September 16, 2005
The Federal Trade Commission says it has settled charges against the marketers of what it calls a fraudulent weight loss operation, in which seaweed patches were supposed to help consumers control their appetites.
The defendants, all based in the United Kingdom, will pay $150,000 the profits they made from selling Hydro-Gel Slim Patch and Slenderstrip in the United States.
Under the settlement, the defendants will be banned in the U.S. from making, advertising, or selling any dietary supplement, food, drug, or weight-loss product, and cannot make claims about other health-related products or services unless the claims are backed by scientific evidence.
The FTC filed a complaint in December 2003 to stop the allegedly false and unsubstantiated weight-loss claims for the two patches. In May 2004, the FTC amended its complaint to include Kingstown Associates, Ltd.; BVW Associates, Inc.; Gary Bush; David Varley; and Laurence White, the defendants named in todays announced settlement.
The FTC added the defendants when the Commission discovered they were allegedly orchestrating the manufacturing, advertising, and selling of the patches in the United States. In September 2004, the original defendants settled FTC charges.
The settlement against the U.K.-based defendants bans them from manufacturing, labeling, advertising, promoting, offering for sale, selling, or distributing any dietary supplement, food, drug, or weight-loss product, or assisting others to do so.
The defendants are further prohibited from making representations about the health benefits, performance, or efficacy of any health-related service or program, or device unless the representations are true, non-misleading, and substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence at the time they are made.
The order also requires the defendants to give the FTC a list of people who bought Hydro-Slim Patch and Slenderstrip, and prohibits them from disclosing their mailing lists to others, except as required by law.
They are required to pay $150,000, but if it is found that the defendants misrepresented their financial status, they will be responsible for the full judgment of $5.3 million the total U.S. sales of the two patches. The order also contains standard record-keeping provisions.
