Man Fakes Cancer to Skip FDA Misbranding Trial

An FDA Office of Criminal Investigations felony case involving a Mays Landing, NJ, man who marketed online a toxic chemical as a weight-loss drug has led to a guilty plea on an obstruction of justice charge after he submitted fictitious medical records and doctor’s letters to the court in an effort to avoid trial on the original charges.

In 8/2021, William Merlino was awaiting trial on a felony misbranding charge for selling the weight-loss drug online. The trial was postponed for months by his faked pancreatic cancer diagnosis until the medical documents were discovered to have been falsified, the government says. 

In 8/2022, Merlino was convicted at trial for “selling misbranded drugs online, arising from his scheme to sell the toxic industrial chemical DNP as a weight-loss drug which he manufactured in a lab in his home,” the government says. He is scheduled to be sentenced on both the obstruction charge and the misbranding trial conviction on 3/16.