, and other healthcare products.
When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, demand for masks, sanitizer, gloves, and protective equipment exploded.
American Screening went after that demand.
It advertised products as available, accepted customers’ money immediately, and promised rapid shipping.
What happened next was so extraordinary that the Federal Trade Commission sued, won, and obtained a judgment exceeding $14.65 million against American Screening and the Kilgarlins personally.
The company appealed.
It lost.
And the Eighth Circuit’s June 27, 2024, ruling delivered an assessment of American Screening’s conduct that no amount of glossy branding can erase.
The court said the company had “capitalized on the public’s fear.”
That wasn’t a disgruntled customer’s interpretation.
That was a federal appellate court describing the conduct underlying a consumer-protection judgment.
Now Kilgarlin’s name has surfaced in the public registration records for American Peptides, a company selling research chemicals in a marketplace already generating its own controversy.
Before examining that connection, let’s revisit what happened when Kilgarlin’s earlier business encountered a national emergency and an avalanche of customers desperate for protective equipment.
When America Needed Protective Equipment, American Screening Promised the World
March 2020 was a frightening time.
Hospitals were scrambling to obtain protective equipment. Nursing homes needed supplies. Medical practitioners and businesses were trying to protect employees and patients while the availability of masks, gowns, and sanitizer became increasingly uncertain.
American Screening presented itself as a supplier capable of meeting that demand.
According to the Eighth Circuit’s published opinion, the company advertised PPE on Google and through email campaigns.
Its website represented that orders could be processed quickly and shipped within 24 to 48 hours after processing, subject to availability.
Other messaging suggested shipping within seven to ten business days.
The problem?
The representations were inconsistent, products advertised as available were frequently unavailable, and actual fulfillment bore little resemblance to the optimistic promises.
The company’s customer-service manager testified that PPE orders took approximately six weeks to ship in practice.
Six weeks.
Imagine a hospital or nursing home desperately ordering protective equipment during the opening weeks of a global pandemic, believing it could arrive in days, only to discover that the promised inventory was effectively a mirage.
Customers weren’t shopping for novelty coffee mugs. They were trying to obtain protective equipment during a public-health emergency.
And according to the court, American Screening wasn’t merely suffering ordinary shipping delays.
It continued accepting orders and payments while failing to provide the notifications, cancellation opportunities, and refunds required by federal law.
Some customers received substitute products they hadn’t ordered.
Some received nothing at all.
And many struggled to recover their money.
The Customer-Service Department Became a Monument to Missing Orders
The scale of the complaints was staggering.
American Screening’s customer-service manager estimated that, during 2020, the company received approximately:
- 1,500 customer emails every day.
- 500 customer telephone calls every day.
Her testimony described a department inundated with people asking essentially the same question.
Where was the merchandise they had paid for?
It is difficult to imagine a worse customer-service strategy than collecting payment for urgently needed products, missing the promised delivery window, and forcing customers to chase answers.
Yet the situation became even more revealing when customers requested refunds.
According to testimony discussed in the appellate opinion, American Screening often refused them.
One employee testified that most refund requests were denied. Customers who wanted their money returned because their orders hadn’t arrived could instead find the company shipping products they no longer wanted.
At a certain point, customers began turning to their credit-card companies to initiate chargebacks.
The customer-service manager testified that investigating chargebacks became her primary responsibility because there were so many of them.
Think about that.
A medical-supply company operating during a national emergency had become so consumed by disputes over undelivered merchandise that investigating credit-card reversals occupied much of its customer-service operation.
If there were an Olympic event for turning the simple act of shipping an order into an administrative catastrophe, American Screening would have been a formidable contender.
But the most revealing detail came from Kilgarlin himself.
Ron Kilgarlin Had a Message About Cancelled Orders
The appeals court highlighted an email Kilgarlin sent to employees.
In it, he wrote:
“we don’t won’t [sic] cancelled orders.”
The court reproduced the statement, including the grammatical mistake.
The context matters enormously.
Customers were asking for refunds. Employees described a company reluctant to grant them. Credit-card disputes were piling up.
And the founder, president, and CEO was communicating his opposition to cancelled orders.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a business preferring to retain orders.
Every company wants customers to complete their purchases.
But a business doesn’t get to keep a customer’s money indefinitely merely because management dislikes cancellations.
Federal shipping rules exist precisely because merchants must not be allowed to advertise unrealistic delivery promises, collect payments, and then treat refunds as optional favors.
When a seller cannot ship within the promised time, it generally must provide the customer with legally required options concerning delays and refunds.
