Exposing The Other Billion Dollar “Diet Supplement” Scam Industry
Are major news houses helping promote these scams? Is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) complicit in helping this scam industry thrive? Keep reading as a whistleblower from within the industry reveals it all.
Special Correspondent
Before you dismiss this as old news, let me assure you, I’m not talking about the oft-discussed supplement industry, controlled by Big Pharma companies, that is expected to turn up over $220 Billion by 2027.
No, I’m talking about a totally different supplement industry working behind the shadows of the world wide web.
Why should you believe me? Because this was revealed by someone who was once a part of this industry. For the past 2 years, this person has been with a company in Pune, India, that has been promoting these fake diet supplements to customers in the United States. The company has made a hefty sum, close to 12 million USD at your expense just during this short period, with nothing more than a few content writers and SEO experts.
Our anonymous whistleblower can’t wash his hands off this as he has also received a decent salary from the company during this period too. But he has decided to expose this farce now, not because he had a sudden urge to do good, but because he has personally experienced the pain and damage these sorts of scam products can cause.
Now, you won’t find these supplements I’m talking about on the shelves of regular drug stores or at Walmart. The only place you’ll find them is in the local and major online news magazines, under their sponsored content section.
Take a look at the images below:
If you are among the unfortunate ones who have seen these kinds of articles, then you already know you have been scammed.
If not, let me explain to you how this scam works.
As you can see, these articles are published on trusted news resources. The titles of these articles suggest that they are reports exposing scams. But the truth is quite the contrary.
These titles are just clickbait to get potential customers to click on the articles. The content in these articles is, however, the exact opposite, and pushes the reader to buy these “diet supplements” making unsubstantiated claims and false promises.
And if you thought the supplements created by big pharma are worthless, at least they are made by recognized brands that are subject to regulation and are manufactured based on some form of scientific research. Well, that’s not the case with these fake supplements, because these supplements can be made by anyone, and there are no regulations to stop them.
And yes, when I say anyone, I really mean anyone. Even you can make a supplement if you are willing to spend a few dollars.
There are agencies in the US whom you can contact from anywhere in the world to get these sorts of supplements made for you in big batches and stored in a warehouse in the US.
You can customize the product as much as you want, choose from a list of ingredients, give the product a generic name, and get marketers to create a narrative and video to promote the supplement on an “official website”.
Now take a look at the “official website” of some supplements:
You don’t have to be tech-savvy to tell that these are the exact same template. From the images to the content almost everything is the same. The only difference is the name of the product in each case.
“Keto” supplements are just one example. This hidden supplement industry has countless products advertised as solutions for all sorts of problems – blood sugar, oral health, hair health, fungal infections, tinnitus, back pain, brain health, gut health, liver health, vision problems, sexual health, and erectile dysfunction, prostate health and more. The list is endless.
Why are trusted news outlets promoting these scams?
There are hundreds upon hundreds of “trusted” news outlets who are willing to publish these articles without any concern for the innocent people who may end up buying these products.
They believe they can absolve themselves of their part in these scams, just as Pontious Pilate did when he washed off his hands, by tagging the article as “sponsored”. What they conveniently ignore is the fact that the majority of people who end up buying these products are elderly women and men who are yet to learn about the pitfalls of the world wide web and have no idea what a “sponsored” post even is.
So, why do these trusted newspapers accept these sorts of advertisements? Simple, they are in it for the money!
It’s alarming however that they don’t care if it is dirty money. These newspapers get paid anywhere between $100 and $10,000 for each article depending on the reach and trustability of the newspaper. Some newspapers even have revenue-sharing deals with the people promoting these products.
What’s more alarming here is that people are buying these fake products. And that’s exactly why marketers are willing to spend so much on publishing such “review” articles and are spending thousands on marketing. They know that they’ll get at least 5 times that amount in return. That should give you a picture of how many people are falling for these sorts of scams and spending their hard-earned money on them.
If some people are buying them, then surely it must mean that it has worked for at least a few people, right?
Wrong!
These “dietary supplements” are not designed to treat or even provide relief from any of these ailments. They are not created based on any research. The only research these people do is find articles in obscure scientific journals that support the ingredients used in these supplements. And this is done after they have created the product. These are used by copywriters to spin a story to convince customers that the supplement was made based on scientific discoveries.
