Acai berry scam exposed by FTC, ten online firms charged

Acai berry scam exposed by feds

Acai berry diets and products have become a huge fad among Internet consumers looking to benefit from the weight loss and other health wonders of eating the exotic South American product.

But unscrupulous website operators have apparently took advantage of the demand for acai berry to perpetrate online scams. The Federal Trade Commission has already filed charges against ten firms in six states.

Regulators want courts in New York, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia and Washington to freeze the assets of the companies who allegedly fleeced many Internet customers by pretending to be real news sites with objective articles.

The FTC said the web sites in fact only had advertisements but used logos of known news organizations to make it appear that what consumers were reading were based on facts to conceal an acai berry scam.

Since the FTC filed their lawsuits, many of the web sites in question have been taken down and a few have been slapped with temporary restraining orders. The commission said it was still investigating whether the web site operators were in cahoots with each other.

Online searches of "acai berry" yielded results with links to those fake news sites that contained articles with dubious facts. Consumers who then click on another link were offered "free trials" and other promos of acai berry products.

Some customers said they were duped into buying anywhere from $70 to $100 worth of acai berry supplements.

Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Rachael Ray have also been used by some companies as fake endorsers just to cash in on the acai berry craze.

Posted by Melanie Mendoza on Wednesday April 20 2011, 6:05 AM EST. Ref: AP. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Shopping. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0