Those obligations do not disappear because management would prefer otherwise.
The Eighth Circuit found that American Screening violated the FTC Act and the Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule.
The court’s findings concerned the business’s actual conduct, not merely an unfortunate sentence in an internal email.
But that email provides an unusually direct glimpse into management’s priorities while customers were fighting to recover their money.
The Federal Government Came Calling With a $14.65 Million Judgment
The FTC filed its civil enforcement lawsuit in August 2020.
The agency alleged that American Screening deceived consumers regarding product availability and shipping times and failed to comply with federal requirements governing delayed shipments and refunds.
The federal district court ultimately granted summary judgment against the defendants.
On January 31, 2023, the court entered a final monetary judgment of $14,651,185.42.
And here is the detail that makes Kilgarlin’s personal role especially important.
This was not simply a judgment against a limited liability company.
The final court order imposed liability jointly and severally against American Screening, Ron Kilgarlin Jr., and Shawn Kilgarlin.
In ordinary language, the individual defendants were personally responsible under the judgment alongside the business.
The court also entered a permanent injunction restricting the defendants from marketing or selling specified protective goods and services and imposing extensive requirements concerning shipping representations, refunds, and other material consumer claims.
American Screening challenged the remedies on appeal.
On June 27, 2024, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment.
The decision specifically described the seriousness of American Screening’s misconduct, referring to thousands of complaints and refund requests.
This was not merely an allegation that evaporated when challenged.
It was a federal judgment that survived appellate review.
The money was ordered for consumer redress, with procedures designed to compensate eligible customers who requested refunds. The $14.65 million figure was the judgment amount, not proof that every dollar was ultimately collected or distributed.
The publicly accessible sources reviewed for this article do not establish how much of the judgment has been paid.
But the underlying finding of liability is unmistakable.
The Court Didn’t Think the Pandemic Excused the Conduct
American Screening argued that extraordinary circumstances made compliance difficult.
That point deserves consideration.
The pandemic caused genuine supply-chain disruptions, government restrictions, warehouse problems, and unprecedented demand.
Businesses across the country struggled to obtain merchandise and fulfill orders.
But the federal shipping rule already accounts for unforeseen disruptions.
If a merchant cannot ship on time, it has obligations to inform customers and provide options concerning delays and refunds.
A pandemic does not grant a merchant a special exemption from those requirements.
That was essentially the appeals court’s reasoning.
The court rejected American Screening’s argument that unusual operating conditions justified the conduct at issue.
More damagingly, it expressed concern about the potential for similar conduct in another national emergency.
That is quite a legacy for a company that presented itself as a supplier of healthcare and protective equipment.
The very emergency that created enormous demand also became the setting for the deceptive practices that produced the judgment.
Then Came the Bankruptcy: $27.25 Million in Liabilities
American Screening’s problems didn’t end with the FTC litigation.
On April 7, 2023, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Western District of Louisiana.
The bankruptcy petition, signed by Kilgarlin as managing member, reported approximately:
- $9,100,921 in assets
- $27,251,799 in liabilities
That is an enormous gulf between what the company reported owning and what it owed.
The company stated in its bankruptcy filings that the FTC judgment was a significant reason for seeking bankruptcy protection.
The proceedings eventually resulted in a confirmed reorganization plan on January 31, 2024.
The bankruptcy case closed on July 24, 2025.
The scale of the debts remains a significant part of Kilgarlin’s business record.
The $1.91 Million RK Giving Dispute
During the bankruptcy proceedings, the Office of the United States Trustee raised serious objections to American Screening’s proposed disclosures and reorganization plan.
One concerned a roughly $1.91 million debt recorded as owed to an entity called RK Giving LLC.
According to a September 2023 report summarizing the trustee’s objection, the government questioned the economic substance of that transaction.
The trustee alleged that substantial funds moved into RK Giving from Kilgarlin and related entities near the end of December 2021 and were largely transferred back shortly afterward.
The objection also questioned how those transactions related to a charitable deduction reportedly claimed on Kilgarlin’s personal tax return.
The trustee described the recorded debt as “essentially a fictitious transaction.”
That is a serious allegation from a federal bankruptcy oversight official.
The bankruptcy plan was subsequently confirmed.
Nevertheless, the existence of the objection demonstrates that the company’s financial affairs attracted questions beyond the consumer-shipping misconduct.
Another Multimillion-Dollar Dispute Preceded the FTC Case
The FTC litigation wasn’t the only major dispute involving American Screening.
