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Terry Polevoy
DietFraud.com
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PhytoPharma - 16 Plant Macerat - Chantal Legrand etc. |
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LATE NEWS
Plant Macerat Silenced for awhile
- Chantal Legrand must have been out for singing lessons
 Over the last six months PhytoPharma's scam continues to spread. The web site known as 16 Plant Macerat - ONLINE, with a larger than life picture of the singing formerly fat lady known as Chantal Legrand, was silenced for a week or so in August. Why, we don't know. But another one popped up out of Cedarhurst, New York. You will notice that these folks market other questionable products as well.
Currently almost all marketing by the original Plant Macerat folks is in the U.S. Recent ads have been reported to us in magazines aimed at a more mature audience. These include mainstream women's media, i.e. home and gardening magazines, A&E, Prevention health, knitting and sewing, hairdressing, etc.
tabloids. Rainbow Investigations and DietFraud.com are very interested in hearing from consumers in the other countries. Tell us tell us where you are seeing the infamous ads with
the model, "Chantal LeGrand".
The French Language magazine from Quebec, Protégez-Vous features Chantal Legrand in its July 2002 cover in all her splendour. The article indicates that the Canadian and Quebec governments have linked Patrice Runner, the man behind many scams, to 30 entities over the last few years.
More PhytoPharma pictures
The company indicated that its "Head Office" was at 1265 Morningside Avenue, Box # 209, Toronto. The direct marketer previously reported on the W5 show as renting the mailbox on Morningside Drive is no longer involved.
The recent ads have a phone number 1-866-726-9604. This goes to a call centre located in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. The phone center in Wilkes Barre owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the landlord and it is a major scandal in that area. We heard that some orders after hours were being filled in South Asia. Orders are still most likely being
filled from Inwood, New York, the so-called U.S. Head Office.
PhytoPharma has now come up with a slick web page, at www.plant-macerat.com
For the complete PhytoPharma story, make sure you read all our PhytoPharma entries, especially our comments about the W5 show.
W5 CTV's Special - Jan. 6, 2002 - Terry Polevoy, and Ron Reinhold guided CTV through a web of deceptive practices on this award winning Canadian program. You can actually watch the entire show here by following the links along The Diet Trail. Or, you can send for the tape or transcript on the CTV site.
Ron and Terry's Comments The CTV W-FIVE show was a blockbuster. Please read a short summary and let us know if you see any more PhytoPharma or 16 Plant Macerat advertisements.
PhytoPharma web site still operating as usual. We found their web site operating as usual on January 20, 2002. These criminal scamsuckers are still operating in Canada, the U.S., Ireland, and Panama. They are bilking thousands of Americans a day out of their money. They are still advertising in major U.S. women's magazines. When is the FTC going to shut these people down? They manufacture and ship this crap from the U.S. We've given up on the Canadian governent. Quite frankly they don't have the balls to do anything. After all, the phone shops were funded with Canadian's tax dollars. We wonder where the money is going, and you should, too. Do these people raise money to fund terrorists, a lavish lifestyle in the Caribbean, or do they just want to retire early? Who have these people put in their pockets and how have they evaded criminal charges all these years?
Full page ads, ingredients and more. Pay attention to the most recent ads in Prevention Magazine. It indicates that they are still operating in Toronto from their original location, unless the contract to go into this magazine could not be changed.
The PhytoPharma company does business at 1265 Morningside Avenue, Suite 109-209, Dept. PMC001, Toronto, Ontario, M1B 3V9.
This two page, ad, claimed how someone identified as Chantal Legrand, lost 54 lbs in less than 6 weeks without dieting. The stuff contains a mysterious mixture of 16 plant extracts referred to as Macerat. It of course does not identify the plants other than to say, "Each with their own specific effects". It makes a vague reference to cardamom, which, according to this, acts on the body's reserves of stored fat.
Ron contacted the Calgary SUN, and I of course contacted the main SUN offices as usual, and fired off my official complaint to the usual folks at Health Canada, the Competition Bureau. Nothing happened, absolutely nothing.
