Federal and state officials in Maine said Wednesday they had shut down an elaborate scheme to deceptively market dietary supplements in which a company disguised 30-minute radio advertisements as a talk radio show and repeatedly promoted fake print newspapers ads.
In fact, according to officials, the promotions for the two products featured fictitious consumers and purported medical experts who endorsed the supplements without actually having endorsed them.
StateNews report one supplement, CogniPrin, was touted as having been clinically proven to improve memory and possibly reverse mental decline. The other, FlexiPrin, was touted for its ability to reduce back and joint pain in as little as two hours.
A complaint from the Federal Trade Commission and the Maine attorney general alleges that the supplements, from a company called Better Health Nutritionals, raked in at least $6.5 million in gross sales between 2012 and 2015.
The agency receives a sea of complaints about the marketing of dietary supplements. But the FTC said the case against the makers of FlexiPrin and CogniPrin involved a “wide range of marketing practices that have caused serious financial injury to consumers.”
Federal rules bar dietary supplement manufacturers from claiming their products can diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent a disease. They can, however, play with language — like that a product “boosts” or “promotes” health — to suggest those same benefits.
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