Ultra HCG

Description[]

Ultra HCG	HCG Ultra	HCG Slim	HCG Pure
Front page Ultra HCG May 2011	Front page HCG Ultra May 2011	Front page HCG Slim June 2011	Front page HCG Pure July 2011
Trailer Ultra HCG May 2011	Trailer HCG Ultra May 2011

HCG Elite

Appearing in 2011, Ultra HCG and HCG Ultra and HCG Slim and HCG Elite web sites offer to sell human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG).

These appear to be similar operations in terms of the product offered. However it is quite possible that these are separate operations that share the same product but come from different operators.

We deal with all operations here, and will draw distinctions where that is relevant.

False Pretenses[]

Fake claim to be secure[]

The web site makes the claim to be "safe and secure"
However, when you proceed to checkout, the site asks for your name, address and credit card number using an http conection. A safe and secure transaction would have an SSL encryption certificate, using an https transaction. Lack of security while claiming it is secure is a hallmark of fraud, typical of criminal abuse.

Fake Seals[]

Ultra HCG,HCG Ultra, HCG Slimm and HCG Pure all display a list of seals or certifications at the bottom of their pages. A genuine seal or certificate is an image which links to the certifying site. But with these fraud sites, the images do not link anywhere.

For example, they display an FDA Registered seal as a pharmaceutical manufacturer. The image does not act as a link, and none of these operations specifies who is the manufacturer, obscuring the source of the supply. The customer can not verify where the manufacturer resides.

Fake News Channel[]

HCG Ultra spams web sites that falsely pretend to be a TV News Channel 12 - which in fact does not exist. At first glance it sees to be a page with many links to other stories, but when you select any of these (US, World, Business, Politics, etc) they ll lead to the one place - the HCG Ultra site, which at the time of writing i May 2011 was hcgsells.com. This is just one more example of undisguised fraud.

This method also cloaks the central site, and allows multiple disposable domains to be registered and used in e-mails. As these are detected and suspended by registrars, they hope that the central target of the redirections may escape attention. Some examples of spammed disposable domains all registered with CENTER OF UKRAINIAN INTERNET NAMES

bringmeat.com
fatsoooo.com
hcg-rocks.com
hcgcheaps.com
hcgsaler.com
hcgultraofficial.com
hurrysmall.com
lightslaunch.com
makebelly.com
minisfat.com
mygreatdiet.com
sellerhcg.com
slowfats.com
sportlow.com
weightedhcg.com
wowsdogs.com

HCG Elite spams web sites that falsely pretend to be a Current News Headlines magazine - which in fact does not exist. At first glance it seems to be a page with many links to other stories, but when you select any of these they will lead to the one place - the HCG Elite site, which at the time of writing in November 2011 was eliteshcg.com. This is just one more example of undisguised fraud.

This method also cloaks the central site, and allows multiple disposable domains to be registered and used in e-mails. As these are detected and suspended by registrars, they hope that the central target of the redirections may escape attention. Some examples of spammed disposable domains all registered with NAUNET-REG-RIPN

hcg-lossweightgames.ru
hcg-lossweightpro.ru
hcg-lossweightsoft.ru
hcgcheapbest.ru
hcgcheapbuy.ru
hcgcheapstudio.ru
hcgdietscom.ru
hcgdietsdeal.ru

Efficacy claims[]

Does hCG help you lose weight? To evaluate the claims, you first have to define what standards you are using to evaluate them.

Mainstream medical science’s viewpoint[]

HCG is the hormone produced by the fetus during pregnancy. It has effects similar to the hormones from the mother’s pituitary gland. By overriding the monthly cycles of pituitary hormones, it stimulates the ovaries to make hormones continuously. That prevents menstruation from shedding the uterine lining supporting the developing placenta and fetus. HCG levels rise rapidly during the first weeks of pregnancy and stay high the entire nine months, preventing a menstrual period from causing a miscarriage.

HCG is not approved by the FDA as a weight loss method. The pharmaceutical manufacturers that produce HCG state clearly in their prescribing information that there is no evidence their product has any effect on weight loss. In addition, women who have been pregnant will point out that having a baby is not a particularly effective way to lose weight. And it’s certainly no way to create an hourglass figure or a sixpack abdomen.

As a pharmaceutical product, hCG is part of a sequence of hormones used to treat infertility. It is given as injections, not pills or liquid drops. Be assured that no one would be giving themselves shots at home if they could accomplish the same thing with pills. HCG is a “peptide” hormone, made of a sequence of amino acids, like the larger molecules called proteins. When a peptide hits the digestive enzymes of the stomach and intestines, it rapidly is broken down to amino acids before being absorbed into the bloodstream. Oral hCG would have no hormonal effect. It would enter the bloodstream as an assortment of short strings of amino acids with no resemblance to the original hormone. Oral hCG would be merely a very expensive amino acid supplement. It has to be injected to have a hormone effect.

