Summary Of Recent FTC Press Release:

Seeking action against 10 operators of fake news sites for making misleading claims about acai berry weight loss products, the Federal Trade Commission is requesting federal courts to halt the deceptive marketing tactics being used by those marketers. To put a permanent stop to this misleading marketing strategy, the Federal Trade Commission has asked courts to freeze the operations’ assets pending trial. The FTC complaints accuse the defendants of operating websites that appear to be parts of legitimate news gathering organizations, but apparently are not. Those alleged fake news sites are said to have typical names like “News 6 News Alerts,” “Health News Health Alerts,” or “Health 5 Beat Health News” and more often than not, the sites bear the names and logos of reputed media outlets which include ABC, Fox News, CBS, CNN, USA Today, and Consumer Reports to name a few. Falsely representing that reports on the fake sites have appeared on those well known networks, the sites contain articles with headlines that sound investigative and impressive and the articles claim that the products really work.

After receiving plenty of complaints from consumers about the weight loss products they had spent about $70 to $100 on, the FTC has accused the sites of making allegedly misleading claims about the acai berry products. The complaints made by FTC include a lot of issues that could get the operators of those false sites in serious trouble. First off, those sites are filled to the brim with claims which are believed to be deceptive by the Commission. The fact that the acai berry supplements will cause rapid and substantial weight loss is unsupported and this makes the commission suspect the sites even more. And the defendants have also been accused of deceptively representing their websites to be objective news reports. The independent tests demonstrating the effectiveness of the product have been seriously doubted and the Commission has also blamed the defendants of committing the grave mistake of falsely representing comments in response to the articles on their websites to reflect the views of independent consumers. To top it all, the defendants fail to disclose their financial relationships to the merchants selling the products.

According to FTC’s complaints, everything on the website is fake from the weight loss results to the so-called investigations to the site itself. The reporters, the consumer testimonials, and even the comments following the articles on the websites have been claimed to be marketing content and not an individual customer’s views about the product. The Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection concurs, saying “Almost everything about these sites is fake.” With the complaint made, FTC hopes to see strict action carried out against the defendants. The commission will ask the courts to permanently stop the defendants from making such deceptive claims and it also aims to see companies refunding the money of the consumers who purchased the supplements and other products from them. To help consumers distinguish and avoid those allegedly deceptive claims, the FTC has come up with a new consumer alert. The commission has also brought forth a new video that underscores the risks of free trials.

The FTC has filed 10 complaints and requested for temporary restraining orders in six federal courts. The outcome of the case is yet to be seen.

Original Release is here: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/04/fakenews.shtm