THE UNWELCOME RETURN OF SNAKE OIL FOR SENIORS AND OTHERS

© Jeffrey Robinson 2025

© Jeffrey Robinson 2025

NOTE: With the current administration deliberately destroying all the guardrails in favor of certain industries, especially pharmaceuticals, then installing quacks like Bobby Kennedy Jr and Dr. Oz who have pledged to turn a blind eye to the nation’s health by destroying protections in place to protect us, we can expect the unwelcome return of snake oil. To highlight the dangers that Kennedy and Oz and their ilk pose to the public and the guaranteed return to the bad old days of inadequate and often corruptly enacted regulation, here is an extract from my book, There’s A Sucker Born Every Minute. (https://shorturl.at/u6EiT)

*****

Snake oil salesmen have been conning the public ever since the public decided that maybe, just maybe, this horrible tasting stuff works.

One of America’s legendary hucksters, William Avery Rockefeller (1810-1906) was the father of John D. Rockefeller, a man remembered these days as the richest the world has ever seen. But long before the surname became synonymous with oil, banks, politics and 22 acres between 48th and 51st s in Manhattan, the patriarch of the family was calling himself “Doctor William Rockefeller, the Celebrated Cancer Specialist,” and traveling the country selling herbal remedies.

He’d buy a barrel of a laxative made with petroleum for $2, pour it into 1000 six-ounce bottles, and call this magic potion Nujol. His pitch was that Nujol cured all forms of cancer that had not already become terminal. He was a womanizer and bigamist, and after being accused of fraud, horse thievery, burglary, arson, counterfeiting and rape, he changed his name to “The Celebrated Dr. William Levingston” and kept right on selling false hopes. He was so good at it that he sold each six-ounce bottle for $25, which was then around two month’s pay for the average working man.

Today, the snake oil business is much the same, except that false hopes are no longer flogged off the back of a buckwagon. Instead, we have the Internet.

A genuine and constant concern of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has tried until now, valiantly, to corral all this phony stuff with regulations and programs aimed at educating the public, the snake oil industry flourishes.

There is:

* Arthritis fraud. According to the government, arthritis affects nearly 15% of the population, which represents a huge potential market. Making it especially attractive to conmen is that more than more than nine out of every ten sufferers buys some form of self-treatment. Whether or not they see a doctor, they are still willing to pay for copper “ionized” bracelets, vitamins, herbal potions, exotic balms, insect extract concoctions and even snake venom. Although there is an argument to be made that if someone believes it will make you better, that can have a positive effect, the FDA insists that none of these things work.

* Miracle Breakthrough Treatments For Frightening Horrible Diseases Fraud. It would be cruel to blame anyone stricken with a serious illness for trying anything and everything to survive. It is even more cruel for fraudsters to promise a cure that doesn’t work, especially because so many people who opt-in to these miracle breakthroughs, then opt-out of sound medical advice and treatments. Unfortunately, the Internet is over-loaded with miracle breakthroughs, charlatans and “clinics” in the Caribbean, the Orient and Latin America - especially Mexico - that are blatant frauds. Their miracle breakthroughs, which come with hefty price tags, are all unproven and mostly useless. Distilled fruit seeds will not sure cancer. Volcanic ash mixed with algae and South American jungle tree bark will not restore youth. Consider the fact that, if any miracle breakthrough offered even a glimmer of hope, it could be worth tens of billions to Big Pharma. And with that kind of money in the game, the global players would be onto it in a heartbeat, with armies of scientists and lawyers grabbing patents, getting it FDA approved and pushing it into the market.

* Weight loss fraud. Whether it’s a skin patch, grapefruit pills, or capsules filled with exotic Chinese herbs, they’re only about hope and not about anything that is going to get you slim.

* Discount fraud. A crooked telemarketing company in Canada advertised cut-price drugs to American seniors, and added a free benefits for the purchase of a loyalty program card. To sign up, seniors were asked about bank account and credit card numbers. The company then charged $399 to the seniors bank or credit card, as a one-time fee for the loyalty card. That card entitled them to a discount card which turned out to be useless.

* Size and libido fraud. Sold over the counter, or especially under the counter, anything that promises to increase male genitalia size, female breast size, cure impotence or increase sexual prowess is a scam. They don’t work, and won’t work but they can pose serious health risks.

*****

Most dangerous of all is prescription drug fraud.

These are scams that turn on counterfeit medicines and they can be lethal.

By definition, a counterfeit medicine is one that contains the wrong active ingredients, is made with the wrong amount of ingredients, contains no active ingredients, is somehow contaminated and/or comes in phony packaging. Because of the way the pharmaceutical companies run their marketing businesses and price their drugs, and because so many seniors are on fixed incomes - some of whom are actually forced to choose between medicine and food - it is understandable that when they hear about cheap prescription drugs available on the Net, by mail or over the phone, they’re interested. But there are two very specific dangers to consider when it comes to cheap prescription medicines.

You don’t always know who you’re buying from.

And, you don’t necessarily know what you’re buying.