I joined an egroups.com PhytoPharma at the time which lasted only a few months. I stuck my two cents in every now and then just to stir up these idiots who were still true believers after scores of complaints were received, sometimes daily about whether anyone would receive the product, let alone benefit from its outrageous claims.
The CTV special on January 6, 2002 blew the entire company apart. These folks are the same crooks that were fined in 1997 by Canada's Competition Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. At that time they operated one of the most notorious swindles in the history of the diet industry, the Svelt Diet Patch.
You can click here for more on diet patches, one of our favourite topics. According to CTV the mail orders get taken in Toronto, get forwarded to Montreal. The money then gets funneled to Ireland and the Phytopharma company is registered in Panama.
Shedding Pounds --- or Dollars - Globe and Mail
The only thing that will be slimmer after taking certain
weight-loss pills is your wallet, says one crusader who
believes untested products are slipping through the cracks
Weight-loss product makes impossible claim -
Stephen Barrett's CANOE.CA
Support DietFraud with your donation
Terry Polevoy, MD
DietFraud.com
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"Do Nothing" Policies |
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OUR GOVERNMENTS' "DO NOTHING" POLICIES ENCOURAGE REPEAT FLIM-FLAMS
When is the government of Canada going to take action against the
newspapers and the companies who market this junk on unsuspecting
consumers.
We demand a complete investigation why the government has failed to take
action against any of these companies. The diet and weight loss scam industry
is worth billions in North America, and much of it comes from Canada. In other
words our country is a safe-haven for hundreds of scam artists who use the
internet and advertise freely in newspapers without fear of investigation by
our governement. Someone right now stands to make millions operating from the
safety of Toronto, right under the noses of Health Canada and the Ontario
government consumer protection branch.
We appeal to the ASC, the government, both Provincial and Federal to take control
of the fraud artists that are preying on the public. Right now, Canada is the
laughing stock of the world when it comes to the control of health quackery.
We will continue to do everything possible to educate the Canadian public about scam
artists and rogue health care providers on our web sites. But, it seems clear from
where I sit, that our governments just doesn't care about false advertising, health
scams and the dangerous products that come into our country. They also don't care
about mailorder scams that originate here, but are often part of an underground
cash-filled pipeline to some island in the Lesser Antilles.
The world of health fraud on the internet includes dozens of other stories, some
of them are very serious and involve doctors who are try to ship quack cancer drugs
out of Canada into the U.S. That's another story, one that we will cover later on.
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Office of Natural Health Products |
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What did the government do about diet and health fraud? Late last year, they
decided to form a new office, a spin-off of Health Canada. They appointed a
dozen or so people to a transition team, the overwhelming majority supposedly
represented the cream of the crop who work in companies that supply Canada with
vitamins, herbs, and other alternative health products. These are the very people
who can't prove that their products work, who can't prove that there products are
safe, and yet the government appoints them to a transition team to set up standards
in the natural and herbal product industry.
While the company that sells this particular product featured in this article is unknown, it is a prime
example of what the government has failed to do. Having an Office of Natural
Health Products is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
Why hasn't Health Canada or the police visited the vendors, and their associates to see what is really going on. Where is the money going from their profits? Is it being laundered overseas?
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We Demand that Action be Taken Now! |
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Our web sites will cover the story of government failure to control the
false claims made in major publications, on the internet, on the radio
and televison info-mercials until something is done.
Terry Polevoy, M.D.
Dietfraud.com
938 King St. West
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
N2G 1G4
519-725-4953 fax.
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SEND US YOUR ADVERTISEMENTS:
Please send any questionable diet ads in your local paper or magazines
from this company. Include the date, the name of the publication, and we
will scan them in and forward them to the proper department at the Bureau
of Competition of Industry Canada. Please send them even if the ads were
in non-Canadian publications. American and other foreign magazines are
everywhere. If we don't know that the scams are out there, we won't be
able to complain.
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