FTC Hits Internet Health Fraud in Continuation of Operation Cure.All: New Cases Target Deceptive Hi-Tech Marketing Techniques
regulatory notice · 2000
SUMMARY
FTC press release announcing proposed settlements against three Internet sellers, including Michael D. Miller (doing business as Natural Heritage Enterprises), who marketed Essiac Tea online. The FTC alleges the companies touted their products as being effective treatments or cures for various diseases, including arthritis, cancer, diabetes and AIDS, without adequate substantiation to support the claims (see verify-quotes block in the grounding log for the exact wording). Fetched directly via curl (WebFetch 403'd on ftc.gov) and parsed 2026-08-17; the underlying complaint/consent-order PDFs downloaded (HTTP 200) but could not be text-parsed on this runner, so only facts stated in the press release itself are used as sourced quotes.
NOTES
A federal regulatory action in which the FTC alleged that a commercial seller marketed Essiac Tea over the Internet in 2000 with inadequately substantiated disease-treatment claims, the accountability anchor for this case’s financial-conflict and disconfirmation sections regarding the product’s present-day commercial life. The press release (fetched directly) names the seller as Michael D. Miller d/b/a Natural Heritage Enterprises and describes a proposed settlement; it uses the phrase “Essiac Tea”, not “Rene Caisse’s Essiac Tea”.