Televangelist Jim Bakker sued for hawking ‘fake coronavirus cure’ – The Sun

TELEVANGELIST Jim Bakker is being sued for hawking a bogus "silver solution" as a cure for the coronavirus.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Missouri's attorney general accuses the 80-year-old pastor of falsely promising consumers that his Silver Solution "can cure, eliminate, kill or deactivate coronavirus" on The Jim Bakker Show.

Bakker and his company Morningside Church Productions are based in the state of Missouri – selling a fake "treatment" for COVID-19 is against federal and state law, according to NPR.

Schmitt joins New York's attorney general, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration in going after Bakker for deceiving viewers into thinking colloidal silver can contain or even "kill" the highly contagious disease.

The New York Attorney General's office sent Bakker a cease-and-desist letter accusing him of defrauding the public on March 3.

Days after receiving  the letter, the FDA and FTC warned Bakker that his website and Facebook page were breaking the law by selling "unapproved new drugs."

The suit stems from a February 12 segment in which the convicted fraudster peddled colloidal silver as the antidote to the coronavirus, which has killed 38 people and infected more than 1,300 around the US.

He advertised the products as a package deal for up to $125 on his television program and invited a "naturopathic doctor" on the show to make false claims about the benefits of Silver Solution.

The woman, Sherill Sellman, said although it hasn't been tested on the current coronavirus strain "but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours."

But according to the National Institutes of Health, colloidal silver hasn't been proven to be safe and "should never be used to replace conventional medical care."

It can even cause serious side effects like bluish-gray skin discoloration which is usually permanent, and the FDA in 1999 said the compound isn't effective for treating any disease.

By Wednesday, the Silver solution was pulled from Bakker's website.

The disgraced TV pastor has a long history of making bogus claims to his followers, beginning in the 1970s and '80s when he gained notoriety as the host of Christian television program The PTL Club.

After a federal investigation into The PTL Club's fundraising activities between 1984 and 1987, he was found guilty on a litany of charges including mail and wire fraud and conspiracy.

Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 1989, but was released in 1994 after serving almost five years of a reduced eight-year sentence.

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