In some cases, these scams are easy to spot. For example, sites which advertise cheap meds where “no prescription is necessary” and, “Our doctors will write the prescription for you.” By definition, the service they are offering is illegal. In practice, they’re frauds.

To begin with, you cannot sell or to obtain prescribed drugs without a prescription. The websites may advertise that their doctor will supply the prescription. And even if that were legal, it would still be absolutely crazy.

The American Medical Association insists, if you accept a prescription from a doctor who has not first given you a physical exam, the drugs prescribed might be, at best, inappropriate, at worst, downright dangerous.

You also need to be wary of sites selling prescription medicines that do not list an address and phone number, or where they do list a phone number but it doesn’t correspond to their address. There are thousands of them.

Some online med sites only sell “lifestyle” drugs, such as those that treat obesity, sex drive and hair loss. Some specialize in miracle breakthrough drugs for arthritis, osteoporosis, and a long list of diseases, especially cancer and AIDs. Some sell products that they insist can be used to treat a variety of serious, but otherwise unrelated, conditions. Or, they sell drugs on the back of wild promises of greatly increased cognitive function. Or, they market drugs with “no side effects.” Or, they advertise products that “make doctors’ visits no longer necessary.”

They’re scams.

The sites are run by conmen operating out of Mexico, Thailand, China, Africa, the sub-Continent and Eastern Europe. They sell you unidentified pills in a jiffy bag; or, counterfeit pills in counterfeit packaging; or just charge your credit card and never bother sending you anything.

*****

A caveat also comes when dealing online with pharmacies in Canada.

Who knows how the tariff wars will impact this but until now, thanks to the way the Canadian government buys medicine for their national health service, US manufactured prescription drugs can sell in legitimate Canadian pharmacies 30%-50% cheaper than the exact same drug in the US. Seniors cottoned on to this years ago, and in response to them, legitimate Canadian pharmacies have a big presence on the Net. But then, so do the fraudsters pretending to be Canadian pharmacies.

One “Canadian” pharmacy, for example, offers highly discounted meds and displays phone numbers in New York and London. But they have a postal address in Cyprus. When you search for their IP address, you find the website operating in Odessa, Ukraine, and the registered owner of it using an address in Minsk, Belarus.

Dialing the 1-800 number at around 9 pm in New York, the young man who answers the phone speaks with a heavy Russian accent. He’s asked where he is in Canada. He answers that he is working at the Canadian pharmacy’s call center in London, England. Which means, for him, it’s the middle of the night. How many Canadian pharmacies have call centers in Britain? Would why they? And how come this guy is still there at 2 am?

He confirms what it says on the website, that no prescriptions are necessary for any of the drugs listed, and yes, he says, they feature big discounts on brand name drugs. One of them is Cialis, manufactured by Eli Lilly to compete with Pfizer’s Viagra. Bought on prescription in the States, Cialis should cost around $10 a pill. Lilly warns that there is no such thing as generic Cialis, and that anyone who finds the drug sold on the Net for say, $3 a pill, is not getting Cialis. They warn, for $3 the active ingredient may be different, the stated dose may be wrong, and the manufacturing of the pill - even if it says Cialis on it - is highly questionable.

They warn, whatever it is, you should not be taking it.

But the Canadian-New York-London-Cyprus-Ukraine-Belarus pharmacy is selling pills clearly marked “Cialis” for $1.01 each.

It’s real, the fellow with the Russian accent insists. He even points to the websites full page of testimonials that praise their products like this: “Your pills are fantastic. I have observed no any (sic) side effects.”

“Sounds like they’re fine,” comes the comment.

“They are,” he says. “The quality of the pills we’re selling are really good. They’re all Indian FDA approved. And we have been in business for 50 years.”

The Indian FDA?

They do exist. But how reliable they are, by North American standards, and how well they oversee the Indian drug market, and just how safe and effective the Indian drug market is, are all fair questions. As it happens, the American FDA considers that part of the world so reliable that it opened two of its own offices in India to judge drug manufacturing there, for itself.

As for the Russian’s 50 year old pharmacy claim, if that were true, you would think they’d have established their website long before their official registration date - November 2005.

*****

In an effort to clarify what is, clearly, a murky situation, the FDA took to the Web a few years ago, looking at Canadian pharmacies offering cheap meds to Americans. They discovered no fewer than 11,000 websites. A Google search of the term “Canadian Pharmacy” returns 3.6 million hits. But, according to the FDA, there are only 214 licensed pharmacies in Canada that sell over the Internet.

Those other “Canadian Pharmacy” sites are, exactly like the one out of the Ukraine, businesses pretending to be in Canada but that are actually in Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, Cyprus, the Caribbean and throughout the former USSR. The FDA even found one so-called “Canadian Pharmacy” located in Washington State.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers in the United States are constantly trying to warn seniors that they shouldn’t be buying drugs on line from anywhere, including Canada, because the drugs may not be safe. This, despite the fact that many of the drugs sold by legitimate Canadian pharmacies are manufactured in the States by those same US companies.

