The co-founders of the Stem Cell Institute of America and related companies have been banned from offering stem cell therapy and ordered to pay $5 million to consumers who were tricked into buying their unproven therapy.

This comes after a court order following a joint complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Georgia Attorney Generals Office.

The company's two founders, Steven Peyroux and Brent Detelich, misled people in need of medical help by marketing expensive and unproven stem cell treatments, the FTC's complaint charged.

They allegedly trained healthcare professionals to use false advertising and "educational seminars" to recruit patients, especially elderly and disabled individuals.

Many patients paid up to $5,000 per injection, sometimes receiving more than one, but the treatments were not scientifically proven to work. The court's decision ensures they cannot offer stem cell therapy or similar treatments again.

The founders of the Stem Cell Institute of America and their network of companies tricked people who needed real medical help into buying expensive, unproven stem cell therapy, said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection. The courts orders hold them accountable, refund consumers, and permanently ban the defendants from offering stem cell therapy and other regenerative medicine treatment in the future.

Chiropractors marketed the treatments

In 2015, Peyroux, a chiropractor, and Detelich, a former chiropractor, co-founded SCIA, a company that trained chiropractors and other healthcare practitioners how todeceptively market unproven stem cell therapyin their practices.

SCIA trained its client clinics how to recruit patients through advertising, host free educational seminars, and conduct consultations. SCIA provided its clients access to a vault of sample advertisements rife with baseless claims of efficacy, and the appearance of being part of a nationwide SCIA network.

The defendants also used these deceptive marketing materials and educational seminars to attract stem cell patients to their own chiropractic clinic, SHC.

SHC chargedup to $5,000 per stem cell therapy injection, with many patients receiving more than one injection as part of their treatment. The group ofconsumers who purchased defendants unproven stem cell therapy consisted almost exclusively of elderly and disabled people.

Summary judgment

Following extensive litigation, in March 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued a summary judgment opinion and order in favor of the FTC and the State of Georgia on all counts.

In granting summary judgment, the court found that the defendants created and published false and misleading advertisements about the efficacy and approval of stem cell therapy injection treatments for a host of medical conditions (osteoarthritis, neuropathy, joint pain, and more), and embarked on a comprehensive marketing campaign to distribute those ads to the public and to other medical clinics across the county.