[Anchor]
It is time for Friendly Economy on Friday with reporter Han Jiyeon. Han, these days there seem to be so many products being sold under the false promise of helping with weight loss.
[Reporter]
A total of 26 businesses have been caught.
Out of 30 products, 22 turned out to be ordinary foods rather than health functional foods.
You might have recently seen products like "Olleshot," an olive oil mixed with lemon juice, or "Edible Wegovy" on social media.
Their tactics were quite sophisticated.
Since AI-generated videos featuring celebrities and pharmacists appear so often nowadays, people tend to filter them out as fakes. However, when these ads also show body tissue images and claim to suppress appetite or block fat absorption, people can be tempted.
These videos were exposed as short-form content on social media, and clicking on them led users straight to purchase pages.
The prices were also absurd.
In some cases, products were sold for up to 28 times their purchase cost. One company made billions of won in sales by selling items bought for 2,000 won at 60,000 won.
About 600,000 such products were sold, amounting to 11.5 billion won.
[Anchor]
You are explaining this now because they actually do not work, right?
[Reporter]
Experts state that there is no scientific basis whatsoever for the effects expected from olive oil or lemon juice, or for so-called "Edible Wegovy" and GLP-1 effects.
Starting with Olleshot, experts explain that olive oil is considered healthy in the context of the entire Mediterranean diet, not when consumed on its own.
Rather, consuming it separately on an empty stomach can simply add extra calories, they pointed out.
Experts explained that there are no research findings at all showing it delays aging or helps lose weight.
The same goes for lemon juice detox.
There is no evidence that it detoxifies the liver. In fact, due to its high acidity, consuming it frequently on an empty stomach can irritate the gastric mucosa or raise concerns about tooth erosion.
What about "Edible Wegovy"?
GLP-1 is a hormone naturally secreted by the intestines when eating food to regulate blood sugar and suppress appetite, but it cannot be increased through food products.
Let us listen directly to what an expert has to say.
[Kim Ji-yeon / Professor of Food Science and Biotechnology at Seoul National University of Science and Technology: GLP-1 has a very short half-life, meaning it breaks down and disappears from the body as soon as it is released. There are currently no food ingredients discovered that produce effects like Wegovy.]
Since the hormone itself is real, it sounds plausible at first glance, but it is just an exaggerated advertising slogan.
They also had tricks to evade crackdowns.
While they used high-violation expressions like "rapid short-term weight loss" and "fat elimination" in their short-form videos, they completely stripped these expressions from the linked online malls.
[Anchor]
Lastly, your credit card was stolen, but it is your fault. What does this mean?
[Reporter]
If a stolen card is used in a transaction where the PIN matches precisely, customer negligence may be recognized, making compensation difficult.
This is an actual case. A pickpocket stole the card of a person surnamed A, who was traveling abroad, and withdrew about 4.5 million won from an ATM.
How was this possible? While Person A was buying transit tickets at an overseas kiosk, the pickpocket watched from the side as the PIN was entered.
As a result, compensation was denied for the reason mentioned earlier.
With the excitement of the summer vacation season, people tend to let their guard down regarding security.
The Financial Supervisory Service advised that when entering a PIN for a card overseas, you must always cover the keypad with one hand, and be careful with ATMs in secluded areas as they can be used to steal PINs using skimmers or hidden illegal cameras.
In addition, when paying at overseas street vendors or bars, cards are sometimes taken elsewhere to be forged, so you should watch the payment process with your own eyes.
In fact, the scale of fraudulent overseas card usage has increased nearly sixfold over the past three years, reaching 3.16 billion won.
More than 88% of this was due to card theft and loss.
Therefore, applying for the domestic fraudulent transaction blocking service before departure and keeping card usage notification services turned on allows you to immediately detect fraudulent usage.
Since domestic text messages do not come through when using an overseas USIM, you must switch in advance to KakaoTalk or app push notifications.
Even so, if you suffer damage, you must obtain a confirmation of accident or incident from a local police station and submit it to your credit card company.
Also, if you lend your card to a family member traveling abroad and a loss accident occurs, compensation may be difficult, so it is safer to apply for and use a separate family member card under your own name.
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