FTC Cracks Down on Fake Acai Berry News Site

While the internet has brought more news and information to people than ever before, some companies have taken advantage of the dependence of shoppers on news websites to get information about products in order to fraudulently sell diet and health products. The Federal Trade Commission has begun filing lawsuits against site owners of five so-called fake news sites that were being used to sell Acai Berry colon cleansers and diet products. While the lawsuits are being settled, courts have issued restraining orders that prevent the companies from transferring assets or destroying documentation related to the sales of Acai Berry drinks during this time as well as ordering site owners to warn consumers they have been sued by the FTC or take the site down completely.

Each of the sites involved in the case claimed to offer “investigative reports” about the effectiveness of Acai Berry products, and lead consumer to believe that these reports were offered by legitimate news outlets. The FTC claims that the reporters featured on these sites were simply actors who had never conducted any tests using Acai Berry products. Consumers were fooled by website names such as “Channel9NewsReport.com” and “ConsumerNewsPicks.com” that featured well dressed new reporters who claimed that they themselves had used Acai Berry drinks and had achieved specific results. But the FTC claims that all information on the sites is false and made up for the purposes of advertising Acai Berry drinks.

While most of the sites have been taken down by operators, there are still a few websites that feature similar “investigative journalism” about other online products. The same type of advertising is used, with reporters claiming to have used products themselves to achieve the results the company touts. In fact, some of the same actors and actresses who appeared on Acai Berry sites can be found selling other online products.

Fake Site, Blog and Review Use by Acai Berry Marketers

Other tactics being called into question by the FTC include the creation of blogs by people who claim to have lost weight using Acai Berry drinks or other products. The sites feature pictures and blog entries from women who claim that the product helped them lose significant amounts of weight, and, according to the FTC, convinced consumers that they were written by other satisfied customers who had achieved the results that the company claimed. But the FTC says that the blogs were part of a deceptive, illegal marketing scheme designed to convince customers to buy a product that may not be as advertised. In fact, claims such as a twenty five pound weight loss in as little as four weeks using Acai Berry products have been found to be patently untrue, prompting the FTCs action.

The practices of publishers who post blogs that don’t disclose relationships with commercial sources have been under fire from the FTC for several years. The FTC states that bloggers who are compensated for posting reviews of products should disclose the fact that they are compensated in order to allow customers to make informed choices about what they are reading. The idea is to match the practices of magazine advertisements formatted to look like news stories which clearly state “advertisement” at the top of the page. Meanwhile, the fate of Acai Berry advertisers may have significant ripple effects as more manufacturers are forced to discontinue deceptive marketing practices.

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This page was last modified on: December 09, 2011