This article is from 2006, but someone just forwarded it to me and it’s very interesting:

“So if you had a questionable product—say, a pill filled with nothing more than an empty promise,  how hard would it be to find someone to make an infomercial and sell your product to millions? Dateline decided to find out.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14846367/

Reporters filled gel capsules with Nestle Quick, went to an infomercial production company, and asked them to make their fake “wrinkle cure” pill legit. Knowing it was bull, the infomercial company quickly found a doctor to pay $5,000 to endorse it, and several actresses to claim they tried to pill with excellent success. It was rather amazing how easily and quickly it all went down. And it was interesting to learn how things happened “behind the scenes.”

They don’t even ask what’s in the pills! Yet in just a couple of weeks, they were prepared to market and fill orders to millions across the country.

We need much stronger laws and enforcement against fraud and lying in advertisements.  A penalty of about one thousand times the amount collected and a mandatory one year sentence might be a good start.

Occam

Yes, it seems the penalties are outweighed by the amount of cash earned in the sales. Instead of a couple of million dollars in fines (out of multiple millions in sales) they need MUCH harsher penalties. No one takes the current penalties seriously.

Sometimes I wish my ethics didn’t prevent me from getting rich. Someone else thought of the two perfect, no-guilt, scams: Pet Rocks and saving messages to deliver after the Rapture.

fotobits - 03 May 2009 03:59 PM

Sometimes I wish my ethics didn’t prevent me from getting rich. Someone else thought of the two perfect, no-guilt, scams: Pet Rocks and saving messages to deliver after the Rapture.

Don’t forget “Information Age Prayer” For $3.95 a month they run your prayer through a voice synthesizer daily, thereby doing your daily prayer for you. It’s not a joke, the PayPal payments will really charge your credit card. Old thread here.

Jules, I need to read Meyers’ site more often. I followed the link to the computerized prayer site. Did you know you can get a Protestant Prayer Pack for only $19.95 monthly?

We really need to brainstorm on legal ideas to fleece people out of their hard-earned cashed. I’m tired of going to work every day. I’d rather spend time at star parties looking through my telescope.

I hear you! I’m tired of the daily grind as well. I’d like to quit my miserable paper-pushing job, stay home and raise a few more little atheists, and perhaps start a non-profit group after they’ve flown the nest.

Perhaps Dateline NBC’s diet pills made of Nestle Quick weren’t such a bad idea after all? You get the gel-caps, I’ll get the Nestle Quick. We’ll split the profits 50/50. 

Alas, this sort of thing floods the airwaves every day. People have no critical or skeptical thinking ability.

I agree strongly that the perpetrators should have to pay a fine that exceeds the gross income from the scam, and should have to spend a lot of hard time in prison. That’s the only way to put the dampers on this sort of criminal activity. It’s not just stealing—it’s actually a danger to people’s health as they decilne established medicine or treatments for the quack products, and thusly end up worse off or dead.

On the other products, I always wonder why some genius is selling his super real estate progam for some big bucks instead of just using it himself to get rich…could it be that’s he’s a marketing genius instead of a real estate genius?? Hmmmm…