Ubiquitous tiny belly online ad part of scheme, government says
A 3-step scheme, FTC says
In lawsuits filed over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission has alleged that the ads are the leading edge of what amounts to a
three-step scheme that has conned millions of people.
Much like a barker outside a carnival tent, 1 Tip is merely a come-on, a lure to start the process. People who click on the ad are directed to a second site, which looks like a diet or health-news page. The sites go by names such as Consumeronlinetips.com and Weeklyhealthnews.com.
The sites typically feature an article in which an attractive young TV reporter investigates the benefits of a diet involving a series of products. Sometimes the products are made from mangoes or acai berries, a fruit grown in South and Central America. In other cases, the products come from human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone produced by developing embryos and the pituitary gland.
We here at Channel 7 are a little skeptical of the hCG diet, reads the copy at Consumeronlinetips.com. So we decided to put these products to the test.
The pages have links that lead to a third site, where consumers can use a credit or debit card to order trial samples of the featured products.
Almost everything about these would-be news sites is bogus, the federal government contends. It has said that the offer of free or low-cost samples is a scheme to capture consumers credit card numbers, leading to thousands of complaints about unauthorized charges.
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The FTC says that none of the Web sites can back up their weight-loss claims. But the real heart of the scam, it says, is the offer of afree sample. In fact, the Web sites disclose only in fine print that a consumer who hands over a credit card number is signing up for much more.
Someone who orders a sample offered by one hCG marketer, for example, is technically agreeing to pay an additional $79.99 for another shipment of the product two weeks later, and another $79.99 six weeks after that, according to the disclaimer. The charges and the product keep coming until the buyer calls a toll-free number to cancel.
But thats easier said than done, investigators found. Canceling often involved time-consuming phone calls and frequent hang-ups that left customers frustrated and angry, the agency said. In the meantime, the charges continued to roll on.
