Supreme Greens Defendants Settle FTC Charges

WASHINGTON--Two Upland, Calif.-based companies and three executives settled Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges for their roles in the deceptive marketing of the Supreme Greens dietary supplement, which featured claims that it could prevent, treat and cure cancer, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes, in addition to causing substantial weight loss. In separate settlement agreements, the defendants were slapped with a total of $80,000 in fines and accepted various restrictions on future supplement marketing ventures.

Supreme Greens developer Alejandro Guerrero and his company, Health Solutions Inc., are to pay a $65,000 fine or hand over the title to Guerreros 2004 Cadillac Escalade. Michael Howell and Gregory Geremesz, both of Healthy Solutions LLC., are to pay fines of $5,000 and $10,000, respectively. All defendants also agreed not to make false or unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits, performance, efficacy or safety of any food, drug or dietary supplement. The agreements further contain high-dollar avalanche clauses, due should any of the defendants have misrepresented their financial conditions.

FTCs original 2004 complaint against Supreme Green marketing involved numerous other defendants, including Direct Marketing Concepts Inc., ITV Direct Inc., Triad ML Marketing Inc., King Media Inc. and various executives of these companies. At issue were infomercials for the product, which ran on a variety of cable channels, including PAX and the Outdoor Channel, beginning in mid-2003. In these infomercials, Guerrero and host David Barrett made drug and disease claims about Supreme Greens and misrepresented their expertise.

While litigation remains pending for all other Supreme Greens defendants, the current settlement involving Guerrero, Howell, Geremesz and their companies contains many specific bans. In addition to banning future unsubstantiated benefit claims, the defendants are prohibited from misrepresenting the existence, contents, validity, results, conclusions or interpretations of any test or study in connection with the marketing or sale of any food, drug or dietary supplement. FTC also banned them from misrepresenting Guerrero as a medical doctor, Doctor of Oriental Medicine or Ph.D.