Diet Lies: FTC Says Acai Berry Diet Pills Are A Scam
What’s worse than taking diet pills that don’t work? Taking diet pills that cost $100 and don’t work!
According to the Federal Trade Commission, online marketing claims surrounding acai berry diet pills don’t live up to the hype.
Six promoters not only lied, they went as far as using false news stories to back bogus information.
With promises of rapid and substantial weight loss, people were duped into believing they could be one of those online testimonials that shed 25 pounds in four weeks without changing their diet or exercising.
The accused were creating legitimate looking websites made to look like they were connected to respectable news organizations. The FTC says these sites, “flashed investigative-sounding headlines and presented a reporter’s “first-hand experience” with acai berry supplements,” such as “Health Reporter Discovers the Shocking Truth.”
“All this was pure fabrication. The weight-loss results on the sites were impossible to achieve,” said Steve Wernikoff, an FTC attorney in Chicago. “We have ongoing efforts to aggressively challenge deceptive advertisements over the Internet like the fake news sites attacked here, and our enforcement actions can potentially reach anyone in the chain between a seller and the consumer,” Wernikoff told the Associated Press.
The defendants in the case were Ricardo Jose Labra in Michigan; Zachary S. Graham in Minnesota with Ambervine Marketing, LLC and Encastle, Inc.; Tanner Garrett Vaughn in Washington state; Thou Lee in Minnesota; Charles Dunlevy in Pennsylvania; and DLXM, LLC and Michael Volozin in New York — none of which will admit guilt as part of the settlement.
The actual judgement was for $4 million, however the agency will only collect $500,000. This is the total amount of tangible assets of the defendants.
The judge ordered that the promoters must make clear when their commercial messages are advertisements and not backed by false news organizations. The promoters are also barred from making deceptive claims about health-related products.
The moral of this story? If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
