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Fake Dementia Treatments and Other Bogus Health Products Abound Online
Shady wellness products and unproven Alzheimer’s ‘cures’ can lead to wasted money and threaten your health
7-minute read
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About Fake Treatments and Health Products
Signs to Watch For
- An online ad claims a supplement, honey product or simple ritual can reverse Alzheimer’s disease, dementia or other health conditions. It may include a celebrity touting the treatment.
How to Protect Yourself
- Talk with your doctor before using any supplement, health enhancement product or medical treatment advertised online.
- Look for products with scientifically supported ingredients and certifications from independent third parties such as the USP or the NSF.
Get Help
- Report suspicious products to the retailer and social media platform where they were advertised, and report misleading health claims to the FTC. Call the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360 for support and guidance.
The video begins with Morgan Freeman standing in his kitchen beside a bottle of honey, a measuring cup full of water and two lemon halves. The beloved actor claims to have a “honey trick” that can reverse Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in less than two weeks.
He touts a “two-minute morning ritual” that uses “ordinary honey from Walmart,” then, contradicting his earlier claim, concludes with a sales pitch for MemoHoney, a honey-based product he says cured his memory loss.
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But the man in the video isn’t really Freeman, and MemoHoney doesn’t really cure dementia. The pitchman is an AI-generated deepfake of Freeman discussing a sham product with no proven brain-health benefits at all. The unscrupulous production — which has aired on YouTube and social media sites — is just one in a slew of online ads promoting a honey-based remedy that can supposedly reverse Alzheimer’s. Alongside MemoHoney are products with names like CogniHoney and Mind Boost, with fake, AI-generated endorsements from the likes of Bill Gates, Anderson Cooper and Bruce Willis, as the Better Business Bureau (BBB) noted in a recent alert about these treatments with “no proven medical benefit.”
(We were unable to reach representatives at MemoHoney or CogniHoney for comment.)
Consumers who have purchased the products have reported unexpected monthly charges on their credit cards, difficulty canceling subscriptions, unresponsive customer service departments, denied or ignored refund requests, and continued shipments despite cancellation attempts.
And fake Alzheimer’s “cures” are only the tip of the iceberg. You also can find misleading ads for loads of other unproven and fraudulent health and wellness products online, notes Amy Nofziger, the AARP Fraud Watch Network’s senior director of fraud victim support. She says callers to the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline regularly report having bought fake, overpriced or disingenuously advertised dietary supplements; herbal and botanical remedies; sexual, memory and energy enhancements; and other over-the-counter cures.
One recent caller to the helpline said they received a supplement they hadn’t ordered; the company that sells it charged nearly $240 to the caller’s credit card every month before the caller froze their account.
Some people never receive the products they order online, notes Nofziger, but consumers who do can’t be sure whether those products contain the ingredients promised in the ads. “You have to wonder whether they’re safe for your body, to say nothing of the issues you might have with your credit card,” she says.
Before using any dietary supplement, health enhancement or medical treatment, you should seek advice from your physician. In the meantime, it’s essential to carefully assess health and wellness products sold online and be aware of the risks before pulling out your credit card.
Health misinformation: a growing problem
Four in 10 U.S. adults get at least some health and wellness information from online influencers who appear on social media or podcasts, the Pew Research Center reported in May. But only 41 percent of those influencers describe themselves as health care professionals; 31 percent describe themselves as coaches and 28 percent as entrepreneurs, Pew says.
The trend of influencers promoting quick-fix health products worries exercise physiologist and researcher Nick Tiller, author of The Health and Wellness Lie: Exposing the Hype, Hacks and Hidden Agendas of the Well-Being Machine. “Social media algorithms prioritize sensational and confident advice,” he says. “ ‘Take this pill and you’ll lose weight. Do this exercise and you’ll get shredded abs. Take this supplement and you’ll boost your immune system.’ It’s simple, and it’s absolute. But our health is more complicated than that.”
Tiller says AI worsens the problem by generating misinformation and deepfakes, including bogus celebrity endorsements that lend apparent credibility to dishonest products.
