Photos of scientists on Foster’s diet website a ‘sham’
PHOTOS of ‘‘Swiss scientists’’ allegedly used on the website to spruik Peter Foster’s diet spray were real doctors from a US lung clinic who had no involvement at all, a court has been told.
Lawyers for the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission yesterday told the Federal Court in Brisbane a website set up to sell a miracle diet product called SensaSlim also invented a whole Swiss research company to claim the weight-loss spray had been studied for decades.
The ACCC is pursuing Foster and other directors of SensaSlim for misleading and deceptive conduct after 90 Australian investors lost $6 million in the scheme in 2009 and 2010 which promised them big rewards for distributing the diet mouth spray.
In material pitched to prospective franchisees, the ACCC alleges Foster took bits of video footage from news sites around the world and then shot his own DVD at his Gold Coast base using paid actors to play Swiss doctors and scientists behind SensaSlim.
The actors were given false names and roles such as director of quality assurance at the Intercontinental Research Institute in Geneva and attested to how the spray had been trialled around the world before becoming available in Australia.
Barrister Simon White, SC, for the ACCC yesterday said it had discovered five staff headshots on the Intercontinental website were actually doctors who worked at the St Paul Lung Clinic in the US. He said records also showed the Intercontinental Research Institute never existed.
Foster was not in court for the hearing. He has claimed the ACCC action, which is seeking a lengthy corporate ban against him and compensation, is a witch hunt. The hearing continues.