A Florida man and three sons will face years behind bars for using a business masquerading as a church to rake in more than $1m selling a deadly bleach solution they claimed was a “miracle” cure for Covid-19 and other diseases.
Mark Grenon and one of his sons, Joseph Grenon were sentenced to five years in a US prison for conspiring to defraud the government, while the two other sons, Jonathan Grenon and Jordan Grenon were sentenced to 12 years and seven months for defrauding the government and contempt of court.
“The family poisoned thousands of people with their bogus miracle cure, which was nothing more than industrial bleach,” said Michael Homer, an assistant US attorney who prosecuted the case. “They targeted vulnerable people who were suffering from life-threatening illnesses and desperate for a cure.”
The New York Times reports that the US Food and Drug Administration had received reports of people requiring hospitalisations, developing life-threatening conditions and dying after drinking the product.
The sentencing capped a three-year-long case in which the Grenons were accused of selling the treatment, named “Miracle Mineral Solution”, online under the guise of a church called Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, co-founded by Mark Grenon.
They claimed the product could cure Covid-19, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, HIV-Aids and leukaemia, among other serious diseases.
The solution contained sodium chlorite and water, which becomes chlorine dioxide when ingested orally, prosecutors said. Chlorine dioxide is a strong bleach used for industrial purposes.
In 2019, the FDA had warned the public against using the product, according to a criminal complaint. When the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, the Grenons started to market it as a cure for Covid-19.
Prosecutors filed charges against them in June 2020, and they were indicted the following year.
In 2020, a judge had ordered them to halt sales of the solution at the request of the FDA in a separate civil case.
Mark and Joseph Grenon had also been charged with contempt of court for failing to stop selling the solution, but the charges were dropped as a condition for their extradition by the Government of Colombia, where they had fled, prosecutors said. The dropped charges resulted in the men receiving lower sentences than the other two defendants.
Prosecutors believe the Grenons created the church entity as a way to skirt government regulations.
The church’s website described itself as “non-religious church”, Mark Grenon saying he founded it to “legalise the use” of the dangerous treatment, prosecutors said.
“That’s why a priest can give a kid wine in church publicly and not get arrested. Because it’s a sacrament,” Mark Grenon said in a February 2020 interview, according to an affidavit filed in the case, adding: “You can’t arrest us from doing one of our sacraments.”
The Grenons marketed the product to vulnerable customers through a book, radio station and newsletter, in which they cited Bible verses, according to prosecutors.
They manufactured the solution, in a “dirty rundown shed” in Jonathan Grenon’s backyard, where investigators discovered, in 2020, dozens of chemical drums containing almost 500kg of sodium chlorite powder that could produce thousands of bottles of the solution.
Investigators also seized loaded firearms, including a pump-action shotgun concealed in a custom-made violin case.
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