The 15 major drug wholesalers in Canada are permitted (or at least have been until now) to buy drugs from manufacturers anywhere in the world. So the FDA does have a point, because it’s not necessarily always true that US branded drugs come from the US. Therefore, fearing that manufacturing standards beyond their jurisdiction may not be acceptable, the FDA’s position is that virtually all shipments of prescription drugs imported from outside the US - which includes drugs bought on the Net from a legitimate Canadian pharmacy - violates the law. And to some extent, they have cracked down. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents work alongside US Postal Inspectors to intercept drugs coming into the country from Canada. Although, Canadian pharmacies report that around 98% of their shipments get through.

The US Government has also, at time, put pressure on Visa and Mastercard to stop payments for these Internet purchases, while the FDA has threatened legal action against insurance companies that cover sales from Canada. In a few rare instances, federal agents have actually boarded buses with seniors returning from day trips to Canada to inspect the medications they bought there.

As annoying as it might be to think that Washington has been stopping drug importation because the Big Pharma lobby is protecting their price monopolies in Congress, the phony medicine industry does pose a genuine problem. It’s estimated to be worth in excess of $75 billion a year and the immediate health dangers posed by pills manufactured and/or sold by unknown sources is just as enormous. So, again, yes, to some extent the FDA does have a case.

Then there was a drug counterfeiter in Africa sold a huge shipment of phony birth control pills to a Brazilian distributor, with predictable results. More recently, counterfeit medicines coming out of China were responsible for several hundred deaths. The World Health Organization estimates as many as one in four drugs sold in the developing world are counterfeit. When criminals counterfeited Procrit, which is used by cancer patients for fatigue and anemia, they used non-sterile tap water and in the wrong proportion, creating a serious risk of infection for the patients who were depending on those pills to stay alive. Around the same time, a shipment of 200,000 counterfeit Lipitor tablets, a drug used to reduce cholesterol, was seized. No one knows how many more of those counterfeit Lipitor pills made their way onto the market. In other cases, deaths have resulted in men with heart conditions taking counterfeit Viagra.

A criminal drug gang busted in Great Britain was selling counterfeit anti-malarial pills that contained traces of sildenafil, the main ingredient in Viagra. They were also selling fake Viagra, Cialis and Propecia. Worryingly, that bunch turned out to be the local distribution arm of an organized criminal enterprise operating out of China, with ties to India and Pakistan, and distribution networks throughout the Caribbean and in the US.

But none of those case studies means that seniors who can find genuine prescriptions drugs from genuine pharmacies in Canada shouldn’t be permitted to buy them.

On the other hand, those case studies do prove that anyone who swallows a pill when he doesn’t know what the pill is or where it came from, has got to be a total imbecile for taking such unacceptable risks.

You can, however, work around those risks. It just takes time and effort.

If you’re looking to buy meds from an online pharmacy in North America, you need to make certain that the site is a legitimate pharmacy. In the States, check with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (

https://nabp.pharmacy/

) or by phone, 1-847-391-4406. If you’re shopping for prescription medicine from Canada, each province has a pharmaceutical board which can provide information. There is also the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (www.cipa.com) which governs and upholds the ethical and professional practice of international pharmacies. Their number is 1-844-886-2472.

And then there is “pharmacychecker.com” a site which independently checks the credentials of online pharmacies in the US and Canada, and publishes drug price comparison charts.

It is important to restate that legitimate pharmacies have legitimate addresses and legitimate phone numbers. Unlike that website in the Ukraine, pretending to be in Canada, legitimate pharmacies have four walls and a roof. They have an address, and a phone number that corresponds to that address. They don’t have a Toronto zip code and a Mexican area code. They have licenses, will only sell on a prescription that you must supply and have a licensed pharmacist on duty to answer questions. Canadian prices will usually be lower than US prices, but they won’t be bargain basement lower. If you find sites with lots of product promotions, enormous discounts and all sorts of special deals, be skeptical.

Real pharmacies don’t only sell “lifestyle” drugs, such as those that treat obesity, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, etc, or miracle breakthroughs for serious diseases, or products that treat several serious, but otherwise unrelated illnesses. Fraudsters do that.

When meds bought on-line arrive, it is vitally important to check the packaging very carefully. It can be difficult to tell a counterfeit pill from the real thing at first glance, so you need to look at lot numbers, and at the pills themselves. You need to compare everything with the same meds in a local pharmacy. Check size, shape, color and, eventually, be aware of the taste. Never take any medicines from an unsealed container. If in doubt, consult a pharmacist or a physician.

If, after taking a pill bought on line, you suffer any change or sudden reaction to it, consult your physician immediately.

Finally, if you believe you have bought a counterfeit drug, you can save other people from serious harm by reporting it to the FDA’s Medwatch program, which at last glance was still operating (www.fda.gov/medwatch) or by phone: 1-800-332-1088.

*****

There's A Sucker Born Every Minute

If you have enjoyed this, you can find more on SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@writingfactory?utm_source=user-menu

The site is free to browse and free to subscribe to.

I am also available, and would be delighted if you’d join me, on the brilliant Twitter-alternative BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/writingfactory.bsky.social

Next, I’d be flattered if you would follow along with me on Linked In. Better still, send an invite to connect on Linked In, I will happily accept and we can keep the conversation going. I’d welcome your company.