In an April 2026 episode of AARP’s The Perfect Scam podcast, New Orleans physician Maurice Sholas found that an AI-generated version of himself was being used to promote vitamin supplements online. (Listen to his story, including his struggle to get the videos removed.)
To get views and clicks, sellers of certain health products can say whatever they want, adds Dr. Peter Kowey, a cardiologist, professor of medicine and clinical pharmacology at Thomas Jefferson University and author of Failure to Treat: How a Broken Healthcare System Puts Patients and Practitioners at Risk. “For a new drug to be approved, it has to go through a precise regulatory process,” Kowey explains. “If a substance is not a drug but, rather, a food-derived or natural substance, the regulation is completely different. In fact, there’s almost no regulation at all.… It’s the Wild West. You can basically claim anything you’d like.”
How bogus health products can harm you
Kowey cites three primary risks:
- Financial hardship. Many consumers are spending money they don’t have on products that don’t work, Kowey says — and sometimes exposing sensitive data like banking information in the process.
- Medical neglect. If you think you’re taking something that works, that could mean you’re not taking things that might actually help you.
- Harmful side effects. Even benign ingredients in a supplement can be dangerous due to unforeseen drug interactions.
Supplements often contain active ingredients in unpredictable doses, and some ingredients aren’t listed on the label, says Dr. Pieter Cohen, who leads the Supplement Research Program at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts. His team has repeatedly found such problems in products marketed for brain health, weight loss and sports enhancement.
How to spot misleading health products
Keep an eye out for these red flags when considering buying a health product online (find more tips here):
- No website. In 2025, the supplement-tracking and verification platform SuppCo tested 44 top-selling supplements purchased on Amazon and found that 22 failed to meet the active-ingredient claims on their labels. Of those, 13 were from brands without their own websites.
- Gummies. SuppCo’s analysis found that gummies are especially likely to fall short of manufacturers’ claims; six of the eight gummies it analyzed contained almost no active ingredients.
- Cheap prices and high doses. Among the products SuppCo tested, those that failed often had significantly lower prices and claimed to have much higher doses of active ingredients than competitors' supplements.
- Anecdotal marketing. Companies making legitimate health products typically lean on quantitative instead of qualitative marketing — that is, data instead of stories — says biochemist Melissa Mena-Schneller, founder of MeLi MeThoDS, which conducts scientific analyses of supplements and pharmaceuticals.
- Buzzwords. Mena-Schneller is suspicious of products that use words like “natural” and “herbal" because there’s no regulatory rigor behind them. She also recommends avoiding products that advertise a “proprietary blend” rather than specific ingredients.
Just as important as what to avoid is what to embrace, suggests Cohen, who says health products should contain active ingredients that have ample scientific evidence behind them. He suggests consumers consult “legitimate, high-quality” medical references, such as the National Institutes of Health, the Mayo Clinic or a trusted hospital system, before deciding whether to try a supplement or other health product. Another green light, Cohen says, is an independent third-party certification. US Pharmacopeia (USP) and NSF, for example, are two organizations that verify the quality, accuracy and safety of dietary supplements. To check whether a supplement is certified, look it up on either the USP Verified Dietary Supplements Directory or the NSF Certified Dietary Supplements database.
Where to report suspicious health products
Stop using a suspicious product immediately and report it to the retailer and the social media site where it was advertised. Reports help platforms remove dishonest merchants and products.
Also report misleading health claims to the Federal Trade Commission — and, if a product made you sick, to the Food & Drug Administration. The FDA does not approve dietary supplements before they are sold, but it uses reports of illnesses and reactions to identify possibly unsafe products.
Or you can file a report with the FTC and the FDA. Mena-Schneller also advises discussing the product with your doctor if you have consumed it.
For support and guidance, the trained fraud specialists at the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline, 877-908-3360, can share guidance on what to do next and how to avoid future scams. The AARP Fraud Watch Network also offers online group support sessions.
The summary about these scams at the top of the story was created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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