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Senior Citizen Alerts
Their Pills Do Not Cure Alzheimer's or Diabetes and
FTC Stops Claims
Maker of herbal supplements Dia-Cope and Sagee
forfeits gains
 August 14, 2006 – An outfit that had already been
busted for selling a fake herbal supplement they claimed would treat
Alzheimer's disease has now been banned by the Federal Trade Commission
from claiming their new pills will cure diabetes and made to forfeit
their earnings. Both claims are obvious bait for senior citizens, who
are the most frequent victims of the two diseases.
This operation selling Chinese herbal supplements
is banned from claiming its products treat or cure diseases, to settle
Federal Trade Commission charges it violated a previous court order.
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Senior Citizen Alerts |
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The FTC alleged the sellers of Dia-Cope, a pill
claimed to prevent, treat, and cure diabetes, violated the order by
misrepresenting the health benefits of their product and misrepresenting
that clinical trials proved their claims. The defendants will give up
their ill-gotten gains – all of the assets they received from the sale
of Dia-Cope.
The defendants originally sold “Sagee,” a Chinese
herbal supplement that they claimed could improve memory and
concentration, repair damaged brain cells, slow the aging of the brain,
increase the learning ability of people with mental handicaps, and treat
various diseases and conditions related to brain function, including
Alzheimer’s disease, senile dementia, schizophrenia, autism, cerebral
hemorrhage, stroke, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease.
They advertised Sagee mainly in Chinese-language
media; some ads also appeared in Vietnamese and English. The supplements
were sold by distributors on the Internet and in some stores.
The FTC charged that the claims about Sagee were
false and unsubstantiated and an order entered in January 2005
prohibited the defendants from making unsubstantiated health benefit,
performance, or efficacy claims for any dietary supplement, food, drug,
device, or service. The order also barred them from misrepresenting the
existence, results, validity or conclusions of any scientific study.
According to the FTC, the defendants then began
advertising Dia-Cope on Web sites available in seven languages: English,
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Spanish, and Russian. The
defendants claimed Dia-Cope could prevent, treat, and cure diabetes and
claimed that thousands of human clinical trials proved it. Their Web
sites, www.sagee.com and www.dia-cope.com, stated that the FDA had
approved the product. Bottles of Dia-Cope with 90 capsules sold for $60
– enough with the suggested dosage to last one or two weeks.
According to the FTC, the defendants violated their
court order by misrepresenting the health benefits of Dia-Cope, falsely
claiming that the FDA had approved the product, and misrepresenting that
there was clinical support for their claims. A US District Court entered
a temporary restraining order against the California-based defendants,
Sagee U.S.A. Group, Inc. and Xiao Hua Li, on July 5, 2006, stopping
their deceptive claims.
The modified order against the defendants bans them
from claiming that any foods, drugs, devices, services, or dietary
supplements can prevent, mitigate, treat, or cure any disease. Under the
order, the defendants will give up all of the assets derived from the
sale of Dia-Cope, $10,396. The order extends the original order’s
monitoring and record-keeping provisions and retains the strict
provisions requiring the corporate defendant, Sagee, to monitor the
activities of its distributors.
The Commission vote to authorize staff to file the
modified stipulated final order was 5-0. The modified stipulated final
order for permanent injunction was entered in the U.S. District Court
for the Central District of California on August 9, 2006.
NOTE: This stipulated final order is for settlement
purposes only and does not constitute an admission by the defendant of a
law violation. A stipulated final order requires approval by the court
and has the force of law when signed by the judge.
Copies of the complaint and modified stipulated final order are
available from the FTC’s Web site at
http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center,
Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC
works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair
business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help
consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or
Spanish (bilingual counselors are available to take complaints), or to
get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free,
1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at
http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/complaint.htm. The FTC enters Internet,
telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into
Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to thousands of
civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.
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