But in truth, you can never even know what these supplements really contain or in what kind of conditions they are made, as the FDA does not regulate either of these.
If These Supplements Are So Bad, Why Aren’t They In The News?
Well these supplements are more worthless than they are bad. That isn’t to say that they are not harmful. The manufacturers of these products are smart enough not to use ingredients that would cause any immediate side effects, as that would invite the notice of the FDA. In the long run, they could still cause health concerns as the ingredients are not used with any sort of scientific understanding.
Oftentimes, supplements that do turn up on the news due to casualties are because the manufacturers look for short-term relief from health problems that in turn cause harmful side effects.
The supplements I’m talking about however do not even intend to treat a problem, which is why they are worthless. All they do is sell you hope and steal your money. And they steal millions from the pockets of hard working Americans.
But why are people buying them?
The answer is marketing!
People fall for these sorts of supplements because the makers of these products use manipulative tactics to cash in on desperation.
They cast actors to play the role of scientists, researchers, and “real customers” who have benefitted from the product, in scripted cinematic-style videos. All of it is fake, but the story is scripted in such a way that it would easily convince people who suffer from these ailments and are desperate.
Add to this the so-called “reviews” published on seemingly trusted newspapers including those such as San Fransico Gate, The Mercury News, Los Angeles Magazine, Discover Magazine, and almost all the local newspapers published by Sound Publishing, and these desperate people receive all the confirmation bias they need.
The newspapers also take a significant chunk of the profits for themselves with profit-sharing deals with the people advertising these products.
Take a look at this excel sheet handled by one of the major news publishers in the United States, which our anonymous whistle-blower got access to when he worked for the company in Pune, India.
It is clear from this long that this news publication is making quite a large sum of money every day through these sorts of articles.
The Process Of Manipulation
First, they reach out to potential customers through aggressive marketing. The process is two-fold.
One method they use to attract you is native advertising. Now, if you are not aware of what “native advertising” is, trust me, you’ve seen it!
That’s because there are very few news publications online these days that don’t make use of native advertising. Ever seen those “news articles” that you find when you scroll down to the bottom of a website, with shocking titles and images? Those are not real news articles, but advertisements made to seem like news articles.
Even though these “articles” scream scam, many people fall for the click-bait titles and images. And can you guess where they lead?
Most often than not, they lead to obscure pages that detail an emotional and manipulative story about some “magical cure” for some ailment to lure you in and then take you to the “official website” of a product or service.
The second method they use is e-mail marketing. These people send cold emails to millions of e-mail addresses of people who suffer from ailments, which supposedly these fake supplements are said to cure.
How do they get e-mail addresses that are so specific? Well, there are services where you can purchase these e-mail addresses for a price. If you have ever registered for an online service and have kept your e-mail addresses unprotected, then there’s every chance that your information has been compromised.
Data breaches are quite frequent on the internet and even the biggest companies are not immune from this. On the other hand, you must already be aware that companies such as Google and Facebook sell your data for a fortune, despite claims otherwise.
To get back to the point, it is easy for the manufacturers of these fake supplements to get huge databases of e-mail addresses of people suffering from the particular ailment they are targeting. These again contain manipulative and misleading stories about “secret cures” and lead to the “official website” of a product or service.
Now, these “official websites” are designed to convert “leads into sales”. They contain fake timers to suggest that the product is running out of stock soon, pop-up messages that keep springing up announcing that certain someone from a certain city bought the product “a few seconds ago” which are also fake, and warning messages that pop-up if you move the mouse pointer to close the page that either shame you to guilt-trigger you into buying or offer you a larger discount, but only if you purchase it at that instance. To top it all off, every single one of these products comes with a “100% money-back guarantee” to make naive and desperate customers believe they have nothing to lose.
In truth, they exclude crucial information regarding their money-back policy such as “the product will have to be returned unopened if you are to be eligible for a refund. Or worse yet, the website might not have any sort of contact or customer support information, which most people only realize after they have spent their money on the purchase. In any case, you can be sure that most of them won’t get their money back.
