$3,000,000 In Penalties For Supplement Retailers!
If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know I often write about supplement retailers who engage in deceptive marketing practices, and their ongoing battles with the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Well, here’s another incidence of the “good guys” winning…
Recently, the marketers of several weight loss products have agreed to pay $3 million in penalties and to “refrain from making unsubstantiated claims or misrepresenting studies in the future.” The companies include Basic Research, LLC; A.G., Waterhouse, LLC; Klein Becker USA, LLC; NutraSport, LLC; Sovage, Dermalogic Laboratories, LLC, and BAN LLC. Three individuals were also involved — Dennis Gay, Daniel Mowrey and Mitchell Friedlander.
Products deceptively promoted include the transdermal “cutting gels” Tummy Flattening Gel, Cutting Gel, and Dermalin AG (you can read a full review of these gels on UltimateFatBurner.com). Fat burners Leptoprin and Anorex were also under the gun, as was PediaLean, the fat burner for overweight children.
In a nutshell, the FTC indicated these retailers had nothing on which to base their claims. From the FTC press release…
“The FTC alleged the marketers lacked a reasonable basis to back up these claims. In addition, the FTC alleged the ads falsely claimed that clinical testing proved those claims for four of the challenged products and misrepresented their spokesperson as a medical doctor.”
You can review the full FTC press release here…
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/05/basicresearch.htm
What’s the morale of the story?
As usual, if a product claims sound too good to be true, you can bet they are. An unfortunate number of supplement retailers are more interested in generating revenue than providing real solutions for their clients. And they’ll stop at nothing to market their products.
Buyer beware!
