Feds Rein in Online Drugstores
Regulators settle with sites accused of deceptive dispensing, privacy violations.
by Reuters
July 13, 2000, 11:10 a.m. PT
Federal regulators have settled charges against a group of online pharmacies, which agreed not to make further deceptive claims and accepted several other restrictions.
The Federal Trade Commission had charged Focusmedical.com, Worldwidemedicine.com, and other Web sites with dispensing prescription drugs such as Viagra and Propecia while falsely claiming that they were full-service medical clinics and that the prescriptions were being filled on their premises.
The FTC says the Web sites also sent e-mail to 11,000 customers informing them that their credit cards would be debited $50, even though the online pharmacies did not have authority to debit credit cards without the cardholders' permission.
The settlement bars the Web sites from misrepresenting their businesses, including their medical and pharmaceutical arrangements, the FTC says. The defendants are also barred from giving out personal information about customers without their permission, and are required to maintain confidentiality procedures and keep records about them.
Defendants named in the FTC complaint are Sandra Rennert and Philip Rennert of Las Vegas, International Outsourcing Group, Focus Medical Group, Trimline, Affordable Accents, Wordwide RX, WorldWide Medicine, PSRenn, and Doctors A.S.A.P. |
