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Did John Monarch's Stealth Media affiliate network advertise the alleged HNB Garcinia Diet scam and other products from HNB?

Stealth Media, which is owned and operated by John Monarch along with his partner Shaun Groomes, solicits affiliate marketers to promote free trials like HNB for a "bounty."    The bounty is often referred to as the CPA, or cost per acquisition.

For example, Stealth Media offered affiliates $39 for every initial credit card acquired from a consumer for Advanced Pure Garcinia and $36 for an additional negative option enrollment in the Advanced Pure Cleanse program.

Many of the free trials above make claims that consumers will “burn more fat” or “prevent fat storage.”  Are these claims false and purposely made to deceive consumers into enrolling in an autobill program, or are these legitimate weight loss programs?

Vee Daniel of the BBB confirmed that FTC Investigator Cynthia Lebowitz interviewed Monarch along with several of his employees and has requested information on a number of these free trial programs that many consumers claim are scams.    Ms. Daniel noted that Monarch was not forthcoming about the ownership structure of many these companies, including Monarch’s own free trial Getting Sleepy.

Ms. Daniel also confirmed that Monarch provided her with the ownership information on a few of his clients.   When Ms. Daniel contacted those clients to investigate the complaints stemming from their businesses, she reported that they were uncooperative and unhappy that their information had been released to her.

HNB is just 1 of dozens of free trials that link back to Monarch's company, Direct Outbound Services, as listed later in this article

How Some Free. Trial Operators Avoid Detection

The USA Herald has found that there are 4 primary methods that some free trial operators use to avoid detection from authorities, including Visa/Mastercard fraud monitors:

3rd Party Signer Banking Infrastructure

In order to process credit cards of consumers without getting shut down by Visa/Mastercard, some free trial operators engage in what is called “load balancing.”