The “real customers” in NextMed’s nationally televised weight-loss ads were paid actors whose before-and-after photos were digitally edited, and the company’s founder knew it.
The Success Stories Were Actors. The Reviews Were Fake. And 25,000 People Tried to Get Their Money Back.
How NextMed Built a Weight-Loss Empire on Lies
NextMed launched in late 2020 as a medical testing company. By early 2022, founder Robert S. Epstein spotted the exploding demand for GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy and pivoted the entire business to capitalize on it. The company built a telehealth platform connecting consumers to doctors who could prescribe weight-loss drugs, then advertised those services with prices as low as $79 for the first month (about what a family of four spends on one week of groceries).
The problem: the advertised price covered almost none of what consumers actually needed to lose weight. The membership fee did not include lab work required to prove medical eligibility, the medical consultation required to actually get a prescription, or the cost of the drug itself. If insurance did not cover GLP-1 medication, the out-of-pocket cost for the drug alone could exceed $1,000 per month (roughly three months of car insurance for the average American driver).
NextMed aggressively advertised on national television, Facebook, YouTube, and paid search, with claims that members “lose over 53 lbs on average” and could expect “23% body weight loss.” The company had no medical records, no weight data, and no systematic way of knowing whether any of its members lost any weight at all. It made up the numbers.
They Knew the Price Was Misleading and Kept Running the Ads Anyway
The FTC complaint documents a string of internal communications that leave no room for interpretation. In April 2022, NextMed’s customer service team told executives that the reason the company’s dispute rate had hit 5.5% was because consumers “thought meds are included” and were disputing charges “all the time.” The executive response was to call those consumers “f**king idiots.”
Respondent Epstein himself, in May 2022, acknowledged in writing that failing to disclose out-of-pocket costs was “kind of a scam.” His Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer Frank Leonardo talked him out of fixing it, arguing that the deceptive framing made the product “more attractive for people to purchase.” The ads kept running.
By August 2022, Leonardo was telling Epstein that a large portion of the cancellation requests were coming from customers who had just discovered the medication was not included. The company’s response was to implement a hidden one-year membership lock-in, bury an early termination fee in a contract that consumers were never required to open, and charge accounts every 28 days instead of monthly, meaning 13 charges per year instead of 12.
NextMed’s Escalating Deception: A Timeline
Key documented events in the FTC complaint against NextMed, 2020–2023
The Cast: Actors, Craigslist Strangers, and the CEO’s Mom
NextMed’s entire customer-facing identity rested on before-and-after success stories. The FTC complaint establishes that those stories were almost entirely fabricated, and that the fabrication was systematic, multi-channel, and approved at the highest levels of the company.
Prior to early 2023, the company “routinely featured individuals who had not participated in a NextMed weight-loss program, or used GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, in testimonials and advertisements.” In some cases, actors were hired through Craigslist. In other cases, the company used a commercial hiring platform that connects businesses to content creators who produce custom video ads. The FTC documents this across television, Facebook, YouTube, and the company’s own website.
The TV Ads Were Completely Fabricated
One nationally televised ad ran from December 2022 through March 2023 and featured “Ava from Utah” who supposedly lost 33 pounds in 12 weeks, “Brenda from Los Angeles” who lost 27 pounds in 11 weeks, and “Terry from Washington” who lost 38 pounds in 15 weeks. All three were actors. None had used NextMed. Their “before” photos were digitally edited.
A Facebook and YouTube ad ran from June 2022 through February 2023, featuring “Connor,” who claimed to have lost 51 pounds and 20 percent of his body weight using NextMed. The same actor also appeared on the NextMed website claiming to have lost 40 pounds. Respondents hired Connor through a commercial content platform and had, according to the FTC complaint, “no knowledge of Connor having used GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.”
A series of video ads in late 2022 and early 2023 featured an actress hired through the same platform. The FTC documents that this actress “was not overweight and had not used any of NextMed’s weight-loss programs” and claimed to have lost varying amounts (between 10 and 22 pounds) over varying time frames depending on which version of the ad was running.
The Website Testimonials Were Worse
Website testimonials for customers named “Chastity” and “Becky” featured people who had responded to Craigslist ads offering to submit before-and-after photos. NextMed “had no knowledge of the individuals depicted as ‘Chastity’ and ‘Becky’ having taken GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.” The testimonial text appearing beside those photos was written by the company.
