Members of a circle of Florida relatives who for years presented a commercial bleach add-on as a miracle cure for a variety of physical conditions, adding COVID-19, were convicted of federal crimes Wednesday in Miami.
Mark Grenon, 65, and his sons Jonathan, 37, Joseph, 35, and Jordan, 29, were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States and deliver mislabeled products after their church, the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, sold their so-called Miracle Mineral Solution for $1 million. or MMS, according to court records.
The Grenons, who represented themselves and refused to speak or make opening statements at their two-day trial, reached the verdict after a jury deliberated for about 30 minutes, the Miami Herald reported.
According to court documents, the Grenons operated their online organization, calling it “a non-religious church” focused on fitness and healing. They included news stories and testimonials claiming that the miracle mineral solution could cure everything from Alzheimer’s to autism.
The solution is actually chlorine dioxide, a potent bleaching agent used in commercial water treatments or for pickling textiles and paper, the federal government said.
The Grenons had created their church with a guy named Jim Humble, who claims on his online page to have found MMS in 1996, a golden expedition in South America. The site describes it as “an undeniable fitness formula that cured malaria. “
Humble writes that he has been interested in fitness and medicine since running a fitness food store in Los Angeles, and also claims to have been an engineer in the aerospace industry.
“Over the years, Jim has maintained his interest in fitness and worked with many healing modalities, adding healing magnets for his own damaged neck in record time,” his online page states.
Humble left the church in 2017. No responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.
In an interview published online in 2014, Mark Grenon discussed church formation with Humble. The self-proclaimed archbishop detailed how he promoted MMS with pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, claiming that fashionable diseases were man-made, but “planned. “
“You go back 150 years, they didn’t have all those diseases that, I think, are caused by humans through commercial toxins, chemicals, drugs, processed foods,” Grenon said. “I would go so far as to say it was planned for humanity in this way. “
In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration issued a public warning related to the Miracle Mineral Solution.
“The FDA has obtained reports of consumers experiencing severe vomiting, severe diarrhea, life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration, and acute liver failure after drinking those products,” the firm said.
In April 2020, the federal government announced it would prevent the sale of MMS and called the product “unapproved, untested, and unsafe. “
In a video posted on his YouTube channel on the fourth of July of the same year, Jonathan Grenon continued to advertise MMS to cure diseases and infections. Less than a week later, he, his father and two brothers were charged with violating court orders to prevent distribution of the product.
After being charged, the federal government said it searched Grenon’s home and discovered fabrics to make MMS in his hangar.
According to the Justice Department, officials seized several blue chemical drums containing nearly 10,000 pounds of sodium chlorite powder, thousands of MMS bottles and several loaded firearms, and added a shotgun hidden in a custom-made violin case.
At that time, the U. S. government was not able to do so. The U. S. Department of Justice has only arrested Jonathan and Jordan Grenon since Mark and Joseph Grenon were in Colombia, where they were accused of creating a medical disinformation motion that it obtained from politicians, military officers and celebrities.
Mark and Joseph Grenon were eventually extradited to the United States in 2022 after their August 2020 arrest in Colombia, and officials claimed they were promoting MMS and organizing expeditions to Europe and Africa.
#ATENCIÓN | #CTI of #Fiscalía, with the support of @FuerzaAereaCol and @Gaulos military angels, dispense with the capture of father and son required in extradition for #EEUU for entering and marketing in that country an alleged ‘potion milos angelesgrosa’ to treat Covid-19 and high-costo. pic. twitter. com/k3rWTkikwF diseases
The overall effect of the Genesis II Church on physical and healing fitness has only increased as the coronavirus pandemic progressed. In Bolivia, authorities said in 2020 that other people could simply consume chlorine dioxide to treat COVID-19. And in Mexico, celebrity Veronica del Castillo said on Instagram that she had used the substance to protect herself from the disease.
The Grenons are expected to be sentenced Oct. 6, according to court records.
Despite the Grenons’ arrest and trial, parishioners continue to advertise the bleach solution at a former MMS Forum but now called The Chlorine Dioxide Forum.