As part of our investigation, we interviewed hoodia growers and suppliers, learning that con artists are hard at work trying to ride the current wave of hoodia publicity. When there's money to be made fooling people, you can bet someone will step up to the plate and start selling counterfeit hoodia at a premium. One hoodia source, I've been told, is selling ground up tree bark as hoodia powder. Another is selling plants that aren't even the right species!
If you're on the Internet searching for hoodia, it's almost impossible to know you're buying the real deal.
There are simply far too many con artists on the loose, and they know that people are desperate for hoodia. Everybody wants to lose weight, right?
That's why I went around the Internet placing purchases and asking for proof of the hoodia content. Some places offered certified analysis documents, others didn't. I spent nearly a thousand dollars buying hoodia tablets, capsules, plants and seeds, and I've listed the results of my investigation later in this report.
But beware! If I were you, I wouldn't buy from just anybody. It's hard to know who to trust in this emerging, high-profit business.
They'll give their usernames, passwords and social security numbers right to the con artists.
Then, it's over. The con artists have got you. They've got everything they need to make your life miserable from that day forward in terms of your finances and your credit rating. Once your identity is stolen, it is very difficult to get your finances back in order.
By the way, if you want to know how to beat identity theft, credit fraud, phishing scams and other threats to your finances and personal safety, definitely check out our downloadable Real Safety Guides.
Yet there are also charlatans and con artists in the business of taking advantage of sick people, so it's worth checking out an uncertified practitioner especially closely
There are also practitioners who are knowledgeable in several fields. It is not uncommon today to find medical doctors who are also certified Ayurvedic physicians, licensed acupuncturists, and licensed naturopaths—all in one. Healers tend to have a lifelong interest in healing, and a curiosity about new approaches. Licensed professionals are also required to obtain continuing education credits, or CEs, each year.
Scammers, con artists, identity thieves, and a wide range of hard-core criminal types will also be inspired to step up the pace of their illegal activities. Painful economic conditions will not only leave Americans more exposed but will also lead to cutbacks in law enforcement, the legal system, and other government programs as well as private sector services, such as parking-lot security and emergency lighting, which make for a generally safer environment. Increasingly, the bad guys will be given free reign to do as they please.
We have been conditioned to think that we look bad and the only way you can possibly improve is to line the pockets of the con artists who feed off your insecurities.
The real answer to health and fitness for the average person may be somewhere between fit and fat. At least that may be your starting point. I say this not to have you strive for mediocrity. I say this from my own experience of lowering my physical expectations to motivate myself to take action.
Junk science has become the tool of corporate and government con artists, and sadly, the public isn't educated well enough about skeptical thinking to know the difference between real science and junk science. For example, few people understand the difference between absolute vs. relative statistics on the efficacy of drugs, and because of that, drug companies are able to convince people their drugs are effective for nearly everyone when, in reality, many drugs only work on about 5% of the population.
Science needs to divorce itself from business interests and politics.
I'm going to expose the con artists in medicine
I say to all the con artists out there -- whether they're in the pharmaceutical industry, the nutritional supplements industry or the surgical procedures industry -- if I hear about your con, and I can manage to dig up enough evidence on it, I'm going to write a feature story and you will be found out. You will be caught. You will be publicized for conning the people.
The hoodia con artists need to be arrested, imprisoned and denied the ability to keep selling fraudulent products to the American public, and if there's any possible way I can assist in that effort to help round up and prosecute these hoodia con artists, I would be more than happy to do so, on my own time and on my own dime.
I would love to help clean up this market so that legitimate, honest hoodia gordonii resellers or manufacturers can be free to sell an honest product at an honest price to consumers who want assistance with their weight loss efforts. That's what I want to see.
And frankly, in the initial research I've done on this, there are apparently a lot of con artists out there in the market selling lousy silver products.
I'm not going to name those companies right now. Instead I'm going to name a company you can trust. And, by the way, I don't earn any money whatsoever from recommending companies here. This is not an advertisement at all; I don’t make commission or take kickbacks from the sale of these products.
Talking about what's wrong out there in the market, some of these companies are just outright lying.
Beware of lawn care con artists and useless "watering" gadgets
Don't let these lawn care maintenance companies fool you into thinking that they can come along and spray it with water and solve your lawn health problems. That’s a silly idea, like "water as medicine" or something. It's ridiculous. If water was so good, why was the lawn killed when it rained? If water was good, the rain should have been good for it, right? But that's not what happened. So these people can't fool me. I know my doctor. He's a bright guy; he taught me the truth about this. He really knows about lawn health.
I learned all about the big con of the prevention industry -- the people who change your oil and who flush out your transmission fluid, and all these other con artists out there to try to "prevent" car problems. Thankfully, my doctor completely reeducated me about the truth about automobile health. I thought, "That's great. I learned so much from this guy. Let's talk to him about the health of my lawn."
I’ve been having some lawn problems, and I'm spending a fortune trying to get people to come over and take care of my lawn. I think they were overcharging me.
In fact, there are many hucksters and con artists in the nutritional supplement industry, just as there are in the pharmaceutical industry. So, my position has never been that all nutritional supplements are good and that all pharmaceuticals are bad. It's just that if you're looking for what's truly healthy you're only going to find them from the naturalworld and never from the world of manufactured, synthesized drugs.