You can clearly see a pattern here. They are playing on human emotions and desperation. And when not targeting human desperation, they use fear tactics or cause hysteria. These products are some good examples:
The “e-books” or “online programs” promoted in these articles, and others like Food Freedom, Water Freedom System, Ground Power Generation System, and Energy Cube System, “supposedly” teach readers how to survive impending destruction that’s on the horizon.
Of course, not all people are not convinced by native advertising videos or cold e-mails. A large percentage of people look for trustworthy sources to fact-check these claims. And that’s where these kinds of articles on major online news publications can be quite problematic.
The majority of the customers of these products are middle-aged and elderly men and women. They can’t tell the difference between a “sponsored” article and a regular news article. All they look for is the reputation of the newspaper. They trust the news source to give them the facts. And when it is an SF Gate, Mercury News, or their local news publication such as a Kirkland Reporter or a Tacoma Daily Index that’s giving them the news, they get the assurance they are looking for.
As I mentioned earlier, the titles of these articles suggest that they are honest reports exposing scams. But these titles are just clickbait to get potential customers to click on the articles. These marketers even go further to earn the trust of the readers by leveraging the names of trusted brands and celebrities. Take a look at these articles for example:
In these cases, marketers have used the phrase “Shark Tank” to suggest that the supplement has appeared on the popular TV show, and in consequence, received the approval of business moguls such as Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. These claims have been fact-checked and dismissed, but such references continue to pop-up thanks to these “trusted” online news publications.
Some of these news publications try to absolve themselves of the blame by placing a sponsored tag and a disclaimer at the end of each article. Others don’t even have that, and you can clearly tell why.
Why Is The FDA silent about these scam products?
The fact that the FDA is completely silent when it comes to these products, makes you wonder whether they are complicit in helping these scams thrive.
It is clear as day that there should be some sort of accountability for the way these products are manufactured and sold.
But unfortunately, “under DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act), FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed.”
Yes, you heard that right!
According to the official documentation on the fda.gov website, “generally, a firm does not have to provide FDA with the evidence it relies on to substantiate safety before or after it markets its products”. Instead, “FDA’s regulations require those who manufacture, package, or hold dietary supplements to follow current good manufacturing practices that help ensure the identity, purity, quality, strength, and composition of dietary supplements.”
The website also goes on to say that “because the law prohibits the distribution and sale of adulterated dietary supplements, manufacturers and distributors have initial responsibility for ensuring that their dietary supplements meet the safety standards for dietary supplements. When manufacturers and distributors do not fulfill that responsibility and adulterated dietary supplements reach the market, FDA has authority to enforce the law to protect consumers. In general, FDA is limited to postmarket enforcement because, unlike drugs that must be proven safe and effective for their intended use before marketing, there are no provisions in the law for FDA to approve dietary supplements for safety before they reach the consumer. However, manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements must record, investigate, and forward to FDA any reports they receive of serious adverse events associated with the use of their products.”
This is equivalent to asking criminals to provide evidence for the crimes they have committed. It’s the perfect scenario for these fake supplement makers and their marketers. As long as they don’t fall under the radar of the FDA for serious health concerns, they can keep making money by selling fake supplements and false hopes.
However, the document also says that “facilities that manufacture, process, pack, or hold dietary supplements or dietary ingredients for consumption in the United States must register with FDA, as required by the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 and implementing regulations, before beginning such operations.”
It also says that the “FDA is responsible for enforcing the laws and regulations governing dietary supplements. To identify violations, the agency conducts inspections, monitors the marketplace, examines dietary supplements and dietary ingredients offered for import, and reviews NDI notifications and other regulatory submissions for dietary supplements”
It is questionable whether the FDA does in fact enforce these laws and regulations as these fake supplements continue to use the tags “Made in an FDA-approved facility” and “GMP-certified” when clearly they are not. There doesn’t seem to be any mention of these sorts of supplements in the FDA health fraud product database.
Thanks to our whistleblower, we now have enough data to expose these news publishers and the marketing companies working with them. But will the FDA hold the manufacturers of these fake supplements accountable?
References:
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/health-fraud-scams/health-fraud-product-database