Pareto Pharmaceuticals

[superawesomename]

As illustrated on an ongoing basis, the moderators on SST act with conviction when confronted with evidence of source’s wrongdoing. In recent weeks we took time to respond to potential issues with the Canadian source Pareto Pharmaceuticals. Through the course of our investigation we identified 3 primary concerns, the combination of which we believed to warrant a ban. Those 3 concerns were as follows:

1. Overwhelming evidence of shilling, including using proxy generated accounts to unduly increase the reputation of the source.
2. Altering of 3rd party analytical results in order to unduly add to the positive reputation of the source’s products.
3. Failure to address the initial 3rd party analytical results which indicated a dosing inaccuracy of 50% (10mg). This level of inaccurate dosing is simply not unacceptable from a public safety perspective.

In light of the above, we chose to ban the source. When a source is banned from SST, it is rare that they reach out to discuss further. In this situation, the owner of Pareto did reach out to attempt to open a dialogue. He responded to the above claims as follows:

1. Pareto Pharmaceuticals employs “reps” to sell their products. This is common, particular in Canada. The rep, motivated to make as many sales as possible in a commission-based role, saw an opportunity to increase his thread traffic and therefore sales through the use of a promotion which encouraged users who had accounts, but did not post, to make first posts, usually in complementary fashion towards Pareto. With evidence of this promotion, we were able to validate this claim. The rep offered $500 to the best “stovetop picture” and review, to be drawn at pseudo random by the end of the year. This explanation, paired with our user data, appears valid.
2. The altering of the 3rd party results in order to hide the difference in dose between tabs was performed by the head of the operation. The justification for this action is that “heavy tabs” are were a known problem believed to have been solved after the tested batch had already been sold. We do not agree with this decision but recognize the following mitigating factors:
   1. The original, unedited test was submitted to SST
   2. The edited test was submitted to a single forum, alongside a myriad of other, unedited tests, ordered by the head of the operation in order to verify quality.
3. The head of Pareto gave a detailed public response as to how the “heavy tab” and tab variation can occur. He described the equipment used in his operation and how an error can occur, as well as how quality control can and has been improved in order to prevent this moving forward. Additionally, upon our asking, he was able to validate his claims and show the moderators the equipment he claimed to use.

In light of the above, the moderator team has had to revisit its primary goal. We continuously seek to ensure that our members have high quality sources available to them. Sources who take care and invest time, money, and effort into providing the best quality products to their customers. While the concerns we had with Pareto were significant, it is evident to us at this time that Pareto is going to extraordinary efforts to right any wrongs. As such, we have decided to allow Pareto to return to SST. We will continue to monitor the rep and keep in close contact with the head of the operation in order to protect the end users on SST.

We will leave this thread open for record and resume the Pareto thread in the next few days.

 

[EnhancedGrappler]

ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW:

In recent weeks the Moderator team was alerted to an accusation that one of our Canadian “verified sources” was participating in shilling, namely by creating a number of throwaway accounts that would be used to leave positive feedback for the source, thereby falsely inflating its reputation. In order to evaluate the validity of this claim, the moderators exhaustively combed through profiles of accounts that had posted in the accused source’s thread in search of evidence. The moderator team identified accounts of concern as ones that had short online times, low post counts, and were registered to proxies and mobile IPs. In order to ensure that our count was not biased, we completed the same task for each of the other Canadian sources in order to compare numbers and establish ratios of “accounts of concern” to “regular accounts” as well as “accounts of concern” to page views. The results of this task revealed that the accused source did not appear to have a suspicious number of bumps or positive anecdotal reviews when compared to other sources.
However, one Canadian source did. Pareto Pharmaceuticals was found to have a disproportionate number of anecdotal reviews and bumps from newly created accounts, many of which are registered to proxies or mobile IPs for the apparent sole purpose of shilling. No other source on the board has a remotely similar number of reviews from newly created accounts that have not posted outside of the source thread, regardless of page views or known sales volume. A similar discovery was addressed several months ago where the source continuously deleted posts in his “source page” before responding to them with the same post in order to bump the thread to the top of the “source page” section.
Soon after the shilling was discovered, the Moderator team was also alerted to various lab tests that were posted by the Pareto Rep on another well-known board. One of these tests was edited by the Rep in order to falsely report the results. This test, when pulled directly from the Jano website, showed the true results indicated overdosing of an oral compound by 25-50%, with a variance between tablets of more than 20%. Unfortunately, the Rep chose to hide these results rather than address and/or correct the issue. This is especially concerning to the Moderators as the source continues to sell items labelled with microgram specific dosing, but fails to dose oral anabolics within 10mg of accuracy.
In response to the above revelations, the Moderator team has decided to remove Pareto Pharmaceuticals, effectively immediately, based on the following summary reasons:

1. Overwhelming evidence of shilling, including using proxy generated accounts to unduly increase the reputation of the source.
2. Altering of 3rd party analytical results in order to unduly add to the positive reputation of the source’s products.
3. Failure to address the initial 3rd party analytical results which indicated a dosing inaccuracy of 50% (10mg). This level of inaccurate dosing is simply not unacceptable from a public safety perspective.
   This decision is not one that has been made lightly, however we encourage all to take this as a learning opportunity at this time. Sources, if discovered to be participating in shilling or practices that are deceptive to the members of our community, will be held accountable and removed accordingly. The Moderators make a concerted effort to prevent subpar sources from reaching our community, and continue to monitor the trustworthiness of these sources long after initial acceptance onto the board, and passed the point of verification.