It’s not often that I get to write about a half-naked company president or look at the animal trophies on his wall at home without ever meeting him. But the Internet, as you know, can make my life as an investigative columnist much easier to peer into the lives of the people you are learning about.

Cowboy Bodybuilder Ronny Schweyher

Ronny Schweyher once finished 7^th in a Mr. Universe contest, but that was years ago. Now he’s founder and president of National Benefit Advisory Association in Fort Worth, Texas. The company received an “F” rating from the BBB because some customers say they were promised health insurance when they signed up and all they got was a lousy discount medical card for goods and services.

Schweyher wasn’t available for me to talk to. But that’s OK. I found his Cowboy Bodybuilder video on YouTube. When you’ve seen a company president half naked, what else is there to talk about?

Then to catch up, I viewed his spread in a Cedar Hill magazine. No, not that spread. The spread of his house. The company president has switched from working on his body to working on the bodies of a vast array of exotic wildlife now gracing his walls. Here’s the story. Go to pages 10-13, but it’s a long download so you gotta really be curious about his house. Here’s a photo, though, not so clear, reproduced below.

From one kind of body to another

It’s nice to learn about the people whose companies you write about.

And this is a company, like most, that has at least one former disgruntled telemarketer who told the Weatherford Democrat newspaper last year that he was taught the company philosophy quickly: “I’ll do anything to get a credit card number.” Here’s the rest of his insider’s account.

The most complaints I found were at www.thriftyfun.com, specifically here.

So I took it and put it together, talking to as many of the interested parties as I could and shared with my Sunday Star-Telegram readers the story of how the bodybuilder built a company that, possibly, hangs credit card numbers on its walls as sales trophies.

Here’s the Aug. 22, 2009 Dave Lieber column, written a lot less tongue-in-cheek than this post.

If you want to drill down deeper and learn more about these discount medical card programs, here’s the state of Texas’ frequently asked questions.

Texas law is changing so that the Department of Insurance is going to regulate these card programs, even though they aren’t insurance. Here’s the state law.

The rules are complex and if you’re still with me, here they are.