Las Vegas • Operators of a Utah-based work-from-home scheme will pay more than $1.4 million to settle an unfair and deceptive practices complaint that they used spam emails, fake celebrity endorsements and bogus news stories to sell their products under more than a dozen brand names, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.
Effen Ads LLC owners Jason Brailow and Brandon Harshbarger, along with an affiliate marketing network called W4 LLC, racked up more than 50,000 orders from 2015 to 2017 at a typical cost of $97, according to an FTC complaint filed in November.
The bulk unsolicited emails included false "from" lines naming news organizations like CNN or Fox News and "subject" lines that falsely suggested endorsements by celebrities such as investor Warren Buffett and personal finance expert Suze Orman.