Chicago 'Shark Tank' startup Guard Llama goes dark on customers as its founder is charged with drug trafficking

In 2017 Joseph Parisi stood on the famed "Shark Tank" stage to pitch his personal safety startup Guard Llama to Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Kevin O’Leary and the rest of the celebrity investors on the hit ABC show. To punctuate the company’s product—a key fob-like device that calls the police in an emergency—a real, live llama was brought out for effect. But in the middle of the pitch, the llama defecated on the floor. “How do you think your pitch is going?” O’Leary quipped. That…