During an October 6 listening to, brothers Jonathan and Jordan Grenon each obtained a sentence of 12 years and 7 months. Mark and a 3rd son, Joseph, had been sentenced to 5 years.
The authentic story follows under.
A Florida household has been discovered responsible of fraud for making a pretend church to hawk industrial bleach as a “miracle remedy” for COVID-19.
Mark Grenon and his three sons — 36-year-old Joseph Grenon, 38-year-old Jonathan Grenon, and 29-year-old Jordan Grenon — have been convicted by a federal jury of promoting jugs of poisonous bleaching resolution as a coronavirus remedy underneath the guise of a phony church referred to as Genesis II Church of Health & Healing. The Bradenton natives bought tens of hundreds of bottles of a product they referred to as “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS), stuffed with sodium chlorite, to customers throughout the nation, together with in South Florida.
“The Grenons claimed that ingesting MMS may deal with, stop, and remedy COVID-19,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) mentioned on the heels of the conviction. “The FDA, nonetheless, had not authorized MMS for therapy of COVID-19, or for every other use. Rather…the FDA had strongly urged customers to not buy or use MMS for any purpose, explaining that ingesting MMS was the identical as ingesting bleach.”
In 2019, even earlier than the pandemic descended, now-65-year-old Grenon and his sons had been slanging jugs of the substance on YouTube and claiming it may stop and remedy all varieties of illnesses.
Grenon claimed to be a supply of former president Donald Trump’s curiosity in bleach as a COVID-19 therapy.
“If you’re ingesting ‘Miracle’ or ‘Master’ Mineral Solution or different sodium chlorite merchandise, cease now,” reads a 2019 warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “The FDA has obtained many stories that these merchandise, bought on-line as ‘remedies,’ have made customers sick.”
In August 2020, Mark and Joseph Grenon had been arrested in Colombia and extradited to the United States to face the legal prices. A federal indictment towards the daddy and sons was handed down in April 2021.
All 4 males had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. authorities by distributing phony treatment.
Prosecutors say that Mark Grenon acknowledged that he based the church to “legalize using MMS” and skirt authorities regulation –– in his phrases, keep away from “going to jail.” The household raked in additional than $1 million in gross sales from the product.
During trial, a federal jury seen pictures of the rundown shed in Jonathan Grenon’s Bradenton yard the place the household manufactured the product.
Photos confirmed a number of blue chemical drums comprising roughly 10,000 kilos price of sodium chlorite powder and hundreds of bottles of MMS, amongst different gadgets.
Aside from fraudulent advertising and marketing, Jonathan and Jordan Grenon had been additionally discovered responsible of contempt. Prosecutors contend that the lads continued to promote the product regardless of a brief injunction in 2020 to halt distribution. The Grenons allegedly threatened the federal choose presiding over the civil case and warned that, ought to the federal government try and implement the court docket orders, the household would “pick up guns” and instigate “a Waco” — a reference to the 1993 federal siege on the Branch Davidian non secular compound in Waco, Texas, through which greater than 70 individuals died.
Sentencing for the Grenon household is scheduled for October 6. They every resist 5 years in jail.