A Connecticut U.S. District court has issued a $16 million summary judgment against LeadClick ($12 million) and Corelogic ($12 million), affiliate marketers that drove traffic to fake news sites that hawked LeanSpa acai berry and "colon cleansing" weight-loss products.
The sites — channel8health.com, dailyhealth6.com and online6health.com — often included the logos of news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, to lend weight to their claims about weight loss.
The Federal Trade Commission had sought the judgment, which the two companies are challenging in a federal appeals court. The money is not a fine, but disgorgement of the marketers' "ill-gotten gains" from driving traffic to the websites, where consumers bought the product through a "free trial" offer that morphed into a monthly $79.99 payment that was tough to cancel.
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