Qns. man faces new apricot-seed arrest
Cancer-cure quack Jason Vale is in another apricot jam.
Vale, a professional arm wrestler already imprisoned once for selling apricot seeds as a cure for cancer, was arrested with his mother in a Wednesday morning raid at their Queens home for running the same lucrative scam, authorities said.
Investigators discovered drums filled with hazardous material in the family garage when they descended on the house in Bellerose around 6:30 a.m., with a half-dozen law enforcement cars screeching to a halt outside.
Vale, 51, is still operating his apricotsfromgod.info website, where his bogus pitch for the healing powers of apricots is still available a full 16 years after he was locked up for ignoring a court order to shut down the business, authorities allege. Vale spent five years in federal prison over the scam.
According to a 15-page federal complaint, the mother and son scammers collected more than $850,000 via PayPal between January 2013 and September of this year for their supposed healing seeds.
The “medicinal” website includes a personal message and a phone number for Vale, who sold his crooked cure-all in the past via a toll-free telephone number, websites and shell companies, authorities allege.
“Only call if it is you that has the cancer and only after you have first gone over a good portion of this site,” Vale advised in a written message to potential buyers. “This way I am not spoon feeding you from the beginning. A little tough love, but I cannot wait to help you.”
The Food and Drug Administration has long dismissed the seeds, known as laetrile, as useless in treating cancer patients. Despite repeated FDA warnings, Vale continued to peddle the phony cure until his latest arrest for the scam, authorities claim.
Vale insists the seeds saved him after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 1994.
Court papers recount how Vale was first cited 20 years ago for selling the seeds as a treatment for cancer that is not federally approved. In 2000, he was permanently restrained from the seed-selling business — and two years later, cited for contempt of court after he continued to offer the phony product, authorities said.
He was convicted of criminal contempt and sentenced to five years in prison, only to resume the illegal marketing and sale of the seeds in 2013, court documents allege. The financial transactions between the customers and Vale’s current operation were funneled through a PayPal account belonging to his mother and co-defendant, Barbara Vale,