uMan Who Sold Industrial Chemical As “Miracle Mineral Solution” Sentenced To 51 Months In Jailr

4 4 4 9

• 
  There are plenty of people out there peddling “miracle” cleanses, juices, and elixirs that don’t really do anything, but that will usually just get them a slap on the wrist and some fines for false advertising. But if the “Miracle Mineral Solution” is really nothing more than an industrial chemical that can’t be sold for human consumption, then you’ll probably end up in jail for a few years.

  Yesterday, a federal court in Washington state sentenced Louis Daniel Smith — a Spokane man who ran an online business called Project GreenLife that sold a product dubbed Miracle Mineral Solution — to 51 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.

  In 2013, the Justice Dept. indicted [PDF] Smith and others, alleging that the Miracle Mineral Solution — which was marketed as a treatment for everything from asthma to malaria to HIV — was nothing more than a mixture of water and sodium chlorite, an industrial chemical with various, including as a pesticide, for hydraulic fracturing and for wastewater treatment.

  Not only is it illegal to sell sodium chlorite for human consumption, anyone who supplies the chemical is required to include a warning label warning against the dangers of ingesting sodium chlorite.

  Compounding the danger of the product, Smith was accused of advising customers to mix the product with citric acid, creating chlorine dioxide — a chemical used to bleach textiles and pulp for paper products.

  It’s also a severe respiratory and eye irritant that can cause nausea, diarrhea and dehydration. According to the DOJ, Smith actually told his customers that nausea, diarrhea and vomiting were all signs that the MMS was working. While the instructions did mention the risk of possible brain damage, the company told customers the product might still be appropriate for pregnant women or infants who were seriously ill.

  Smith and his colleagues obtained the sodium chloride by creating fictional “water purification” and “wastewater treatment” businesses.

  In June, a jury convicted Smith on one count of conspiracy to commit multiple crimes, three counts of introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce with intent to defraud or mislead and one count of fraudulently smuggling merchandise into the United States.

  Three of Smith’s former Project GreenLife colleagues — Chris Olson, Tammy Olson, and Smith’s wife Karis DeLong — have already pleaded guilty to introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.

  “Today’s sentence is a just result reflecting the defendant’s role as the leader of a business that sold dangerous chemicals as miracle cures to sick people and their desperate loved ones,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Consumers have the right to expect that the medicines that they purchase are safe and effective.”

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uAmazon May Launch Its Own Clothing Brand To Offer More Options For Customersr

4 4 4 9

• Back in May, Amazon announced it was toying with the idea of creating its own house brand for everyday items like cereal and diapers. Not content to just stay in your cabinets, the e-commerce giant is apparently on the verge of infiltrating our closets with its own private-label fashion line. 

  The company would used the line to fill “gaps” in the marketplace, an Amazon executive said during the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit on Monday, BuzzFeed New reports.

  Despite Amazon Fashion’s recent rise to the top of the retail ranks, it has often had difficulty attracting some big name, designer labels.

  “For Amazon, we know our customers love brands, many of the brands in this room…and that’s where the lion’s share of our business comes from,” Amazon Fashion’s vice president of clothing Jeff Yurcisin said. “When we see gaps — when certain brands have actually decided for their own reasons not to sell with us — our customer still wants a product like that.”

  In order to provide those things for customers, Yurcisin said the company could offer these products via a private label.

  The new label could also serve as a negotiating chip for brands that choose to forgo sales through Amazon.

  BuzzFeed reports that brands’ decision not to sell with Amazon often comes down to the e-tailer’s pricing strategy.

  On Monday, Yurcisin defended the company’s pricing model saying it was no different from other retailers.

  “We work just like any other retailer — we buy at full price, try super-hard to sell at full-price…then we follow a traditional markdown cadence,” he said.

  Amazon Is Considering Making Its Own Private Label Clothing Lines [BuzzFeed News]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uWalgreens To Buys Rite Aid For $9.4Br

4 4 4 9

• 

  Just hours after rumors began swirling that a proposal was in the works, Walgreens Boots Alliance – the holding company that owns Walgreens Co. and Boots pharmacies in Europe – officially dropped to one knee offering Rite Aid $9.4 billion to live happily ever drug store after. 

  The Wall Street Journal reports that Walgreens Boots Alliance announced late Tuesday that it would add the Rite Aid branded drug stores to its portfolio creating a mega-pharmacy chain.

  The deal, which will face antitrust scrutiny, combines the country’s second- and third- largest drugstore chains, vaulting past No. 1 chain CVS.

  Currently, Walgreens Boots Alliance operates more than 8,200 stores around the world, while Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid operates more than 4,600 stores in the U.S.

  The merger would be the latest in a recent spate of new combinations in the healthcare industry as companies try to lower costs and get more leverage with suppliers: health insurer Anthem is buying Cigna, and Aetna offered $37 billion for Humana.

  Walgreens, Rite Aid Unite to Create Drugstore Giant [The Wall Street Journal]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uExotic SpaghettiO Flavors Render Recent Shrink Rayage Less Logicalr

4 4 4 9

• We were under the impression that when SpaghettiOs Shrink Rayed their standard-size cans to 14 ounces across all flavors to celebrate the product’s 50th birthday, this was done to harmonize the package size across the whole brand. Plain pasta in tomato-ish sauce, sliced hot dogs, meatballs: across the board, they would all be 14 ounces. That made sense. Then we saw the pizza flavor.

