I have a small, niche, health food store in a medium-sized city in New York state. One of the products I sell is Acai. I’ve stocked Acai health products for many, many years, and it has recently become very popular due to a number of high profile media discussions. I have found myself ordering new stocks almost every day. Of course this is great, and my business is running really well despite the heavy recession we are experiencing.

I sat reading reports on line about some Internet Acai retailers employing, shall we say, slightly less than legitimate business practices. This doesn’t really affect me as such, as these retailers are not in direct competition with my small shop. When a scam becomes synonymous with Acai, however, my sales will suffer. People simply see Acai as a scam; they do not separate the concept of on line scams involving Acai, and the product itself.

Now all this is very unfortunate, and something needed to be done about it. Fortunately many hundreds of people in Arizona felt the same way. Central Coast Nutraceuticals have been selling health products on line for a while now, and the advertising and sales techniques have generally been criticized as deceptive. It took the attorney general of Arizona to bring a case against CCN before anything really happened. The result in this case being brought against CCN was a quick and decisive settlement in the State’s favor. The total settlement sum was $1,375,000.

The main problem that attorney general Terry Goddard had with CCN was in there free trial offers which involve products like Acai berry. The free trial was a precursor for a much more expensive subscription for delivery of products on a regular basis. CCN had a license to print money. I suspect that $1,375,000 will not hurt the organization too much at all.