Hoodia
Gordonii Scams & Frauds Exposed!
The following article is one of the finest examples of fraudulent Hoodia Sales on the internet I have ever seen. This is the reason I created this site. This is why you MUST buy from the companies I list on the Hoodia Sales page or risk fraud!
NOTE - on 5-10-2005 I received an email which stated that if I did not remove this information that I would be sued. I have been forced to remove the name of the fraudulent company in the following text and replace it with "the company" to prevent legal action. However the name of "the company" for those interested might be found on the site of those that first exposed them...
Article Courtesy of: Truth Publishing - reveals the details of an exhaustive investigation into what may be the largest Hoodia Gordonii supplement scam operating in North America: "the company"
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"the company", is selling counterfeit hoodia as verified by independent lab testing (actual documents revealed below).
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"the company", is failing to fill their capsules with the promised quantity of powder. Our tests on a digital scale showed that capsules from "the company" contained only 290mg of powder, not 400mg. (Actual digital scale results and photos shown below.)
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"the company", has sought to steal intellectual property from a competing hoodia company by attempting to preemptively register / steal its trademark and product name. (Documents shown below.)
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"the company", has stolen Truth Publishing content, modified the text, and posted a distorted version on their own website in an attempt to mislead readers into believing that we solely and exclusively recommend their product, which is absolutely not the case.
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"the company", operates out of a Nevada corporation set up and run by individuals who operate hundreds of small Nevada corporations, most likely for lawsuit protection reasons.
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"the company", operates several companies and brands of Hoodia, which are advertised and promoted as separate companies, but are actually owned and controlled by the same people.
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"the company", operates a series of fake "consumer comparison" websites that deceive consumers into purchasing their "top-rated" products, which are always products owned or controlled by the "the company", operators.
Revealing the Scam
This story begins in mid-2004, when hoodia was appearing
on the scene as an appetite suppressant . At that time, Truth Publishing purchased
several hoodia products, conducted interviews, and began listing hoodia suppliers
known to offer honest products. At the time, we were convinced this included "the
company". To further verify this, Truth Publishing attempted to locate laboratories
in the U.S. that could conduct specimen authentication testing, but no such labs
could be found (we called dozens).
As the popularity of hoodia skyrocketed since mid-2004, the bulk materials hoodia suppliers in South Africa were getting squeezed. Demand was skyrocketing, but the supply of hoodia couldn't be ramped up overnight. In fact, the hoodia gordonii plant requires 5 - 7 years to reach maturity, so there was a sudden shortage of raw material.
Selling sawdust and calling it hoodia
As Truth Publishing has now learned from a variety of interviews with the chief scientific officers at two different laboratories, the South African suppliers responded to this heightened demand by doing three things:
1) Blending plant roots into the bulk materials as filler. Roots, unfortunately, have none of the active chemical constituents that give hoodia gordonii its appetite suppressant qualities.
2) Wild harvesting species that appear similar to hoodia,
but are not hoodia. While this may allow the bulk ingredients to pass a simple
microscopy test (because it all looks like succulent material under the microscope),
it will not pass HPLC and TLC testing (chromatographic tests) that reveal the
active chemical constituents of the sample.
3) Cutting their bulk materials with silica, leaves, sawdust and other filler products that provide bulk, but no active ingredients.
Many commercial buyers in the U.S. were duped by South African hoodia suppliers who used these tactics.
Bait and Switch
Another favorite tactic of the suppliers was a "bait and switch" strategy: when a U.S. buyer wanted to test a sample, the South African companies provided a genuine sample of hoodia gordonii. But once a large-volume order was placed, the bulk ingredients turned out to be counterfeit. Truth Publishing can confirm that at least one U.S. hoodia supplement company is now engaged in legal action against a South African hoodia supplier who used this bait-and-switch tactic.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., hoodia supplement companies were raking in astronomical sales as demand for hoodia weight loss pills skyrocketed. With all the money flowing, some companies decided that using authentic hoodia was irrelevant. As long as people were buying the product, they apparently thought, it didn't really matter what was in the capsules.
Truth Publishing can reveal that "the company", is
a company now selling counterfeit hoodia. While we believe that "the company"
originally sold genuine hoodia in 2004, we have now completed (and paid for) independent
lab testing that shows the "the company" product to be counterfeit.
The Microscopy Test
| The microscopy test shows the sample has no physical resemblance
to hoodia gordonii. |
The first test conducted by Alkemist Pharmaceuticals (the lab) on the "the company" sample was a microscopy test. This is essentially a visual inspection of the microscopic structure of the material. Families of plants show unique structures under the microscope. For example, flowering perennials look very different from succulents. Similarly, leaves, stems, roots and rhizomes all have unique structural characteristics that are readily identifiable by a trained botanist.
The microscopy test conducted on the "the company"
sample had no resemblance to hoodia gordonii. As the lab report states,
"The characteristic cellular structures above cannot confirm the identity
of Hoodia gordonii."
I spoke with the lab about this, and was told that the sample was definitely not hoodia, although it was, as they explained, "A common adulteration of hoodia seen in many samples submitted by various companies." In other words, it's not only counterfeit, it's also a "common" counterfeit recipe.