  

  Yes, Campbell’s sells TacOs and CheeseburgerOs and PizzOs. Disappointingly, they’re just pasta rings with flavoring and some meat in the burger and taco versions. Even more disappointingly, they lost some volume in the latest round of Shrink Rayage, going from 15 ounces to 14.2. Wait, what? Why not 14?

  We thought that there was logic to this particular shrinkage. Apparently not, thanks to that extra fifth of an ounce.

  (Thanks to G., who we will not judge for browsing the flavored SpaghettiO shelf, for the submission!)

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMasterCard Launches Program To Make Anything – Clothes, Rings – A Payment Devicer

4 4 4 9

• 

  MasterCard’s quest to make paying for things easier already includes a few out-there systems: verification via selfie for online orders, anyone? And it doesn’t appear that the credit card company is holding back in its latest endeavor, partnering with a fashion designer and other companies to create an array of consumer products-turned-mobile payment systems. Because, you know, paying with pieces of plastic and phones was so last year. 

  MasterCard announced the launch of a new program that will bring the company’s payments to a variety of new products: cars, clothes, wearables – and other things they haven’t even thought of yet.

  The company says the program brings to fruition the vision that every device will one day be a commerce device.

  “As more and more ‘things’ become connected, consumers will have endless possibilities when it comes to how they pay, and will need all of their devices to work seamlessly together,” Ed McLaughlin, Chief Emerging Payments Officer at MasterCard, said in a statement.

  So far, the program includes partnerships with fashion designer Adam Selman, General Motors, wearable technology company Nymi, smart jewelry designer Ringly, and Bluetooth locator TrackR.

  “This program eliminates the boundaries of how we pay by delivering a secure digital payment experience to virtually anything – rings, fitness and smart bands, car key fobs, apparel, and whatever comes along next,” McLaughlin said.

  Prototypes from the program, including a payment ring, key fob, wristband, dresses, gloves and handbags, were unveiled and on display at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.

  There’s no word yet on whether or not the payment-dress is dry clean only.

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uToy Companies Slowly Letting Go Of Strict Gender Categoriesr

4 4 4 9

• 
  A few months ago, Target got a lot of publicity when they decided to remove gender labels from their toys, bedding, and electronics sections. In practical terms, this didn’t change very much: toy marketing didn’t instantly change, so you can tell who each display was “for” even without a sign. However, the rest of the toy industry is slowly changing, realizing that kids don’t like being stuffed in boxes and told what to play with.

  The toy business can’t change instantly, but manufacturers are coming to realize that maybe making some Easy-Bake Ovens that aren’t purple means that they could sell more ovens. For example.

  Target’s adventure in gender-neutral aisles began when a sign that said, “Girls’ Building Sets” annoyed a Twitter user.

  Don't do this, @Target http://pic.twitter.com/cfh3cp5Nqa

  — AAAAAH!bi Bechtel (@abianne) June 1, 2015

  Target can only make its aisles neutral to the extent that toy manufacturers do, though, and some kids will always like glittering ponies and others will always like plastic tanks. Even the LEGO aisle has the standard kits on one side and the less changeable playsets of the LEGO Friends on the other.

  “The industry’s learned that you shouldn’t be labeling for a specific gender,” the editor of a toy review site explained to the New York Times. “There are so many girls who want to be Iron Man and Captain America, and boys who want to play with Easy-Bake.”

  Parents occasionally take to social media to point out discrepancies, such as when a clothing company doesn’t offer dinosaur shirts for girls, because everyone likes dinosaurs, and there are now entire websites and Twitter and Facebook accounts devoted to the cause.

  Sweeping Away Gender-Specific Toys and Labels [New York Times]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uAnthem Blue Cross Will Pay $8.3M To Customers To Settle Class-Action Suit Over Mid-Year Policy Changesr

4 4 4 9

• 
  When you sign up for an insurance policy, you’re given a price for that plan for the year. So when California consumers discovered changes to their Anthem Blue Cross policies in the middle of the year that came with extra out-of-pocket costs, two policyholders filed a class-action lawsuit against the insurance provider in 2011. Anthem Blue Cross has now agreed to a settlement that includes reimbursing about 50,000 customers in California almost $8.3 million.

  Anthem Blue Cross agreed to stop imposing mid-year policy changes that raise costs for consumers, reports the L.A. Times.

  The 2011 lawsuits accused the company — California’s largest for-profit health insurer — of hiking annual deductibles and other costs individual consumers had to cover in the middle of the year. Anthem Blue Cross isn’t admitting any wrongdoing here but agreed to the settlement to avoid “further expense.”

  The insurer will mail notices to affected customers as well as post information about the settlement on a website. Checks should be on their way to California consumers by December: you’ll only receive a check if you were affected by those mid-year policy changes, but any residents enrolled in individual Anthem plans won’t be facing mid-year cost increases in the future.

  Anthem Blue Cross to repay $8.3 million to customers in class-action settlement [Los Angeles Times]

  
• 
  

ribbi

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist