This is why I don’t really like April Fool’s day anymore, this is not a joke, this is a true story. On April Fool’s Day 2008 I was delivered a large FedEx envelope that contained about 500 pages from the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), my wife, myself, and my herb company were being sued by the FTC for what they deemed “false and/or unsubstantiated claims” on my company website. The so-called false claims were mostly information I had posted about the herbs I sold that I had taken from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) government website NCCAM (National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine). The information was provided by the NCCAM for companies like mine to freely use, sharing this information insured I was not just making stuff up about the herbs I was selling, it was not false information, it was documented historical use information posted on a government website.
They also said the feedback customers were posting on my website about how the herbs had helped them were “false and/or unsubstantiated claims”. In this modern Ebay world customer feedback is a normal business practice, it allowed customers to post their experience with my products and service and I can’t change it or delete it or modify it for obvious reasons. If a customer says “their products suck and they were rude” I can’t change it to “their products are great and they were very nice people”. So I had no hand in the feedback my customers left about my products, but the FTC said I was responsible for claims made by my customers about my products. Customers had posted that they loved my products and they had helped them with specific health issues, the FTC didn’t like those claims. And the laws they were going by were written in the early 1900’s. Because of lawsuits like mine the FTC has since updated their rules to fit the 21st century internet world and companies are no longer required to personally substantiate feedback or claims real customers leave about their products, but that didn’t help me in 2008.
Anyway I and my great attorney (Rick Jaffe: author of Galileo’s Lawyer) thought it was BS so we filed a counter suit against the FTC, they didn’t like this, apparently the Feds don’t like people that fight back, it was crazy actually, my family and I were harassed, threatened, followed, chased, watched, hacked, and more, it was almost unbelievable, I am not saying it was FTC people doing this but it seemed every independently funded “quack buster” in the country was now focusing on me since my story was getting national news coverage. I don’t talk about it much because when I do it just sounds like a meth head saying people are hiding in the trees watching me lol, but I wasn’t breaking bad and this was really happening, believe it or not. Unfortunately while this was all happening I broke my neck in a single car accident on a desolate dirt road one night and was paralyzed from the neck down (I can walk and wipe again now but I’m still f*cked up) and because of that I just couldn’t deal with this FTC thing anymore so I dropped my counter suit and we went our separate ways, they won, they probably always win, WTF was I thinking? I am guessing they don’t like Complimentary and Alternative Medicine ha ha ha.
Due to my paralyzed condition and my herb companies now “tainted” reputation I had to close the company down, a few years earlier I could have easily sold the company for 6 figures but after my little spat with the Feds no other herb company would touch it, it was “tainted” and I was physically incapable. Legal fees and medical bills broke me and the broken neck left my hands completely numb so I can’t even play guitar anymore, boo hoo. That is why I don’t really like April Fool’s day anymore lol…
