FTC Charges Settled by Clickbooth

The Clickbooth affiliate network has settled with the Federal Trade Commission for the likes of $2 million thanks to charges that it bamboozled purchasers through fraudulent weight-loss assertions on artificial news websites about acai berry supplements and alleged “colon cleansers,” according to Imperial Valley News.

The FTC will utilize the $2 million to dish out reimbursements to customers who were fooled by the defendant’s advertisements.  The agreement keeps the defendants from various deceitful marketing methods.  It will ban them from making false claims, invalid facts, and incorrect results from surveys or tests.

Clickbooth, which is located in Florida, have been compensated by vendors for the last five years to promote alleged weight-loss goods to customers.  They also brought aboard many marketers who deceitfully publicized those goods.  The original complaint claims that the defendants created websites for Central Coast Nutraceuticals, a vendor that spent $1.5 million to settle disputes by the Federal Trade Commission of deceitful advertising and wrongful charging in regards to the sale of weight loss and colon cleanse goods.

The FTC claims that Clickbooth also brought aboard marketers to promote these products online.  Clickbooth oversaw these ads and created websites for them to utilize.  Affiliates of Clickbooth built their web pages to appear like news sites as they made web addresses like channel5healthenws.com, dailyconsumeralerts.com, etc.  There, they publicized products like Acai Pure, Acai Max, Pure Berry Max, Acai Advanced Cleanse, Acai Ultraberry Slim, Slimberry, TriSlim, ColoThin, HCG Extreme, Tone DeTox and ColoPure.  On these sites, they posted headlines making false claims.  They went as far as using names and emblems of well-known television entities for their reports.

John Daniel Lemp owns Clickbooth.com, LLC and IntegraClick, LLC.  Both his companies breached the FTC Act because they made wrong or baseless affirmations about the products.

Several other similar settlements took place between online marketers of acai berry supplements and other weight loss goods that made false affirmations.  The companies caught red-handed were Coleadium, Inc. and IMM Interactive, Inc.  Coleadium poses as Ads4Dough while IMM worked with Copeac.

The FTC assists customers in identifying and staying away from deceitful claims from bogus news sites that promote acai berry weight loss products.  Their consumer alert “Fake News Sites promote Bogus Weight Loss Benefits of Acai Berry supplements” as well as their video “Free Trial Offers” details how free trails are utilized to promote these goods.

The FTC also received aid from the Florida Office of the Attorney General in this dispute.

The Commission vote allowing the staff to issue the action and pass the planned consent mandate 5-0.  The FTC issued it in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern’s Division on November 13.