You’ve heard of Miami beach? Well, this was a Miami bleach case. And a Miami federal jury took oh about 30 minutes on July 19 to “bleach” a conclusion to convict four Florida men of selling Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), according to Jay Weaver reporting for the Miami Herald. They had claimed that MMS—which can turn into bleach—can cure 95% of the world’s known illnesses, including HIV/AIDS, autism, Alzheimer’s Disease, leukemia, and Covid-19. That’s despite the lack of evidence to support such claims unless the goal is to poison yourself with bleach so that you don’t have to worry about other diseases.
These four Florida men were actually all related with 65-year-old Mark Grenon being the father of 37-year-old Jonathan, 35-year-old Joseph and 29-year-old Jordan Grenon. They had sold about a million dollars worth of MMS via a Genesis II Church of Health and Healing website. The Grenons had referred to themselves “bishops,” dubbed MMS as “sacraments,” and urged people to donate to the Church for these “sacraments,” according to prosecutors during the trial. But just because your call yourself a Church doesn’t mean that you really are a Church.
Here’s a 2016 ABC News report that showed some of this “Church’s” claims:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had issued a public warning about MMS in August 2019, which I had covered for Forbes at the time. The FDA described MMS as consisting of 28% sodium chlorite mixed in distilled water. If you were to follow the instructions and mix this with a citric acid such lemon or lime juice, guess what would result. It’s not lemonade but chlorine dioxide, which is “a powerful bleaching agent” in the FDA’s words. The FDA also mentioned that had “received many reports that these products, sold online as ‘treatments,’ have made consumers sick.” These included reports of severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration, and acute liver failure. Yeah, that’s what can happen when you drink something like bleach.
The FDA eventually help get this “bleach” boys’ fake church operation shut down the following year. That year after a federal court had banned the Grenons from selling MMS, Ryan Ballogg reported for the Bradenton Herald on May 7, 2020, that the elder Grenon had said that he had written then-President Donald Trump about MMS. Gee why would anyone write Trump about putting bleach into the body?
It wasn’t clear what that letter to Trump may have accomplished. Or even if Trump even read the letter, assuming that it was sent. Eventually, law enforcement and the justice system has forced the family to come clean with this MMS operation. The father and one of the sons, Joseph, had left the country and thus had to be extradited from Colombia. The extradition negotiation meant that these two could not be charged with contempt for not ceasing to sell MMS in 2020. The other two sons ended up being found guilt of contempt by the 12-person jury in the Miami trial, though. This means that these two sons—Jonathan and Gordon —may have to serve up to life in prison. The jury did find all four defendants guilty of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and FDA, which may carry up to five years in prison for each of them.
Although the four defendants chose to represent themselves during the trial, they reportedly didn’t say much until the verdict arrived. To that Joseph Grenon responded, “We will be appealing.”
You know what’s not appealing? Making unsubstantiated health claims about a product, especially when the product is potentially dangerous. The Genesis website had said things like “Don’t fear this coronavirus. Fear the Vaccine and meds!” And in a video, Mark Grenon has claimed about MMS, “We are trying to create a world without disease. It’s been proven to be tremendously effective in curing cancer.”
As the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, there is no shortage of people in society making bogus claims about so-called treatments in efforts to try to make money. There are a lot of dirty businesses out there, including ones trying to get you to drink bleach.
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