Toxic Dirt Grifter Is Back Pushing Another Miracle Cure

The founder of a health and wellness company that sold “magic dirt” which was found to contain toxic levels of arsenic and lead after a campaign from anti-multi-level marketing activists, is back with a new set of products—that look remarkably similar to his old ones.

Marc Saint-Onge calls himself the “mud man,” and has been extolling the virtues of “fulvic acid,” (decomposed plant material in the soil, otherwise known as dirt) in different forms since the 1990s. For nine months in 2021, his MLM, Black Oxygen Organics (BOO), sold four ounce bags of dirt dug up from an Ontario peat bog—for $110 a pop. The company encouraged buyers to “Drink It. Wear It. Bathe In It,” according to reporting by NBC, claiming the substance could detoxify the body and had multiple health benefits.

That was until a coalition of anti-MLM activists banded together to raise awareness of what they believed were the dangers of consuming fulvic acid, leading to a warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a class action lawsuit against the company.

But earlier this month, Saint-Onge appeared in a launch video for Lovvare, a new beauty and wellness MLM. In it, the company’s CEO John Altshuler announced Lovvare would soon be launching a new product—a powder called ‘Fulvic Essentials+’, formulated by Saint-Onge. The powder contains a “proprietary blend of fulvic, humic and beetroot,” according to the company’s website.

(The company already offers a topical product called ‘MudTox+’, a “humic/fulvic black powder” extracted from peat which sells for $49.99.)

In the video, Altshuler touted what he claimed were the many benefits of consuming the fulvic-humic acid blend.

“Increasing energy and reducing fatigue, strengthening immunity, increasing cognitive function and decreasing the risk of age-related cognitive dysfunction, increasing nutrient and supplement absorption,” Alshuler said. “May help with high blood pressure or high blood sugar and related issues, lowering free radical damage, and acting as a very powerful antioxidant, improving muscle function and supporting healthy testosterone levels.”

The product is currently only available to the Lovvare’s ‘brand partners,’ who have signed up with the MLM to do “direct selling.” But in the video James Leonhardt, Lovvare’s vice president of sales and marketing, said it would be shipping to customers by the second or third week of July.

“When I saw [the video] I was completely unsurprised, because this is how people like him operate. There is always a new victim to exploit,” said Matt Wetherington, a Georgia-based attorney whose law firm is pursuing a class action lawsuit against Saint-Onge and BOO. Saint-Onge has not appeared in court or responded to the subpoenas Wetherington has filed in the case.

“Is what Marc Saint Onge doing criminal? The answer is almost certainly yes, but we are going to have to wait and see,” Wetherington said.

“He’s decided to pop his little head back up, which is bold of him,” says Ceara Manchester, an anti-MLM researcher and activist who was part of the campaign against BOO, Saint-Onge’s previous company. “I don’t know why he thinks it’s now safe. He thinks [anti-MLM activists] are not going to go after him again. But he’s wrong.”

“The dirt MLM is back, baby!” anti-MLM activist Savannah Marie said in a TikTok about Saint-Onge’s partnership with Lovvare, “It’s going to look very familiar to you.”

Manchester’s Facebook group, ‘BOO is WOO,’ has already begun an initiative to report Saint-Onge and Lovvare to the FDA, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the group Truth In Advertising.

“The company is really small, and the product hasn't launched yet so we have a chance to stop it before it even starts,” Manchester wrote to members of BOO is WOO, “[Saint-Onge] is a proven scammer who is willing to poison people with heavy metals for his own greed.”

Manchester’s campaign against BOO came after she began to notice sellers making extraordinary claims about the products on social media, including that fulvic acid could help cancer, Covid, diabetes, and autism. People posted about giving the product to their children and animals.

“I would emphasize how dangerous it is,” Manchester told The Daily Beast last week. “This is the same group of people, and the same BOO distributors are already pitching it.”

In 2021, some members of Manchester’s group purchased bags of fulvic acid from BOO and sent them to labs for testing. They’d grown increasingly concerned after discovering that the Canadian peat bog where Saint-Onge allegedly sourced his fulvic acid was located next to a landfill, NBC reported. The outlet also bought a bag of the product and sent it to Ohio State’s Trace Element Research Laboratory, which found that “two doses per day exceeded Health Canada’s limit for lead, and three doses for daily arsenic amounts,” NBC reported.

The campaign against BOO gained traction, and over the course of a few months, the business fell apart.

In September, 2021, Health Canada recalled BOO’s tablets and fulvic acid powder due to “potential health risks.”

“The products are being promoted in ways and for uses that have not been evaluated and authorized by Health Canada,” the agency wrote on its website. “Stop taking these products. Do not administer the products to children or adolescents.”

The company told sellers that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was holding its products at the border, according to NBC.

On Nov. 17, 2021, the FTC sent BOO and Saint-Onge a cease and desist letter, demanding that the company’s representatives stop claiming that their products could treat or prevent COVID-19.

Then, two days later, a federal class action lawsuit was filed by Wetherington’s firm, claiming that BOO products contained “dangerously high levels of toxic heavy metals” and were “dangerous for human use and consumption.”

The following month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning that consumers should avoid BOO’s fulvic acid powders and tablets due to “elevated levels of lead and arsenic.”

“People who have Fulvic Care Powder and/or Tablets should immediately stop using the products and throw them away,” the FDA wrote in its notice.

Finally, on Nov. 23, 2021, the company announced it was shutting down immediately.

Saint-Onge and Altshuler did not directly address BOO or Saint-Onge’s legal troubles in the launch video for Lovvare’s fulvic acid product, nor did they respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.

However in the launch video, Altshuler did ask Saint-Onge: “How do we know we are consuming something that’s safe?”

“What we’re doing now is we’re doing some analysis on the content of the fulvic and humic and we make sure there is standard levels of all the minerals,” Saint Onge responded. “There’s organic, inorganic, there’s arsenic and lead and there’s certain levels, and you can’t shy away from that because it’s earth. Those elements are in all natural products, and it’s just to be able to manage it and create a dosage that actually has the standard levels and the lower levels. And that’s what we’re able to do now.”

Wetherington and Manchester were skeptical of Saint-Onge’s claims that his new product is safe.

I don’t see why it would be a different product,” Manchester said, arguing that Saint Onge has been selling some version of fulvic acid for 25 years. “He keeps trying to reinvent himself without getting caught.”

Wetherington emphasized that Saint-Onge has so far not appeared in court to defend his products under oath as part of the class action lawsuit against him.

“Refusing to do that I think speaks volumes about his character and the products he was peddling and continuing to peddle,” Wetherington said.

Saint-Onge and Lovvare did not respond to a request for comment.