$1 Million in Toxic Bleach Sold as ‘Miracle’ Overcome, Officers Say
MIAMI — Leaders of a organization masquerading as a church offered a harmful bleach remedy as a religious sacrament and promoted it as a “miracle” cure for Covid-19, most cancers, autism, Alzheimer’s condition and far more, federal prosecutors stated.
A federal grand jury in Miami has indicted Mark Grenon, 62, and his 3 sons, Jonathan Grenon, 34 Jordan Grenon, 26 and Joseph Grenon, 32 all of Bradenton, Fla. Prosecutors explained on Friday that they violated courtroom orders and fraudulently developed and offered a lot more than $1 million of their “Miracle Mineral Alternative,” a unsafe industrial bleach option.
The option incorporates sodium chlorite and water. When it is ingested orally, it becomes chlorine dioxide, a robust bleach utilized in industrial h2o remedies and in bleaching textiles, pulp or paper, the U.S. Attorney’s Office environment for the Southern District of Florida explained.
The federal Foodstuff and Drug Administration warned past year that the merchandise the adult men were being accused of advertising and marketing by means of the Genesis II Church of Overall health and Therapeutic was “unproven and potentially harmful.”
Mark Grenon and his sons relied on a book, radio station and a e-newsletter to current market their resolution to susceptible buyers, prosecutors mentioned.Credit rating…by using YouTube
“Despite a past warning, the Genesis II Church of Healing has continued to actively place consumers at danger by peddling potentially dangerous and unapproved chlorine dioxide items,” Stephen M. Hahn claimed final calendar year, when he was the F.D.A. commissioner.
The Grenons relied on a ebook, radio station and newsletter and cited Bible verses to marketplace the answer to vulnerable people, in accordance to prosecutors. It was unclear no matter if anybody was sickened or died from getting the products they promoted.
In paperwork from a civil case last yr, a program analyst at the F.D.A. stated she requested the bleach item and experienced it delivered to her. Federal prosecutors said they discovered that the resolution was currently being created in a get rid of in Jonathan Grenon’s yard.
Officers seized dozens of blue chemical drums with practically 10,000 kilos of sodium chlorite powder that could make countless numbers of bottles of the solution, federal prosecutors reported. Loaded firearms have been also recovered, which include a pump-action shotgun concealed in a custom made-created violin case, officers claimed.
The Grenons were being every charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and legal contempt. If convicted, they could experience daily life in jail, federal prosecutors said.
The church has described by itself on its internet sites as a “nonreligious church,” federal prosecutors claimed.
Mark Grenon, described as an archbishop and a founder, has also continuously said that the church “has very little to do with faith,” and that he launched the institution to legalize the use of the bleach alternative and to stay away from heading to jail, prosecutors said.
The church has promoted the bleach answer for decades.
Jim Humble, a church founder and a former Scientologist, has claimed that he is a billion-12 months-aged god from the Andromeda galaxy. Mr. Humble, who was not billed in the case involving the Grenons, stated that he questioned “to be put in the part of the area navy that watched more than Earth,” according to an investigation previous year by ABC7 in Los Angeles.
Jonathan Grenon and Jordan Grenon had been arrested past summer time on connected rates primarily based on a complaint submitted by federal prosecutors in Miami. They have been detained since their arrest dependent on a judge’s ruling that they posed a possibility of not showing at future court docket proceedings and have been thought of a risk to the local community.
Mark Grenon and Joseph Grenon are now in Colombia, prosecutors claimed. The Grenons, who could not be achieved, have formerly represented them selves in court.
Federal prosecutors think that Mark Grenon and Joseph Grenon operate what they call a “health restoration center” in Santa Marta, Colombia, where they demand customers about $5,000 a month to continue to be at the compound and “dose by themselves with Wonder Mineral Option,” court records demonstrate.
Federal prosecutors introduced criminal contempt costs in opposition to the Grenons, accusing them of willfully violating court orders in a individual civil court situation previous yr that directed the relatives to halt distribution of the answer.
Prosecutors explained the Grenons also threatened a federal choose presiding about the civil case, stating that if the governing administration stopped their resolution distribution they would “pick up guns” and instigate “a Waco,” a reference to the fatal 1993 siege by federal agents of a spiritual sect’s compound in Texas.
This circumstance is one particular of several that have been prosecuted related to a debunked bleach treatment. In 2015, a seller of a bleach option from Spokane, Wash., was sentenced to far more than four decades in federal prison.
“I can explain to you that the Section of Justice is taking the distribution of Miracle Mineral Alternative, and all chlorine dioxide merchandise, exceptionally very seriously,” mentioned Michael B. Homer, the assistant U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of Florida.