Alternative medicine’s view[]

The Ultra HCG and HCG Ultra websites claim they are selling a homeopathic product. The theory of homeopathy is that substances can be diluted to vanishingly small proportions and take on effects that are opposite to those of the undiluted product. So a product that makes you fat would be slimming if you diluted it enough. According to this theory, the more dilute a homeopathic product is, the stronger it becomes. And while hCG is not active when swallowed, homeopathy is not about achieving a therapeutic blood level of the product.

Which kind of product are they selling?[]

However, Ultra HCG can’t seem to decide whether it is homeopathic or not. While it lists dilution strengths and describes itself as homeopathic, it also claims that hCG itself has slimming properties:

What is the HCG diet?
HCG is a naturally occurring human hormone. Dr. Simmeons, a British endocrinologist, 
discovered that HCG combined with his diet triggers the body to utilize its own fat 
stores more readily. Many people have so called "thrifty genes", meaning the less 
they eat, the more their body will tend to hoard fat. In this case, the body is 
simply compensating for what it recognizes as a lack of food, which could mean the 
person is starving, so survival kicks in. HCG helps to bypasses this mechanism for 
the duration of the diet--the result is the body consumes its own fat stores, 
especially the stubborn fat that can be so difficult to lose on other types of diets.

How does the HCG diet work?
HCG occurs naturally in pregnant women. According to Dr. Simeon's research, one of 
its functions is to help the body more easily make use of fat in the body to ensure 
the developing baby has a steady supply of food. He found many of patients were 
unsuccessful at shedding weight, and theorized that for some reason, their bodies 
were not making effective use of fat stores.

No matter how much these people dieted, they couldn't get rid of the fat in certain 
parts of their bodies. These patients would suffer through diets where they felt 
weak and constantly hungry, they would lose weight in the wrong places, so instead 
of becoming slim, they became haggard. They would often gain back the weight as soon 
as the diet was over.

Dr. Simeons realized that HCG's beneficial affects in pregnant women could be 
applied to the case of weight loss, and help people more easily and effectively shed 
fat.

We’ll ignore the fact that they can’t decide how Dr. Simeon/Simmeons/Simeons spells his name. Since they claim hCG itself causes people to lose weight in the right places, how is a homeopathic, highly diluted version of that going to help you lose weight? And if hCG makes you gain weight in the wrong places – a much more believable concept given most women’s experience of pregnancy and the process of trying to lose weight afterward – then the author of the text on the Ultra HCG website is completely misinformed about homeopathy.

The HCG Ultra website is less detailed, but also claims that homeopathically diluted HCG Ultra drops have the same biologic effect as high blood levels of hCG during pregnancy:

 HCG is a biologically natural hormone that is produced in all human beings. It 
elevates during pregnancy in women and regulates the use of stored fat within the 
body while preserving muscle tone. This allows a more vibrant state for the body 
with increased metabolic and hormonal needs. HCG Ultra does not put the body into a 
state like pregnancy, rather it allows the body to mimic the mechanism. It is 
completely safe in both men and women.

Ultra HCG drops cost US $60 per 30 ml. For those of you in the US, that’s about 2 tablespoons, the volume of one coffee measure. It’s a lot smaller than the bottle appears when it’s blown up to be taller than the line of scantily clad models in their photo. HCG Ultra is $60 for 60 ml, but that's still only a 15 day supply. Either way, it's a pretty steep price to pay for such a small quantity, even if the manufacturer were a highly skilled homeopathic practitioner rather than a misinformed fraud.

How to Report this Spam[]

The Complainterator is configured to report this spam to the registrars. It performs a "whois" lookup on the domain names used by the name servers that resolve access to the web site. It discovers the registrars that are sponsoring the access to the web site. It prepares a complaint to the sponsoring registrars.

Removal instructions

web site domains
- the registrar needs to set the status of the domain to

clientHold
clientUpdateProhibited
clientDeleteProhibited
clientTransferProhibited

name server domains
- the registrar needs to set the status of each of the name server domains to

clientHold
clientUpdateProhibited
clientDeleteProhibited
clientTransferProhibited

In addition, to remove them as name servers, the subdomain address records (eg for ns1 and ns2) need to be changed to a non-routable address, such as 0.0.0.0 or a blackhole address within their own address space.