Feds crack down on supplement industry, go after deceptive products

DOJ pursuing criminal and civil cases against more than 100 makers and marketers.

Beth Mole – Nov 17, 2015 10:43 pm | 97

Federal agents are pumped to do a little supplemental cleaning.

In a sweep, the Department of Justice and federal partners announced Tuesday that they are pursuing criminal and civil cases against more than 100 makers and marketers of dietary supplements, hoping to scrub out deceptive and unproven products. The actions follow a year-long effort to cleanse the profitable industry of products that threaten public health, the department said.

Of note, the department said it had filed criminal charges against 6 executives of USPlabs LLC, a Dallas firm behind the popular workout supplement Jack3d and weight loss supplement OxyElite Pro. The two products, which had $400 million in sales between 2008 and 2013, were said to be made from plant extracts, but actually contained synthetic stimulants made in China.

In an 11-count indictment unsealed Tuesday, the department alleged that the executives not only conspired to falsely label and cover up the products’ true ingredients, but that they also knew that the stimulants were linked to liver toxicity.

In October 2013, after OxyElite Pro was linked to a rash of liver injuries, the company told the Food and Drug Administration that it would stop selling the product. Despite this, the indictment alleges that “USPlabs engaged in a surreptitious, all-hands-on-deck effort to sell as much OxyElite Pro as it could as quickly as possible. It was sold at dietary supplement stores across the nation.”

At the time of the department’s announcement, four executives had been arrested and the other two were expected to surrender.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Mizer told Reuters, that “[f]rom California to Maine, consumers ingest pills, powders and liquids every day, not knowing whether they are wasting money or whether they may end up harming, rather than helping, themselves. Unfortunately, many of these products are not what they purport to be or cannot do what the distributors claim they can do.”

This past week, the department also filed civil cases against five other companies, alleging improper sales of a variety of supplements. The companies include: Optimum Health, which sold a cream that it claimed treated arthritis and cancer; Bethel Nutritional Consulting, which among other things allegedly sold supplements that contained active pharmaceutical ingredients not listed on the products’ labels, including one that was pulled from the market over safety concerns; and Regeneca Worldwide, which allegedly sold a dietary supplement containing an unsafe food additive.