A friend worked for an ice cream maker who added coffee grounds vanilla ice cream. That deceives consumers into thinking real vanilla beans are used. He did not say which company but he seemed to think they all do it.

Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, but whenever I see the vanilla specs I can taste vanilla. It may be imitation vanilla with coffee grounds, but I probably wouldn’t perceive a difference between real and fake vanilla anyway.

Sometimes I have had “vanilla” ice cream and I taste no trace of vanilla. But in all those cases, there were no black specs either. So I have come to trust the specs.

The biggest real dick move would be to add coffee grounds and then withold vanilla (imitation or not). I have not encountered that AFAIK.