Tag Archives: Snake Oil

Kevin Richardson’s “Miracle Cure,” an Infuriating Scam

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Oxygen Diet Scam

So here’s the email that showed up in my inbox today:

From: Ultimate.Cure.17690762 <your.miracle.cure@highly-wondercure.com>
Subject: Doctor Jailed for CURING Cancer (see why),  Article No. 10754166
To: <redacted>

Today, you have a 95% chance of eventually dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure right at your fingertips.

Well-respected doctors have been attacked, threatened with losing their licenses and even JAILED for sharing the information you are about to discover…
If you or a your loved one is suffering from ANY, and we mean ANY illness, chronic or acute, especially if you’ve been told it is incurable, then this is the most important message you will hear today.
View This SHOCKING Health Alert in your Browser: http://learnmore.highly-wondercure.com
(they don’t want you to know about this)

Article No. 10754166

We see this kind of thing all the time, but this particular scam infuriates me because it doesn’t just say you’re going to lose weight (açaí berries or garcinia cambogia) – it claims to cure any and all diseases, including cancer and HIV. This is cruel and dangerous – weak-minded or uneducated people will fall for this rubbish and spend their valuable money on a worthless system instead of seeking competent medical assistance. This fraud will kill people.

Have a look at some of the garbage this maddening presentation says:

  • Learn how to oxygenate your cells in a way that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for bacteria, cancer, or any virus to live, and create a miraculous recovery and immunity to any disease – much less the diseases that are killing us in record numbers today.
  • Disease and oxygen cannot be in the same space in your body.
  • Oxygen needs to get inside your cells in order to get rid of disease. (Solution: take a deep breath.)
  • Remember the oxygen therapies you will have access to have been PROVEN to CURE the most incurable illnesses to date like the HIV virus and practically all forms of cancer.
  • Documentation and proof of oxygen therapy curing virtually every disease we know of goes back to the late 1800s.
  • When you use these techniques properly, you’ll be shocked as you see physical reactions that prove the virus, bacteria or toxin is leaving the body – even if you’ve tried every therapy out there.
  • Use your “maintenance routine” once your illness has vaporized out of your body.
  • Many people the world over have been helped and yes even “cured” by these simple therapies. (Note the use of scare quotes.)

The lies and false claims continue unabated for around half an hour – cure eczema, psoriasis, regain youthful skin, whatever, you name it. As I mentioned in a previous post, with thanks to the creators of Lucky Luke:

Petroleum

Buzzwords, vague and oblique references to un-cited scientific studies, dropping names like Atkins, I have never seen a more evil conglomeration of mumbo-jumbo in my life.

Bullshit

Search Google for “Kevin Richardson Miracle Cure Scam,” and most of what you get is shill pages and affiliate recommendations. Yes, they pay people to become affiliates using another multi-level fraud:

Affiliate

… and I’m sure the email that started all of this is from one of their suckers. Notice that they promise up to $118.00 and change commission per sale, but they’re selling their product for less than $40.00. I’d like to see the math on that one.

Order

Original price $97.00, but for YOU, because YOU”RE SPECIAL, and because you’re going to ACT NOW, only $37.00.

Order 2

One other thing to be aware of is that if you do order, you’re giving your credit card number to extremely unethical people, and you stand a good chance of having unauthorized and/or recurring charges applied to your card, with little or no hope of getting a refund if you complain.

Attorney General offices are constantly trying to bring down such fraudsters – click through for an Iowa report on one action against a company promoting the miracle benefits of “marine phytoplankton.” The problem with scams like this is that they are like a hydra – cut off one head, and two more spring up in its place.

I write this post largely to combat all of the fraudulent information out there, in the hopes that a few people might encounter it and save their money. Please, be smart. Stay away from all such snake oil.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Old_Wolf_Curse

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Packaging Snake Oil

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I’ve posted numerous times about health-related scams and sleazy marketing. For this reason, I have no small sense of irony spending time as a temp worker for a local nutraceutical company that serves many herbal and health-food concerns. Today I spent 8 hours helping to package about a million capsules of… wait for it… garcinia cambogia.