The testimonial labeled “Pam” was submitted by Respondent Epstein’s own mother. The testimonial labeled “Frank” was submitted by Respondent Leonardo himself. The FTC complaint confirms that neither used GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. Neither made the statements attributed to them in the ads. “None of the individuals depicted in these testimonials made the statements that appeared next to their before/after photos, or used a NextMed weight-loss program.”
When The Wall Street Journal published an investigation into NextMed’s testimonials in March 2023 and presented the company with its findings, NextMed removed the fake testimonials from its website and stopped running the fraudulent ads. The removal only happened because a journalist caught them.
Who Was Actually in NextMed’s “Customer” Testimonials?
All four categories documented in the FTC complaint. Zero represented genuine customer weight-loss experiences.
The Review Factory: 100 Fake Reviews, One Volunteer, One Job Posting
NextMed prominently displayed its Trustpilot star rating on its homepage as social proof that the service worked and that customers were happy. That rating was systematically engineered to be false. The FTC complaint documents a coordinated, months-long campaign to manufacture positive reviews and bury negative ones.
In April 2022, Respondents Epstein and Leonardo discussed generating fake Trustpilot reviews, the need to create multiple fake Facebook and Google accounts to post them, and the use of a VPN to avoid Trustpilot’s fraud detection systems. In June 2022, Leonardo explicitly told his team: “we also need to add fake reviews for now. Do you have a staff member who I can give this task to full-time?” In October 2022, he asked for a volunteer to generate 100 fake weight-loss reviews.
Trustpilot eventually detected the fraud and removed many of the fake reviews. It also told NextMed that selectively requesting removal of negative reviews and soliciting reviews only from satisfied customers were violations of its terms. NextMed’s response to being caught was to try to find a better way to evade detection: after being told that “posting 5-10 a day and having them removed within minutes is stupid,” Leonardo wrote that “we should, but we need to figure out how to get them to stay up.”
They Paid Customers to Erase Their Own Complaints
The FTC documents that NextMed proactively offered Amazon gift cards to consumers willing to remove or change negative reviews, and also offered refunds to customers specifically contingent on review deletion. The company’s customer service team selectively solicited positive reviews only from customers whose complaints had already been resolved to their satisfaction.
NextMed also filed challenges to negative reviews with Trustpilot “solely or primarily because they were negative,” without any legitimate basis for disputing their accuracy. Trustpilot flagged the company for this practice as well. The entire review profile NextMed used to sell its services to new customers was, by the company’s own design, a fabricated fiction.
The Non-Financial Ledger: What Numbers Can’t Capture
Weight loss is one of the most emotionally loaded topics in American life. For millions of people, it is tied to decades of shame, failed attempts, doctor’s appointments where they felt humiliated, and a quiet, persistent hope that something will finally work. NextMed targeted that hope precisely. Its ads promised “no restrictive diet or intense exercise.” Its website promised prescriptions the same day. Its testimonials showed ordinary people who looked like the person scrolling through Facebook at midnight, wondering if this time could be different.
The people who signed up were not naive. They were doing what any reasonable person does when evaluating a medical service: they looked at the reviews, they watched the success stories, they read the claims. What they could not have known was that the reviews were written by paid staff using VPNs, the success stories were actors hired on Craigslist, and the “53 pounds average” figure was invented by a company that, by its own admission in internal messages, had zero access to any customer’s actual weight data. The FTC complaint is explicit: NextMed “did not maintain records regarding the weight loss of its members” and the executives “had no knowledge of the average weight loss in terms of pounds or percentage body weight for consumers who enrolled.”
More than 25,000 customers tried to cancel their memberships between March 2022 and July 2023. Many of them discovered only after paying that the medication they thought was included cost over $1,000 per month extra (more than many people pay in monthly rent for a room). They tried to cancel. They called and could not reach anyone. They emailed and waited months for a response. One of NextMed’s payment processors terminated its relationship with the company after Visa and Mastercard both flagged NextMed for exceeding industry thresholds for customer disputes and chargebacks. The chargeback rate means customers were going around the company directly to their banks because there was no other way out.
In October 2022, Respondent Leonardo wrote to his customer service team: “Team, we really cannot cancel subscriptions unless people dispute [with their credit card company]. Even if somebody cancels, put it on pause. We can try and reactivate.” That instruction from a company officer tells the full story of what these customers experienced: a healthcare company actively strategizing to keep billing people who had asked to stop being billed, treating a medical service cancellation the same way a scam subscription box would. People dealing with health concerns, spending money they often could not spare, found themselves trapped by a company that had decided their attempt to leave was a problem to be defeated.
