Last year, Oz praised the anti-aging properties of the acai berry on Oprah’s show.  Soon, marketers began selling acai products claiming they had been endorsed by Winfrey or Oz. We previously advised about a rash of BBB reports on deceptive acai supplement marketing practices.

Oprah and Oz are represented by Marc Rachman of Davis & Gilbert in New York. The Chicago Tribune reports about a phenomenon where the health benefits of a substance is discussed on the show and then the scams start.  According to Rachman, Winfrey’s Web site has fielded more than 2,000 complaints related to acai-berry-related products.

Also joining in is the Illinois Attorney General who has filed consumer fraud lawsuits against three suppliers and a local marketer of acai berry products.  The suits allege that the companies lure customers with free trial offers, and then charge consumers’ credit cards prematurely, do not always supply the product as promised and make it challenging to cancel the orders.

The Illinios AG filed three suits, the Crush LLC Complaint , the Advanced Wellness Complaint , and the Amirouch Complaint .

To read the Oprah and Oz complaint, click here.

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This time, the news report is real. In an earlier blog, we identified News 13 and News 29 as faux-TV news Web sites that touted the health benefits of resveratrol and acai. Our search of public and other records linked them to a company in Hollywood, Florida, among other locations. We told readers to stay tuned for an update.CBS News -- the real network -- reported July 29 on what appears to be the same Hollywood-based company, FWM Laboratories, in a national broadcast and an accompanying Web story headlined, "Buyer Beware: Web Supplement Scams." Some of the Web site visuals in the TV report (such as the Resveratrol Ultra Web page) are the same we saw in our research. Some had prominent mentions of CBS News and its "60 Minutes" news show as sources of information about the benefits of resveratrol. That may have prompted the story.Kelly Cobiella

In its reporting, CBS discovered an “F” rating from the same regional Better Business Bureau and a multitude of Web sites that FWM uses, though it is not clear if the faux-TV stations were among them. Kelly Cobiella, a real reporter from CBS, found the company’s offices. She toured the sales and shipping departments, and had a sit-down with CEO Brian Weiss who looked, in our opinion, a little uncomfortable. He told Cobiella, “We’ve sold to million and a half customers since November. So in the overall picture, the number of complaints seems high, but it’s low when compared to the number of orders we’ve shipped out.”

The Web story follows with this: “In fact, FWM is one of the most complained-about companies in the nation. The Florida Attorney General is investigating the company and the Federal Trade Commission is looking into the marketing tactic they – and companies like them – use. News organizations including CBS have tried to get FWM and others to stop misusing their reports to sell products.”

Signature statements from Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey come to mind, but let’s think about consumers. One FWM customer told CBS News that he signed up for what he thought was one 99-cent sample bottle, but received and was billed for two more at $87 each.

Do billing practices like these reflect well on the industry as a whole? If not, what can be done so that other sellers of resveratrol and acai are not also labeled as scammers?

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Cathy

If you thought faux news was the province of only The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and The Onion, welcome to News 13 WKTV. It is the non-TV station,  non-news Web site that reports on Resveratrol Ultra. And it is not the only fake station. Move up the Internet dial and you will find News 29 Online. There, a reporter named Alice Avaleece uses almost the exact same language to tout Acai Essence as fake-WKTV’s Cathy Diaz does to describe Resveratrol Ultra:

“Usually as a reporter I find products that are “too good to be true” and report on how they didn’t live up to their claims. I can say with the utmost certainty that this is a feel good story for the “ages”!”

Alice

Suspicious? So are the people at the real WKTV, which operates Channel 2 in Rochester, N.Y. They might be interested to know that Ms. Diaz also appears on another URL, http://abc360news.com. Look closely at the faux-anchors atop the Web pages of both faux stations and you might see the same face twice. You will definitely notice that the stories on the pages have only minor differences; for example, Cathy in New York is 35 and Alice in Florida is 33 .

The two fake TV Web sites share product links to Resveratrol Ultra. The site has more product information and this disclaimer: “Resveratrol Ultra is not affiliated in any way with CNN, FOX, WebMD, ABC, FORTUNE, NBC or CNN.”

Who owns the two Web sites? News 13 is a mystery, but a “Who Is” search of News 29 shows that the registrant is XM Brands and the administrative contact is Issa Asad. Both have an address of 3609 N. 29th Ave., Hollywood, Florida. There the trail gets confusing. Acai Essence is sold by a company in the West Indies and Resveratrol Ultra by a company in Cyprus.

Search Google for “XM Brands” and the first page of results has a number of uncomplimentary entries, including an “F” rating dated October 2008 from the Better Business Bureau of Southeast Florida and the Caribbean.  Search for “Issa Asad” and “acai” and you can find Acai XM, where the same “Dr. Perricone” who pronounces the benefits of Acai Essence also recommends Acai XM.

As they say in the TV news business, “Stay tuned.”

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Acai Palm

The acai berry has been credited by supplement companies with fighting cancer and other diseases.  The acai berry comes from the acai palm.

According to Steve Cox, BBB spokesperson, “many businesses across the country are using the same selling model for their acai products: they lure customers in with celebrity endorsements and free trial offers, and then lock them in by making it extremely difficult to cancel the automatic delivery of more acai products every month.” To read the press release, click here

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