Even though the microscopy test is, by itself, conclusive, we wanted to conduct more testing to make certain that our investigation was covering all the bases. What test did we look at next? TLC.
Thin-Layer Chromatography
| The TLC (chromatographic) test reveals no chemical constituents resembling hoodia gordonii. (Click image to see full-size.) |
This test reveals the chromatographic profile of the sample
substance. In layman's terms, each chemical in a sample resonates with certain
frequencies of electromagnetic energy. As this energy is directed towards the
sample in a progression algorithm that sweeps from short wavelengths to longer
wavelengths, chemicals in the sample will resonate, giving off peaks of energy
that are detectable by the TLC sensors. It is this combination of peaks and valleys
in the chromatographic chart that reveals a pattern for each species of plant.
In the TLC testing, "the company" sample turned out to have no resemblance to hoodia gordonii powder. As the report states, "The chromatographic profile demonstrated above cannot confirm the identity of Hoodia gordonii." (Translation: the sample isn't hoodia.)
High Performance Liquid Chromatography
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The HPLC test also reveals no chemical constituents resembling hoodia gordonii.
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Truth
Publishing also paid for one final test: HPLC. Without getting too technical,
this test is similar to the TLC test, but helps confirm the test findings from
another angle. The results of this test confirm, for a third time, that the sample
is not hoodia gordonii: "The chromatographic profile demonstrated above cannot
confirm the identity of Hoodia Gordonii."
These were three separate tests all confirming that the sample was not hoodia gordonii. The only two possible conclusions to draw from this are that either the lab has no idea how to conduct tests (highly unlikely) or that the sample isn't genuine hoodia. Truth Publishing believes that the test results are accurate and that the "the company" product is counterfeit.
But this is only the beginning of the investigation. Once you take a closer look at the business practices of "the company", , plus the deceptive labeling and online marketing techniques used by "the company", you will not be surprised at all by the counterfeit findings revealed above. What you are about to read may shock you. And if you were a customer of "the company", it may in fact enrage you.
Unscrupulous business practices exposed
After receiving the test results described
above, Truth Publishing began to look further into the business practices of "the
company", One of the first interesting things we found was a trademark application
filed by "the company", in 2004 for the phrase, "hoodithin." Sounds
like a hoodia product name, right? It is... except that it's the product name
of a competitor - the StrictlyHealth company who had been using the hoodithin
name for a considerable period of time, long before "the company", filed
for it.
The likely strategy here? It seems likely that the "the company" was trying to register trademarks for the names of competitors' products. The only purpose for a tactic such as this would be to gain ownership of competitors' intellectual property, then sue them in order to take over their domain names or product branding reputation. It's a dirty tactic, and would only be pursued by someone with a very low standard of ethics.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filing by "the company", for the "hoodithin" trademark on July 15, 2004. You'll also see that the trademark application reveals a link to a Nevada corporation. Seeing this, we decided to follow the Nevada lead and check with Nevada's Secretary of State...
A corporate front for illicit operations
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Nevada Secretary of State documents reveal a corporation mill and the name of an operator. (Click image to see full-size.) |
At Nevada's Secretary of State website (http://sos.state.nv.us/), I
ran a search for the "the company". This turned up the record shown
at right, which reveals that "the company" is operated by a corporation
front organization named "the company"
From this document, we also learned that the officer of the corporation was "name removed", a person who has a more substantial role in this investigation, as you will see below. It's important to note that "name removed" is not the owner of "the company", "name removed" is basically a front-man for corporations set up in Nevada. For those who don't know, there are basically two reasons to set up a Nevada corporation like this: 1) for legitimate asset protection reasons, in case you happen to be a lawsuit target from unscrupulous ambulance chasers and the like, and 2) for con artists, scammers and criminals who want to be able to conduct business while making it nearly impossible for them to be sued.
| The Nevada Secretary of State reveals a web of corporations for which "name removed" serves as officers. |
Running
a search on "name removed", we discovered 510 records with the State
of Nevada, representing potentially hundreds of corporations (see right).
This indicates "name removed" is most likely an individual who will
register and operate Nevada corporations for anyone willing to pay filing fees
and annual maintenance. Although Nevada corporations certainly have legitimate
uses, this pattern is simultaneously indicative of a corporate shell game played
by con artists. There's more to the corporate shell game, as you'll see below.
But now let's shift gears and take a look at the marketing tactics of "the
company",
Deceiving people with fake comparison charts
| This rigged comparison chart deceives consumers by only recommending
companies operated by the same guy. |
One way many companies use search engines and websites to deceive customers is to construct bogus comparison charts that imply a fair comparison among hoodia products, but that actually place self-serving product recommendations at the top of the list. You can see one such chart in the image shown here.
This originally appeared at "name changed", but may have been changed by the time you read this. This chart purports to show a collection of various independent hoodia products along with rankings from five stars down to one star. The top three products on this chart are "the company", and others, and others. Sounds like three different products, right? Think again:
ALL three are Nevada corporations but have the EXACT
SAME officer acting as President, Secretary, and Treasurer...guess who? - "name
removed".