Temp work is fine, I guess. It’s pretty mindless work, although it can be physically demanding, and it provides some income where there would otherwise be none. But as one works, one’s mind drifts to the customers who will be buying this stuff at grossly inflated prices, thinking that this is the magic bullet to help them lose weight; it’s not, and they won’t. They’re just throwing money away on a powdered fruit product of dubious value.

Petroleum

From “Lucky Luke 18 – In the Shadow of the Derricks”

008

Competition was also lively in the 1740’s among some half a dozen proprietors marketing a form of crude petroleum under the name of British Oil. Early in the decade Michael and Thomas Betton were granted a patent for “An Oyl extracted from a Flinty Rock for the Cure of Rheumatick and Scorbutick and other Cases.” The source of the oil, according to their specifications, was rock lying just above the coal in mines, and this rock was pulverized and heated in a furnace to extract all the precious healing oil. (Old English Patent Medicines in America, George B. Griffenhagen and James Harvey Young. Found at the Gutenberg Project.)

Snake-oil salesmen have been around since the dawn of time. Sometimes they took the guise of shamans or medicine men – now they’re just con men and marketing specialists. Now, don’t get me wrong – I am a proponent of optimal nutrition including an adequate intake of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and co-factors, and there is a significant body of peer-reviewed science that documents beneficial effects from many natural sources: fruits, vegetables, plants, herbs, chemicals (think of aspirin), and so on. I have nothing against natural remedies, especially when there is adequate proof to show that they are effective. What rubs me the wrong way more than anything are the outrageous claims touted by advertorials and infomercials, picked up on by celebrities such as Oprah and Dr. Oz, and marketed in multiple millions of dollars to the gullible proletariat.

The nutritional industry is a trillion-dollar scam waiting to happen, and very little of what is sold imparts benefit commensurate with price paid. Add to that the fact that the landscape is so unregulated that one can claim almost anything as long as you include the standard disclaimer that your product is not intended to cure, prevent, diagnose or treat any disease, and that your claims are not approved by the FDA. That makes nutritional labeling similar to the CAN-SPAM act… you can get away with selling the moon as long as you word it right.

Let’s look at another product: Galaxy juice marketed by Joy Life international, a Chinese MLM company.

From their web page:

——–

GALAXY HIGH IMPACT JUICE BLEND

  1. Boosts energy levels in a novel way
  2. Contains a unique proprietary blend of antioxidant ingredients that may slow-down the aging process
  3. Enhances ability to focus and concentrate
  4. Taken with breakfast, this product has the singular unique property of reducing stress and in some manner enhances a positive outlook for the rest of the day
Ingredients:  Water, Super Fruit Blend: (Acia, Pineapple, White Grape, Pomegranate, Red Raspberry, Aronia, Red Grape, Cranberry, Elder-berry, Plum, Red Sour Cherry, Mangosteen, Goji), Chicory Root Extract, Xylitol, Super Food Blend: (Barley, Cayenne Pepper, Buckwheat, Flaxseed, Alfalfa Sprout, Lactobacillus Acidophilus, Soy Isoflavones (40% Extract). Garlic 4:1, Wheatgrass 33:1), Antioxidant Blend: (Green Tea Extract, Alpha Lipoic Acid, DMAE, Idebenone, Ascorbic Acid), Citric Acid, Lecithin, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate.
——–
If this stuff boosts energy levels, it does so because of the natural sugars contained in the fruit blend, which is hardly novel; but I especially love the “in some manner,” which conjures up visions of handwavium and unobtainium. Don’t ask questions, it just works. Remember that Chinese medicine has largely been marketed to a Chinese population, a large percentage of whom are essentially ignorant of modern scientific realities. Were it not so, the rhinoceros would not be an endangered species today.
In Bernard Read’s translation of the 1597 Chinese materia medica “Pen Ts’ao Kang Mu”, the complete section on rhinoceros horn (“the best is from a freshly killed male animal”) reads as follows, with no mention of any aphrodisiac qualities:

“It should not be taken by pregnant women; it will kill the foetus. As an antidote to poisons (in Europe it was said to fall to pieces if poison were poured into it). To cure devil possession and keep away all evil spirits and miasmas. For gelsemium [jasmine] and snake poisoning. To remove hallucinations and bewitching nightmares. Continuous administration lightens the body and makes one very robust. For typhoid, headache, and feverish colds. For carbuncles and boils full of pus. For intermittent fevers with delirium. To expel fear and anxiety, to calm the liver and clear the vision. It is a sedative to the viscera, a tonic, antipyretic. It dissolves phlegm. It is an antidote to the evil miasma of hill streams. For infantile convulsions and dysentery. Ashed and taken with water to treat violent vomiting, food poisoning, and overdosage of poisonous drugs. For arthritis, melancholia, loss of the voice. Ground up into a paste with water it is given for hematemesis [throat hemorrhage], epistaxis [nosebleeds], rectal bleeding, heavy smallpox, etc. (Found at Save the Rhino)

But how is Galaxy juice being represented to their sales force, and hence by the sales force to potential customers? As an anti-cancer agent. Now, if US reps don’t want to run afoul of the FDA, they won’t say anything about that in a direct manner, but have a look at some of the slides from their own inspirational Powerpoint presentation:

slide-40-728[1]

slide-41-728[1]

slide-42-728[1]

slide-43-728[1]

slide-44-728[1]

Joy Life found a willing scientist, gave him a research grant, and wildly extrapolated his results. And a bottle of this fruit/grain concoction sells for $130.00 in China. Is it worthless? Well, looking at the ingredients, it’s probably a good source of antioxidants, but it won’t cure cancer, and it’s hardly worth the end-user price. Let it also be mentioned that Joy Life sells a few other things in the USA that are highly questionable, including:
  • The “Energy Cup“, a filtration system that ‘converts everyday drinking water into ionized, alkaline water, helping sustain the body’s natural pH levels
  •  The  “Anion Emitter” which is supposed to  ‘contain semi-precious stones infused with proprietary frequencies that carry a negative charge‘ designed to ‘bring the body into balance and energetic homeostasis while restoring health and reducing pain‘
  • The “Cation Shield“, Joy Life claiming it ‘helps strengthen your body’s bio-field while bathing you with the beneficial effects of negative ions to help combat EMFs.

Things of this nature fall directly into the quackery zone, and I’m astonished that they can get away with marketing this sort of garbage.

Fortunately for me, I won’t be working at this particular outlet much longer; another opportunity has come up which strikes me as being much more upstanding and worthwhile. But the size and scope of the former enterprise made me realize once again that the business of separating people from their hard-earned cash often has very little to do with providing honest value in return.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

An Especially Devious Spam Comment.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

People can be so bloody dishonest it makes my brains hurt. This comment showed up on my post regarding combating elder fraud:

I don’t know if it’s just me or if everybody else encountering problems with your blog.

It looks like some of the text on your content are running off the screen.
Can someone else please provide feedback and let me know if
this iis happening to them too? This may be a issue with my
browser because I’ve had this happen previously. Manyy thanks

Looks legitimate and reasonable, except for the lousy spelling, but I know a lot of bad spellers and bad typists.

What was the dead giveaway was the user name: “Miracle Dr. Oz garcinia cambogia dosage,” and the link to a spammy review website promoting this worthless garbage, which then links to an even spammier order page. Dr. Oz should be ashamed of himself; he’s the health world’s “Mr. Popiel,” hawking anything and everything to the drooling viewers of late-night cable stations and internet infomercials.

As for this comment… into the spam can it goes. I won’t be increasing your SEO rankings, thank you, and what I would like to say to people who do this sort of thing – not to mention those who hawk worthless snake oil to the gullible masses – is not fit for a family-friendly blog.