In February 2020, supplier UCP Biosciences sued American Screening and several related defendants in California federal court.
UCP alleged that American Screening had fallen behind on payments for diagnostic testing products.
According to the complaint summarized in an August 2020 judicial order, UCP claimed approximately $15.72 million in outstanding invoices, plus approximately $3.72 million in accrued interest.
The lawsuit included fraud-related and racketeering allegations, but the court found that UCP had not adequately pleaded the necessary fraudulent intent and dismissed those claims with leave to amend.
The parties later settled their dispute.
A May 2021 stipulation of dismissal states that American Screening paid the agreed settlement amount in full, and the case was dismissed with prejudice.
The settlement amount was not disclosed in the document.
Enter American Peptides: A Familiar Name in the Registration Records
Now we arrive at the reason Kilgarlin’s history deserves renewed attention in October 2026.
Public domain-registration records for AmericanPeptides.us identify:
Registrant: Ron Kilgarlin
Organization: American Peptides LLC
The domain was registered on February 21, 2026.
More revealingly, the registration records associate Kilgarlin’s contact information with an email address using the American Screening corporate domain.
That establishes a documented administrative connection between Kilgarlin and the American Peptides website.
And what does American Peptides sell?
Research peptides and related products, accompanied by laboratory-use disclaimers and claims about product testing and quality.
The website says the products are for laboratory research, not human or animal consumption.
But the involvement of someone subject to a substantial consumer-protection judgment makes the company’s representations, customer protections, and operational transparency especially worth examining.
And there is one particular provision in American Peptides’ published terms that practically leaps off the screen.
The $2,500 Chargeback Clause: An Uncomfortable Echo
Remember American Screening?
The company that struggled to fulfill customer orders, denied refund requests, and generated so many credit-card chargebacks that investigating them became a major customer-service responsibility?
Now consider the published terms on AmericanPeptides.us.
The website states that sales are generally final and that refunds are heavily restricted.
It also contains a chargeback policy under which customers who dispute a transaction without first contacting support and allowing 30 business days for resolution may face various consequences.
Among the remedies the company reserves the right to pursue is a $2,500 liquidated-damages fee.
Yes, $2,500.
The language is striking.
American Screening’s FTC case centered partly on consumers’ difficulties obtaining refunds and their eventual resort to chargebacks.
A newer business publicly connected to Kilgarlin now publishes terms contemplating a substantial financial penalty in certain chargeback disputes.
This is an entirely legitimate reason to examine how the company handles cancellations, disputes, shipping problems, and refund requests.
Customers deserve to know what protections they have before paying a company that reserves the right to pursue such an unusually large fee.
And Kilgarlin’s history makes that question especially pertinent.
American Peptides Is Already Facing a New Federal Lawsuit
There is another development.
On October 8, 2026, Eli Lilly filed a federal lawsuit against American Peptides LLC in the Western District of Louisiana.
The case, Eli Lilly & Co. v. American Peptides L.L.C., No. 5:26-cv-04146, concerns the marketing and sale of products purportedly containing retatrutide, an experimental drug being developed by Lilly.
According to reporting on the complaint, Lilly alleges that American Peptides markets purported retatrutide in ways inconsistent with its laboratory-research-only disclaimers.
The complaint describes allegations involving social-media promotion, customer testimonials, and products associated with preparing injectable solutions.
American Peptides has not been found liable on those claims in the court materials reviewed here.
And the defendant named in the case is American Peptides LLC, not Ron Kilgarlin individually.
A complaint is not a verdict, and Kilgarlin’s old FTC judgment does not establish the truth of Lilly’s newer allegations.
But the lawsuit adds another significant development to the public record of a business whose website registration identifies Kilgarlin.
The full details of the American Peptides litigation, marketing practices, product-testing claims, and consumer policies deserve a separate investigation.
For the present article, the central point is simpler.
Kilgarlin’s documented association with American Peptides creates a legitimate reason to examine the company’s claims and operations against the backdrop of his established consumer-protection history.
The Questions Ron Kilgarlin and American Peptides Should Answer
There are several straightforward matters that would help customers and the public understand the current situation.
What is Kilgarlin’s exact ownership and management role at American Peptides?
The domain records establish an association, but they do not disclose the company’s complete ownership and management structure.
What is the present status of the FTC monetary judgment?
The judgment was affirmed. The amount paid or collected is not established by the sources reviewed for this article.
How does American Peptides ensure compliance with applicable consumer-protection requirements?