Legal Receipts: Their Words, Not Ours
“i don’t know if it’s scamming. i mean effectively what we’re doing is making it more attractive for people to purchase.” — Respondent Frank Pat Leonardo, III, May 2022, responding to Respondent Epstein’s concern that hiding out-of-pocket drug costs from consumers was “kind of a scam.” (FTC Complaint, Paragraph 33B)
“we also need to add fake reviews for now. Do you have a staff member who I can give this task to full-time?” — Respondent Frank Pat Leonardo, III, June 2022, to his team regarding Trustpilot. (FTC Complaint, Paragraph 26)
“we should, but we need to figure out how to get them to stay up because posting 5-10 a day and having them removed within minutes is stupid.” — Respondent Frank Pat Leonardo, III, September 2022, after Trustpilot flagged and removed NextMed’s fake reviews. (FTC Complaint, Paragraph 26)
“Team, we really cannot cancel subscriptions unless people dispute [with their credit card company]. Even if somebody cancels, put it on pause. We can try and reactivate.” — Respondent Frank Pat Leonardo, III, October 2022, to the NextMed customer service team. (FTC Complaint, Paragraph 39)
“this is super misleading[,] receiving so many patients that think their entire first month is $0 medication and visits included.” — A NextMed medical partner, July 2023, telling Respondent Leonardo directly that patients were being misled about pricing. (FTC Complaint, Paragraph 33D)
Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt When Healthcare Becomes a Con
Public Health: Selling False Hope in the Middle of a Real Health Crisis
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are not trivial medications. They require medical supervision, lab testing to confirm eligibility, and ongoing monitoring. The FTC complaint notes that clinical trials showing significant weight loss results were conducted with “reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity” as required components, but NextMed’s own ads claimed “no diet or exercise required.” NextMed sold access to a medical process it did not fully deliver, to people with real health needs, using fabricated clinical-sounding outcomes.
The gap between what NextMed advertised and what it delivered is medically significant. A consumer with a BMI qualifying them for GLP-1 therapy, relying on NextMed’s platform, might never have known that obtaining a prescription required additional lab work their membership did not cover, an additional medical consultation their membership did not cover, and then a drug that could cost over $1,000 per month (approximately 40 hours of work at the federal minimum wage) out of pocket. Some consumers, after paying the membership fee and discovering these costs, simply gave up pursuing treatment. The company’s deception did not just cost people money. It disrupted access to medical care.
NextMed also had no systematic knowledge of which GLP-1 drugs its members were prescribed, at what dosages, or for how long they remained on treatment. The company was operating a healthcare business with no data about patient outcomes, and advertising specific outcomes it had no data to support. The FTC complaint notes that NextMed lacked “a reasonable basis for assuming that its members would achieve or had achieved weight-loss results comparable to those of individuals in specific industry-sponsored GLP-1 clinical trials.”
Economic Inequality: A Trap Built for People Who Could Least Afford It
The pricing architecture NextMed built was engineered to extract maximum money from consumers while minimizing their ability to exit. Membership fees ran at $138 to $188 per month (roughly the cost of a week’s worth of food for a family of three). Those fees were hidden inside a one-year contract that was never disclosed before checkout. The company switched billing from monthly to every 28 days in September 2022, creating a 13th annual charge without any corresponding disclosure. An early termination fee equivalent to one month’s cost was added in April 2023.
The chargeback data tells the financial story clearly. NextMed’s chargeback rate consistently exceeded the industry threshold of 1%, meaning a statistically extraordinary number of customers were going to their banks to reverse charges. One payment processor terminated the company after both Visa and Mastercard placed NextMed on their excessive dispute monitoring programs. These programs exist specifically to identify merchants whose customers are disputing charges at rates that indicate systemic fraud. The customers who could not navigate a chargeback process, who did not know that option existed, or who feared credit consequences simply kept getting charged.
The demographic of people most aggressively marketed to by GLP-1 telehealth services skews toward individuals who have already spent years and significant money on weight-loss attempts. Many are dealing with weight-related health conditions. The promise of a doctor-backed, FDA-approved, affordable path to the medication that “actually works” is deeply appealing to people who have been failed by every other option. NextMed found that audience and monetized their desperation.
What NextMed Advertised vs. What Consumers Actually Paid
