July 2, 2003
An Idaho woman has been sentenced to 33 months in federal prison and ordered to repay her victims almost $800,000 for conspiring to use the Internet to falsely promote a cure for spinal cord injuries and other serious illnesses.
In addition to the prison time, Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered Beverly Vigil to serve three years of supervised release following her incarceration, and to repay her victims $795,396.06. She has been in jail since her arrest in January, 2002, and will receive credit for time already served.
Beverly Vigil and her ex-husband, Tom Vigil, owned and operated the Alternative Medicine and Biophysics Research Institute in Nampa, and promoted a product they called Neuralyn on their web site.
More than 100 patients, most of them paraplegics or quadraplegics, paid up to $10,000 each to come to Nampa or affiliated clinics in Utah and Colorado to be treated with Neuralyn.
Prospective patients were told that Neuralyn was 85 to 95 percent successful and could enable them to move or even walk again by regrowing nerve cells. They were also told, falsely, that Tom Vigil was a medical doctor with training in biochemistry, that Neuralyn had undergone clinical studies, and that a patent application and FDA approval were pending. An advisory board of distinguished physicians and scientists consisted mainly of people who had no idea they were on such a board.
In addition to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Beverly Vigil pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy to delivery a misbranded drug in interstate commerce with the intent to defraud. The Vigils promoted Neuralyn as an all-natural substance made from plants from the Yucatan. In reality, the product contained a topical anesthetic which gave some patients temporary pain relief and led them to believe that they were improving.
The Vigils charged $300 to $500 for a vial of Neuralyn for home treatment, claiming that the ingredients, production process, and costs of research and patent applications justified the high price. Beverly Vigil admitted, however, that vials of Neuralyn cost them only $15 apiece.
Tom Vigil faces two counts of conspiracy, 18 counts of wire fraud and 8 counts of delivering a misbranded drug into interstate commerce with intent to defraud. He is a fugitive, believed to be in Mexico.
California pharmacist David Taylor, who supplied the Neuralyn to the Vigils, pled guilty to conspiracy to deliver a misbranded drug in interstate commerce with intent to defraud. He cooperated with the investigation, was given five years probation, and has paid restitution to the victims.