Old_Wolf_Curse

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Hawking snake oil to the elderly

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I still get mail addressed to my mother on occasion; she left this world last year at the age of 94. But she was getting ads like this regularly for about 15 years before she finally caught the bus, and as time went on (before we took over her financial affairs) she ordered lots of products, either on her own or at the insistence of skilled but sleazy telephone salesmen. As a result, she ended up on every sucker list out there.

If you have older loved ones, please make sure they throw solicitations like this into the trash, even if they come from places as respectable as the Mayo Clinic – they’re not above drumming up business in the elder sector, and there are thousands of others who are looking for a chance to separate mentally-diminished but resource-wealthy seniors from their incomes, savings, and pensions.

The letter above is pure crap. The company makes a glaring mention of the FDA and implies that said agency has endorsed their product. This is a load of hqiz: the actual FDA letter is here, and if you read it you’ll see that the agency is clearly saying that evidence for effectiveness of phosphatidylserene as a memory-enhancer is feeble at best, although the product is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) based on the information provided to the FDA by the company involved, with the additional disclaimer that the FDA has not done its own research. They went on to say, “FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions.FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions“.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m a long-time proponent of optimal nutrition and there is a lot of science out there about vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other co-factors that do benefit health. What I object to is outlandish claims and weasel words from companies looking to make a quick buck from the unsuspecting and uneducated, and there are far too many of those out there.

If you’re looking for things to help your loved ones, be sure to do your due diligence. Research as much as you can on the product involved, and make sure you’re not buying smoke and mirrors, which is what 90% of the stuff being marketed out there really is.

The Old Wolf has Spoken.

WOSML: Wrong on So Many Levels

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Having recently posted about cigarette advertising, some of my readers pointed out that cigarettes were routinely hawked by doctors as being harmless at best, and actually good for you at worst. Here are some of the choicer examples, of which there are hundreds:

Even with all this historical nonsense, my head did a Linda Blair when I saw this picture over at Frog Blog:

I immediately went back to this Dilbert cartoon (click the link for the full-size version):

By the dessicated skull of Mogg’s grandmother – it’s like recommending arsenic to treat the symptoms of poisoning; apparently Dr. Batty (no offense intended to my dear friend in Dubbo) thinks the image of a 7-year-old puffing away on his death sticks would be fine. (“You don’t want to sell me death sticks. You want to go home and rethink your life.”)

Advertisements like this seem impossible in today’s world, but gullibility comes in many different forms. In the olden days, people believed just about anything they saw in print; authority and social validation are still powerful persuasion factors which can elicit the “click-whirr” response in a consumer’s brain. If you’re intersted in how marketers get your money, I recommend reading Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.)

Depending on a person’s level of awareness, however, the concept of “If you see it in the Weekly World News, it must be true” persists.

The parody issue of “The Irrational Inquirer,” published in 1983 by Larry Durocher and Tony Hendra, illustrates perfectly that most thinking people look at the supermarket tabloids with rolling eyes and shaking heads, but there is a segment of the population who buy these rags and actually believe what they contain, simply because it’s in print. “Alien Psychic Boondoggle Cripples Human Scum” is the best headline ever!

Pathetic… yet Americans alone are wasting billions of dollars annualy on bogus cures, nostrums, worthless weight loss products and other remedies, just because they find the information on the Internet.

The number of web pages like this which are out there number in the millions – because there’s money to be made from gullible people. Many of these deceptive ads claim that their products have been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Oz or others (again, using authority and social validation as marketing hooks) – but just like the snake-oil of old, it’s nothing but bald-face lies. For further reading, you might want to check out my previous post about the Açaí Berry.

Don’t get me wrong – there are countless products out there that do a body good – but my beef is with the deceptive marketing practices and false claims, particularly for products or systems (like tobacco) which science has shown to be harmful.

In closing, I recommend the following strategy for anyone who wishes to make wise purchasing decisions:

The Old Wolf has spoken.