Its shipping, cancellation, refund, and dispute practices should be clear and consistent with the law.
Has American Peptides ever sought to collect the $2,500 chargeback fee described in its terms?
If so, under what circumstances?
What is the company’s response to Eli Lilly’s allegations?
The complaint raises questions that deserve a substantive response, not a presumption of guilt.
None of these questions requires speculation about Kilgarlin’s motives.
They require information that a transparent business should be capable of providing.
Ron Kilgarlin’s Business History Deserves to Follow Him
Some business failures are understandable.
Supply chains collapse. Markets shift. Companies face unexpected crises. Entrepreneurs make mistakes and sometimes emerge from them wiser.
But American Screening’s FTC case was not simply an ordinary business failure.
A federal court found violations of consumer-protection law. The judgment was imposed against the business and its individual defendants. A federal appeals court affirmed it.
The appellate record described an operation that solicited orders through unrealistic shipping representations, struggled to deliver merchandise, and failed to provide legally required remedies to customers.
Its founder’s opposition to cancelled orders was documented in the same record.
That history should not be scrubbed from public consideration merely because years have passed or a different business name has entered the picture.
If Kilgarlin is involved in another venture, people evaluating that venture are entitled to know what happened at American Screening.
They are also entitled to distinguish established wrongdoing from unproven allegations.
American Peptides is not automatically guilty of American Screening’s misconduct. Eli Lilly’s allegations are not established facts. And the bankruptcy trustee’s objections should not be transformed into judicial findings that were never made.
But the $14,651,185.42 FTC judgment is real.
The appellate affirmance is real.
The documented connection to American Peptides is real.
And the company’s current terms and litigation are matters of public record.
Ron Kilgarlin may have moved into another product market, but the federal court record didn’t go anywhere.
For anyone considering doing business with an enterprise connected to him, that record belongs near the top of the due-diligence checklist.
Not buried beneath the testimonials.
Not hidden behind the marketing copy.
And certainly not forgotten.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did the FTC sue Ron Kilgarlin and American Screening?
The Federal Trade Commission sued American Screening in August 2020 over deceptive marketing and shipping practices involving personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company advertised rapid fulfillment but frequently failed to deliver products within the promised timeframes. Federal courts found violations involving misleading shipping representations, delayed orders, and failures to provide required refunds and cancellation options.
Was Ron Kilgarlin personally liable for the $14.65 million FTC judgment?
Yes. On January 31, 2023, a federal district court entered a $14,651,185.42 consumer-redress judgment against American Screening, Ron Kilgarlin Jr., and Shawn Kilgarlin, holding them jointly and severally liable. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment on June 27, 2024. The judgment amount does not necessarily represent the amount ultimately collected, which has not been established by the sources reviewed.
What happened to American Screening after the FTC judgment?
American Screening filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 7, 2023, reporting approximately $9.1 million in assets and $27.25 million in liabilities. Its reorganization plan was confirmed on January 31, 2024, and the bankruptcy case closed on July 24, 2025. Chapter 11 reorganization should not be confused with liquidation.
What is Ron Kilgarlin's connection to American Peptides?
Public domain-registration records for AmericanPeptides.us identify Ron Kilgarlin in connection with American Peptides LLC. The registration also included contact information associated with American Screening. These records establish a documented administrative connection but do not independently establish the complete ownership structure or prove that American Peptides is a legal successor to American Screening.
Does the FTC judgment establish wrongdoing by American Peptides?
No. The FTC judgment concerned American Screening’s consumer-protection violations during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Peptides is a separate business and was not a defendant in that judgment. Eli Lilly filed separate litigation against American Peptides in October 2026 concerning alleged retatrutide marketing and sales practices, but those allegations should not be confused with established findings from the earlier FTC case.
References
- FTC v. American Screening, LLC — Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion, June 27, 2024
- FTC — Final Order and $14,651,185.42 Judgment, January 31, 2023
- Federal Trade Commission — American Screening Case History
- American Screening — Bankruptcy Case 23-10350
- American Screening — Bankruptcy Reorganization Record
- American Screening — September 2023 U.S. Trustee Objection, Reported by Troubled Company Reporter
- UCP Biosciences v. American Screening — May 2021 Settlement and Dismissal
- AmericanPeptides.us — WHOIS Domain Registration
- American Peptides — Published Terms and Chargeback Policy
- Eli Lilly v. American Peptides — Federal Court Docket
- Louisiana Record — October 22, 2026, Reporting on Eli Lilly’s Complaint