access to only after Dr. Siegal's death.

Siegal says that he schooled Moulavi on all aspects of his business: How to run the centers. How to screen patients. How to detect hyperthyroidism, a condition he feels is underdiagnosed. "I taught him everything," Siegal says. "Except one thing: I would not give him the recipe."

With the newfound business model, Moulavi went to work. "He was building an empire," Siegal says.

That's right, Moulavi agrees proudly. He was building an empire. He took Siegal's simple concept and expanded it from small-time operation to an international business, with dozens of franchises throughout the U.S. and Canada. Moulavi attributes much of his success to marketing savvy. He says he spent $100,000 in 2005 and $164,000 in 2006 on public relations and advertising.

According to courtdocuments, it was in August 2002, when Moulavi opened the Boca office, that he started using the phrase "the cookie diet" to describe the program. Says Moulavi, it was hard for an entrepreneur to work with an uptight doctor, who "frequently complained" about using the "cookie diet" moniker. "He considered the term denigrating to the medical component," Moulavi says. He refers to an NBC-TV interview in which Siegal says, "I hate for it to be called the cookie diet." According to Moulavi, Siegal wanted to describe his program by this mouthful: "a diet that uses a cookie as an adjunct to losing weight."

For the most part, though, things were really cooking — until, Siegal says, he started getting letters from Moulavi's attorney. The cookies were unsatisfactory, the letters