Those Hoodia Spam Emails May Be Coming To An End

Diet pills are prime targets for spammers but one of the most popular diet pills for email spammers is hoodia. After hoodia was featured on 60 Minutes and the BBC in the early 2000’s, its popularity took off and email spammers jumped on the bandwagon. I’ll bet anyone reading this has been spammed at least once about hoodia diet pills.

It appears the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on hoodia spam. Under a court order obtained by the FTC, an international enterprise must stop sending unsolicited email advertising weight loss products using the hoodia gordonii plant. The court also ordered the enterprise to stop making product claims that the FTC charged were false or unsubstantiated.

The international enterprise was spread across three countries - the United States, Canada, and Australia. They used spammers to drive traffic to web sites selling hoodia diet pills. The hoodia diet pills they were selling were under the brand name of HoodiaLife and HoodiaPlus. These two brands supposedly contained hoodia gordonii and were to cause significant weight loss - as much as 25 pounds in one month!

I don’t know what these clowns were thinking, but hoodia definitely doesn’t result in significant weight loss by itself. At best, hoodia gordonii is simply an appetite suppressant. Hoodia can be an effective tool as part of an overall weight loss program, but it’s definitely not a magic weight loss potion.

This case is just another in a long line of cases I’m sure we’ll be hearing about in the coming months. If you recall, the FTC brought charges against Trimspa earlier in 2007 for making unsubstantiated claims about hoodia and weight loss. I published an article about the Trimspa case and in it I pointed out that the FTC clearly has hoodia in its cross hairs. This recent case is proof positive of that. It will be interesting to see which company is next on the FTC’s list.

Source: Yahoo! News