Postal Service Steps Up Probe Into Diet Firm

U.S. Postal Service authorities Tuesday expanded the number of post office boxes from which they are seizing money and product orders mailed to a Carlsbad firm that markets the Grapefruit 45 weight-loss plan.

Four post office boxes in Southern California and Florida have been added to the three already targeted by the Postal Service for seizure of mail addressed to World Communications Inc., which nationally advertises and markets Grapefruit 45 as “fat burner pills.”

Jim Harbin, an attorney for the Postal Service inspector’s office, said WCI is “trying to evade” a previous Postal Service cease-and-desist order by changing the name of its product line.

WCI is now marketing the Grapefruit 45 diet plan and other products under the name Sunshine, with a post office box in Long Beach.

Last Friday, the Postal Service received authority to seize mail to that post office box as well as to boxes in Encinitas, the City of Orange and Orange City, Fla.

The new post office boxes were opened after the Postal Service began seizing WCI’s Grapefruit 45 mail at three boxes in Carlsbad on Feb. 22, according to Postal Inspector John Neff, who heads the Postal Service’s fraud division in San Diego.

An estimated $90,000 worth of orders per day are sitting unopened in the U.S. Post Office in Carlsbad. WCI officials have tried unsuccessfully to place those funds in an escrow account.

WCI President Jay M. Kholos said in an interview Tuesday that he had expected the Postal Service to seize the additional orders.

Kholos asserted that new television commercials for Grapefruit 45 and the Sunshine products do not fall under the jurisdiction of a 1984 consent agreement with Postal Service officials that prohibited WCI from making claims about its “orally ingested” weight-loss products. Last month, federal authorities claimed that that agreement had been violated.

Kholos said the new ads feature different disclaimers, which appear in larger type and are superimposed during most of the televised commercial. The disclaimers say the product will not result in weekly weight losses of more than two pounds for women and 3 1/2 pounds for men.

In the past, the Postal Service has objected that most consumers were unaware of WCI’s disclaimers because they appeared briefly and in small print late in the commercial.

“It’s not like we’re trying to hide,” said Kholos. “We’ll sell the product until they tell us we can’t.”

He criticized the Postal Service’s ability to quickly seize his firm’s product orders as a “rubber stamp” legal process.

Kholos acknowledged that WCI began using the Sunshine name “just a couple of weeks ago,” although he insisted that officials began planning six months ago to use Sunshine as an umbrella name for its products.

Kholos said Tuesday that he expects WCI to be granted a hearing early in April to determine how long the mail seizures will last.

In the past, Postal Service officials have contended that the Grapefruit 45 pill does not cause or aid weight loss, whereas WCI officials maintained that their product is effective.