Dr. Mehmet Oz. Photo: Ryan Collerd/Bloomberg
The Federal Trade Commission is sending about $905,000 in refunds to 39,977 consumers who bought Pure Green Coffee, a product that was created after Dr. Mehmet Oz talked about use of green coffee beans as a weight-loss aid on his television talk show.
President Donald Trump has nominated Oz to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that would help oversee many federal laws and regulations that affect employer-sponsored health plans, such as the Affordable Care Act rules for benefits summaries and preventive care services coverage and the No Surprises Act billing rules for plan participants who get care from out-of-network providers.
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Oz — who was a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University's medical school, one of the 20 top medical schools in the world — devoted a segment of "The Dr. Oz Show" to green coffee beans in 2012.
Nichols Congleton responded by selling Pure Green Coffee through NBP Advertising, a company that marketed coffee beans through fake news websites and use of fake customer testimonials, according to the FTC.
Related: Trump picks surgeon and talk show host 'Dr. Oz' to lead health agency
The FTC says NBP's claims about Pure Green Coffee were false.
The FTC sued NPB and related individuals and companies in 2015. It settled with most of the defendants in 2015. In 2016, the agency won a $30 million judgment against Congleton in a case filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
The FTC is making the refund payments by sending checks to some coffee bean purchases and PayPay payments to others.
The FTC has not accused Oz of wrongdoing.
A Senate Commerce subcommittee included Oz as a witness at a hearing on deceptive advertising about weight-loss products in 2014.
Oz said during the hearing that he created a segment about research on the benefits of green coffee bean extract because he knew people in the audience wanted and needed the information.
"After the show aired, an explosion of ads and marketing followed along with criticism that our characterization went too far in describing green coffee," Oz said.
Oz said the show responded by doing a second segment about retail scams related to green coffee extract.
The National Institutes of Health's PubMed research paper database shows that researchers have published hundreds of articles about the possible benefits of green coffee beans.
One is a 2024 paper on a small study that showed that green coffee capsules appeared to reduce metabolic syndrome risk factors in obese individuals.
Another is a 2024 study suggesting that green coffee bean powder might fight the bacteria in foot ulcers in people with diabetes.
Members of the Senate voted in February to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Senate committees have not yet scheduled any hearings on the Oz CMS administrator nomination.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
