Spammers in US Charged for Falsely Promoting HGH

A judge of the US District Court has issued an order for a company in Las Vegas to halt sending unsolicited promotional e-mails for anti-aging and weight-loss products, the US Federal Trade Commission announced on February 4, 2008.

At the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Judge David Coar has additionally ordered Sili Neutraceuticals and its owner Brian McDaid to pay US$ 2.6 Million for making fake promotional claims and spamming mails that violated the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act and the FTC Act. Networkworld published this on February 4, 2008.

The violations by McDaid and his company under the CAN-SPAM Act included delivering commercial e-mails with subject headings that would mislead recipients and not providing them a clear opportunity to be able to decline receiving further unsolicited e-mails.

Officials at the district court said about the defendants that they went against the FTC Act by wrongly claiming that Sili Neutraceuticals' 'Human Growth Hormone', or HGH products, will reverse or turn back the aging progress and the hoodia products will rapidly cause a permanent and substantial weight loss.

The Commission charged the defendants with sending spam having misleading subject lines and not allowing the recipients to opt out from those e-mails that also didn't have the postal address of the sender.

In the month of August 2007, the FTC accused the defendants for violating the CAN-SPAM Act and falsely claiming over the Internet that its HGH anti-aging medication and hoodia weight-loss drugs are highly effective. The complaint by the FTC said that the company's spam directed large traffic towards the Websites of the defendants to sell their products.

Then under the January 23, 2008 ruling, Coar ordered Kaycon, the name under which the company did business, to halt misrepresenting any service or product through the Internet, including the HGH-related and the hoodia plant products.

Besides, the spam database of the FTC received more than 85,000 spam mails sent during the operation. Also, documents that the FTC filed in the court spelt that a number of these e-mails were sent via Web hijacks.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 2/13/2008