There are, after all, some con artists out there selling products. I don't think we need new regulations. I think we just need to enforce the existing laws. You see, this particular problem I investigated and reported on was not a supplement-regulation problem; this was a criminal problem. This was a con artist problem, and if we enforce the laws we have right now, we can get these people off the internet and out of business, and we can help protect the integrity of the nutritional supplements industry. So, this is not a regulatory question; this is a law enforcement question.
Although Nevada corporations certainly have legitimate uses, this pattern is simultaneously indicative of a corporate shell game played by con artists.
There's more to the corporate shell game, as you'll see below. But now let's shift gears and take a look at the marketing tactics of Pure Hoodia, Inc.
Deceiving consumers with rigged comparison charts
This rigged comparison chart deceives consumers by only recommending companies operated by the same guy.
Only through law enforcement efforts can we get con artists shut down.
If you were harmed by the Pure Hoodia company, financially or otherwise, please email Truth Publishing at the email addresses listed on this site, so that we may compile a list of complaints for law enforcement authorities. We may also publish those complaints in an update to this investigation (we will not publish your name or email address, rest assured).
Help us track down other unscrupulous activities by the Pure Hoodia scam artists.
For those who don't know, there are basically two reasons to set up a Nevada corporation like this: 1) for legitimate asset protection reasons, in case you happen to be a lawsuit target from unscrupulous ambulance chasers and the like, and 2) for con artists, scammers and criminals who want to be able to conduct business while making it nearly impossible for them to be sued. You can guess which category Pure Hoodia probably belongs to.
disease mongering psychiatrists, or counterfeit diet pills.
If we had more regulations about nutritional supplements, it wouldn't stop people like this, because we (as a nation) are not enforcing the laws on the books right now that could take con artists out of society, or at least take them offline.
Making an honest living is not that difficult
I have to add: I don't have anything personally against the person who turned out to be a con artist. In fact, I feel sorry for the guy in a big way. I have a lot of compassion for him. He must have a terribly sad life. He must have non-stop conflict; it has to be a terrible way to live.
Nature is not the problem here; the con artists are the problem. They're selling so-called "hoodia diet pills" that actually contain no detectable levels of hoodia whatsoever, and that conclusion is based on High Performance Thin-Layer Chomatography (HPTLC) testing, digital microscopy and other lab tests.
Based on my conversation with Alkemist Pharmaceuticals, the top hoodia testing lab in the U.S., it is now clear that a minimum of 60 percent of the hoodia being sold in the United States is counterfeit and the actual number is probably much higher.
Make no mistake: the bird flu "panic" is going to bring out a bunch of crooks and hucksters in the herbal supplement market, and there will be con artists selling counterfeit antiviral products just like you see people in the weight loss industry selling bogus hoodia gordonii. That's why I strongly encourage you to stick with companies and products you can trust.
So, to be detailed, my current top-recommended antiviral product is:
Jon Barron's Baseline of Health Formula "Super ViraGon": (current price is $39.95 for one bottle, or $100 for five) http://www.baselinenutritionals.
It all depends on which ads appear, of course, and we don't control that, but make no mistake: Many of the top hoodia advertisers in the search engines are actually the top con artists. It's no exaggeration to say that your favorite search engine that starts with a "G" is making millions off counterfeit hoodia product ads. But not intentionally: They're being duped just like many consumers.
Who can you trust?
As I hinted above, there are honest players in the hoodia market.
I must get two or three phishing emails from con artists every day. Of course, I ignore them. Most of them are from banks that I don't bank with. But every once in a while, something comes in from a bank that I do bank with. It's pretty convincing stuff. If I were a new user to the internet, or if I wasn't covering this kind of topic, I might click on it and I think it was legitimate. It all looks legitimate. The logo is there, and the domain name looks right. It all looks very official. These scammers are very good and creating these official-looking "phishing" websites.
Then, it's over. The con artists have got you. They've got everything they need to make your life miserable from that day forward in terms of your finances and your credit rating. Once your identity is stolen, it is very difficult to get your finances back in order.
By the way, if you want to know how to beat identity theft, credit fraud, phishing scams and other threats to your finances and personal safety, definitely check out our downloadable Real Safety Guides.
The worst may be yet to come
When it comes to email, we used to think that spam was the biggest problem.
Therefore, you have very high demand for the product, coupled with very high profit margins on the adulterated product, which means there is a very strong incentive for con artists to counterfeit this ingredient and make huge margins as a result. That's why you see so much crime in this industry, and that's why it's unique to hoodia gordonii.
Protecting against fake hoodia
So, what can you do as a consumer to protect yourself? Well, it's extremely difficult to actually weed out who is honest from who is a crook in this industry. I've had trouble, and I've talked to many people.
In other words, the hucksters and con artists who seem to dominate this industry are scamming the American people in a big way to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
You might ask, "Why are there so many crooks in the hoodia business? You don't see crooks in the business of selling vitamin B12 or cod liver oil or other supplements. Why hoodia?"
The answer is pure economics. Hoodia is where the money is. At $300 a kilogram, hoodia is quite a lucrative commodity. It approaches the price of some high-end industrial metal alloys or bulk diamonds.
So what do hoodia con artists do? They download the certificates that have been posted by legitimate companies, and then they do a little Photoshop photo editing to modify the original information on this certificate. Then they post the altered image on their own web site, and all of a sudden, it looks like they have their own CITES certificate, and they have lab test results showing their product to be genuine. They appear to have two pieces of documentation "proving" that their product is real, while, in fact, they know it to be counterfeit.
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disease mongering psychiatrists, or counterfeit 
