In mid-May 2023, a false rumor was circulating online that claimed author and food blogger Ree Drummond, perhaps better known as "The Pioneer Woman," was fired from or was leaving Food Network to focus on selling a line of weight loss keto gummies.
Had Drummond truly decided to leave the TV job, it would have ended her long-running show on the network. It, too, is named "The Pioneer Woman."
To be clear, Drummond has never created or endorsed any weight loss keto gummies products. Her image and likeness were being used without permission, just as they had been used back in June 2022 by scammers who misleadingly claimed she also had something to do with CBD gummies.
A History of Gummy Scams
For years, scammers have used the images and likenesses of many celebrities to sell CBD gummies and keto gummies despite having no permission from them to do so.
Oprah Winfrey, Tom Selleck, Tiger Woods, and the cast of "Shark Tank" are just a few of the many examples of actors and famous people who have been mentioned by scammers to push these products.
Unfortunately for these celebrities, some of the people who have been scammed still believe the celebrities were involved in the deception, even though none of them ever endorsed the products. Online commenters have expressed resentment of the celebrities they once admired, seemingly meaning that the scammers had tarnished the celebrities' reputation in the eyes of the scammed customers.
Drummond Isn't Leaving Food Network
The rumor that Drummond was leaving Food Network originated in ads on Facebook and Instagram. Those ads were being paid for by an unknown person or group of individuals. Anyone who clicked on the ads were led to scam websites like travel4fun.pro that hosted pages that were designed to fool readers into believing they were reading a People magazine article.
People magazine had nothing to do with the creation of this fake article.
The fake People magazine article above showed the false headline, "Ree Drummond Confirms She is 'LEAVING' The Food Network After Her Accidental 'Live' Confession On-Air."
The fake article misleadingly claimed that Drummond created her own line of weight loss keto gummies. According to the story, the candy-like gummies can purportedly help people magically lose weight with no diet or exercise. Drummond's supposed affiliation with the so-called "amazing miracle gummy" product clashed with Food Network's relationship with Weight Watchers, the scam article claimed. Further, the story said that Food Network producers weren't happy with her weight.
To be clear, none of this was true. The dramatic article was fabricated by scammers in an apparent effort to make the weight loss keto gummies products look more trustworthy in the eyes of people who trust and admire Drummond.
Actor Melissa McCarthy and singer Kelly Clarkson were also named in the story, despite the fact that they, too, had nothing to do with any weight-loss gummy products.
Product Order Pages Host Scams, Too
One of the products named in the articles next to Drummond's name was True Form Keto + ACV Gummies. Upon clicking the link in the fake People magazine article, users were led to the product order page, trueformbrands.com/v1. On the product order page, the creator of the website falsely claimed that Dr. Mehmet Oz endorsed the product and called it "the 'Holy Grail' of weight loss," even though he never said anything of the sort.
The product order page also mentioned CBS News, NBC, CNN, Women's Health, Woman's World, Honolulu Magazine, and the Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism Journal. However, True Form Keto + ACV Gummies has never been featured by any of these publishers. These mentions were misleading trust signals.
For any readers who were scammed, we recommend contacting your credit card company or other financial institution that you used to make the purchase so that you can inform them about what happened. We also recommend asking your credit card company to block future charges from the seller, as these scams usually enroll customers in recurring charges of hundreds of dollars every month.
Further, the terms and conditions on trueformbrands.com/v1 said, "If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase of True Form Keto at any time, please call or email us at ." The sentence ended with a space and a period, with no phone number available for customer service.
In the past, we found that this phone number omission is common on product-order pages for keto gummies scams. Even in cases where a phone number has been available, it led to an apparent call center whose agents wouldn't reveal any information about who they were or what their parent company name was, with secrecy apparently being the name of the game.
We advise readers to stay far away from any products with claims of offering a weight loss "miracle" where no diet or exercise is required.