According to Jon on Wicked Fire, 4-5 subpoenas were served today to Illinois based affiliates that promoted the acai berry weight loss products. There’s a lot of speculation as to how those affiliates were found and why they are going after them now.
According to some updates that Jon has posted, the affiliates are all Illinois based and were using Oprah in their ads. They were running on Facebook, which means that any of the information gathered could have been done so by a subpoena of Facebook. The Illinois attorney general subpoena has requests for financial information, campaign information, tracking information, networks and advertisers tied to the campaigns, etc.
Normally in a case like this they go after the bigger parts first, i.e. advertisers and networks. So I’m not sure if they are simply going after these affiliates for information to use against their larger counterparts or what the deal is.
Other states have said that they are interested in this case and doing followup or joint cases with the Illinois AG. It seems like one of the largest motivators of this is Harpo, the production company behind Oprah’s show. Apparently they are seeking out anyone using her name or likeness in a promotional affair.
Harpo is sending all of the information they gather against these websites to the Illinois AG and pushing hard for something to be done. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone go directly at affiliates so it’s definitely an important thing to keep an eye on.
I’m going to be watching this as much as possible and trying to keep you updated with it in coming posts. If anyone has any more information than I have posted or that is on my source – a post by Jon at Wickedfire then please let me know.
ehh.. bookmarked )