Federal Suit Settled With NJ Company Claiming COVID ‘Treatment'

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ — A distributor of a product that had claimed in the past to have sold a treatment for coronavirus, has been ordered by a federal judge to no longer brand or distribute their product in that way.

A complaint filed against the New Jersey-based National Solutions Foundation, its trustees Ralph Fucetola of Hampton Township and Dr. Rima Laibow of Tucson, Arizona, was settled on Monday, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

As part of the settlement, Natural Solutions Foundation agreed to a permanent injunction that the organization and those connected with it, cannot manufacture, market or distribute their colloidal silver product - which has claimed to contain silver particles within it - as a drug, without the FDA’s oversight.

With their nano silver products they had previously sold, Boynton said Fucetola and Laibow were ordered to recall products labeled that way, as well as destroy ones they currently have in their stock.

The FDA, in turn, may come in and inspect the company’s procedures and facilities in the future, the U.S. Department of Justice order states.

According to the suit filed against the company in November 2020, the nano silver product was marketed as “Dr. Rima Recommends Nano Silver 10PPM,” “as a cure or prevention for viral outbreaks, including the Ebola epidemic in the mid-2010s and most recently, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.”

Fucetola and Laibow continued to market nano silver that way, even though the FDA and Federal Trade Commission censured them for doing so over the summer of 2020, the complaint also states.

One of the claims accompanying their nano silver supplement was that “ someone who takes ‘1 cap full…a day’ of their product, should have ‘no fear or concern’ about coronavirus.”

In return, after the government’s warning in 2020, the company reportedly put their product “on hold” removed some claims and noted on their websites, they had planned to “challenge the government’s position,” the complaint from the government additionally stated.

On Monday, Natural Solutions Foundation announced on its website that their lawsuit was settled, providing a link to a statement about it.

The statement from Laibow, who co-hosts an “unmasked crusaders” podcast with Fucetola, indicated that the company had “entered into a consent decree resolving the dispute, without an admission of wrongdoing.”

“In consequence,” Laibow wrote, “of that consent decree, we may modify some of our procedures and activities, but the Foundation will continue to operate under the protection of the First Amendment.”

“We remain committed to the Mission of Natural Solutions Foundation: To discover, document, develop and disseminate natural solutions to the problems with which we are faced,” Laibow continued.

"Marketing unproven products as treatments for COVID-19 endangers public health and violates the law,” Boynton commented in a news release on behalf of the Justice Department. “The department will work closely with the FDA to stop anyone attempting to take advantage of the pandemic by selling unapproved, misbranded drugs.”

In May 2021, the U.S. Attorney General formed the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force with the Department of Justice, responding to allegations of pandemic-related fraud.

“The FDA will continue to aggressively pursue and hold accountable those who jeopardize public health,” Acting Deputy Director Greg Noonan of the FDA’s Office of Dietary Supplement Programs also said.

The consent decree, Noonan said, “demonstrates that we will use all of our authority to stop companies that prey on the public during a global pandemic by selling unapproved new drugs.”

COVID-19 fraud allegations can be reported to the National Center for Disaster Fraud hotline at 866-720-5721 or by using this form: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

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