Starting to get the picture here? What this con artist does is sets up shell corporations in Nevada, pumps counterfeit hoodia powder into capsules, then slaps three (or more) different labels on the products, making it look like it all comes from three different companies. Then he sets up a rigged consumer comparison website and, coincidentally, happens to list his three hoodia companies all as five-star, top-rated recommendations. Whatever company the consumer chooses, this guy wins. And he wins big, because buying counterfeit hoodia is a lot cheaper than buying the real thing. The consumer, meanwhile, gets screwed by paying retail prices for fake products.
Stealing even more intellectual property
When Truth Publishing started to uncover this information in
our investigations, we of course removed our original link to "the company"
which had appeared in earlier hoodia articles. The "company" didn't
like that, so they decided to steal entire pages of content from Newstarget.com,
edit those pages to make it seem like we were exclusively recommending their product,
and then post those edited pages on their own website(s).
This was not only a blatant theft of Truth Publishing's intellectual property, it is also causing untold damage to the Truth Publishing reputation due to "the company's" editing of the content page, making it misrepresent Truth Publishing's position on their products. Sending a warning email to "the company" accomplished nothing. It was completely ignored, and the intellectual property theft continues to this day.
But this part of the investigation is by
no means over, because by stealing content from Newstarget.com, the "the
company" con artist has, in effect, motivated us to further pursue investigations
and, potentially, support criminal charges against the "the company"
owner / operator (who we will not name here, but whose identity is well known
to us). You'll read more about this below. We are now fully aware of this con
artist's multiple products, corporate fronts, and even his criminal history, all
of which we are currently holding off on making public until we can put together
a more complete investigation.
"the company", violates federal labeling laws
Thinking that a con artist who would sell counterfeit hoodia, steal feature articles, play nasty trademark games with competitors, deceive consumers with bogus product comparison charts and use Nevada shell corporations might also be up to other questionable activity, we decided to find out if the "the company" product was possibly violating federal labeling laws. As it turns out, we were right: "the company" product is deceptively labeled and is right now being sold in violation of federal laws and FDA regulations.
To find this out, we purchased a high-end digital scale called the i2600. It is accurate to .1 grams (1/10th of a gram) and is calibrated with a 1kg weight (1000 grams).
| Ten empty capsules weighs .9 grams. |
To do the math on "the company's"
capsules, we first needed the weight of empty capsules. We purchased and weighed
10 gelatin capsules on the scale, which gave us a reading of .9 grams (900mg).
Then we read the "the company" product label, which claims 400mg of hoodia powder per capsule. Using that figure, the total weight of 10 capsules should be, of course, 4g, plus the weight of the empty capsules (.9). This means that if the capsules were properly filled with 400mg of hoodia powder each, the resulting total weight of capsules plus powder should be 4900mg, or 4.9 grams.
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The "the company" capsules weighed only 3.8 grams, indicating a 25%
shortage of hoodia powder. |
However, as you can see from this photo, the actual weight of ten "the company" capsules was only 3.8 grams. Subtracting the .9 grams for empty capsules, this leaves only 2.9 grams of actual hoodia powder. This is less than 75% of the promised amount of hoodia according to the product label and website (which should be 400mg per capsule).
The bottom line?
"the company" capsules only contain 290mg of powder each, not 400mg.
Of course, even if they were to contain 400mg of powder, the powder is counterfeit
hoodia to begin with. But what this indicates is a double scam: the powder is
counterfeit, and customers are being short-changed on the dosage.
Action item: What you can do
If you have purchase products from "the company", Truth Publishing strongly urges you to take the following steps:
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DO NOT consume capsules labeled as "the company". Truth Publishing does not know what powder is actually contained in these capsules, but the lab results are telling us it is definitely not hoodia gordonii powder. Do not throw out bottles of "the company". Keep them. Law enforcement officials may want to contact you in the future in order to obtain samples of the counterfeit capsules.
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Call your credit card company and dispute the charges, citing this new report showing the "the company" products to be made with counterfeit hoodia powder.
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Spread the word: forward the URL for this report to your friends, family, or anyone who may have purchased hoodia products on the internet. Help protect them from this hoodia scam by inviting them to read this Truth Publishing investigative report.
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Contact your local state Attorney General and file a complaint. You may include a copy of this report, if you wish (full permission granted to copy this). If you are in California, strongly consider this option, as the operator of "the company" resides in California.
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If you purchased "the company" products by clicking on a search engine advertising link, complain to that search engine about the fact that they are unknowingly promoting a company with a fraudulent product. Help these search engines purge their pages of fraudulent products and promoters.
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Consider contacting the FTC or other law enforcement officials on this matter. Only through law enforcement efforts can we get con artists shut down.
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If you were harmed by "the company", financially or otherwise, please email Truth Publishing at the email addresses listed on this site, so that we may compile a list of complaints for law enforcement authorities. We may also publish those complaints in an update to this investigation (we will not publish your name or email address, rest assured).
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Help us track down other unscrupulous activities by "the company" scam artists. Have you been scammed by another product that you think may be operated by the same con artist? Let us know via email, and we'll do our best to continue this investigation and bring this man to justice.
Used by Permission of Newstarget
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