HARD SELL
Inside ‘deadly’ fake Viagra scam that saw conman rake in ‘suitcases stuffed with cash’ before tragic death claim
One expert suspects there could be scores of people who have died due to taking the drug - but their families are unaware
STIFF Nights promised to be an all-natural sex supplement to rival Viagra - but that wasn’t the whole truth.
The little red pill with the sales pitch “Regain the Thunder”, was sold across America everywhere from sex shops to petrol stations - even becoming known as the ‘gas station boner pill’.
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Within months it was making millions for its unlikely developers Mormon Kelly Harvey and vegan Erb Avore, with Kelly bringing home suitcases brimming with notes which he lavished on his family to buy laptops, holidays and other gifts.
But it turned out the Stiff Nights' claims to be all natural were a little limp - and instead the pills were laced with sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra which could potentially put lives at risk if users had underlying health conditions.
Instead of pulling his rampant cash cow from the market Harvey decided to take his chances and continue selling the pills until 2011 — when he was finally busted by the Food and Drug Administration in the US and ended up behind bars.
In the documentary The Great Erection Deception: The Stiff Nights Story, which airs tonight on ITV, Harvey said: “I seriously underestimated the repercussions of my actions. Seriously underestimated them.”
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Viagra had taken the world by storm after a happy accident by British scientists in 1992 put medicine on an upward trajectory.
Originally developed by Pfizer as a drug to treat high blood pressure it was found that the drug raised something else.
Men taking part in the clinical trials reported an unusual side effect - erections that were much more frequent and harder than normal.
Scientists had accidentally found a cure for an age-old problem. Up to that point, experts had failed to come up with anything — and many men frustrated in the bedroom struggled to maintain more than just a stiff upper lip.
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Sex historian Dr Kate Lister, of Leeds Trinity University, says in the documentary: “As long as there have been men, there have been willies that won’t work properly, and throughout history there have been quack cures.
“They have included eating the testicles of various animals, drinking bats’ urine, inducing the penis with minor electric shocks, hot baths, cold baths, even lying on sheets of lead.”
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The drug went on sale in 1998 sparking a worldwide frenzy - and copycats who wanted to cash in on a piece of the Viagra action.
But there were also tight regulations over who took the drug, as it could be harmful to people with heart conditions, particularly if they swallowed too strong a dose.
So producers worldwide started looking for a way around the rules. Pfizer had spent nine years and nearly a billion pounds developing the drug - but that didn’t stop stiff competition wanting a slice of the action.
In Salt Lake City, Utah, Kelly Harvey was making his living from selling herbal supplements.
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Harvey’s Chinese supplier contacted him to say they had a drug for male sexual health and sent him a sample.
“That night I tried one, and I am like, wow!” He said. “This stuff really works. Without fail I got the same report from everybody - this product works.
The supplier claimed the ingredient was a natural alternative to sildenafil — golden speargrass extract.
This was a plant indigenous to China and, as it was not a lab drug, there were no regulations against producing it, no licence was needed to sell it and no prescription needed to buy it.
So he called vegan marketing mastermind Erb Avore, one of the first people in the world to create spam emails, to put together what they thought was a plan for unlimited growth and a billionaire lifestyle.
“We thought we had the first all natural erectile dysfunction supplement,” says Harvey.
How does Viagra work?
SIDENAFIL - the main ingredient in Viagra - belongs to a group of medicines called phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors.
It works if you have erection problems by temporarily increasing blood flow to your penis when you get sexually excited.
It also works in pulmonary hypertension by relaxing blood vessels in your chest.
This increases the blood supply to your lungs and reduces the workload of your heart.
Men over 18 can take the pills for ED and most adults and children aged over one can take sildenafil for pulmonary hypertension.
Sildenafil is not suitable for some people.
To make sure it's safe for you, speak to your doctor or pharmacist before taking sildenafil if you:
- Have ever had an allergic reaction to sildenafil or any other medicine
- Are taking medicines called nitrates for chest pain (angina)
- Have a serious heart or liver problem
- Have recently had a stroke, heart attack or a heart problem – your doctor should carefully check whether your heart can take the additional strain of having sex
- Have low blood pressure (hypotension)
- Have a rare inherited eye disease, such as retinitis pigmentosa
- Have sickle cell anaemia (an abnormality of red blood cells), leukaemia (cancer of blood cells) or multiple myeloma (cancer of bone marrow)
- Have a deformity of your penis or Peyronie's disease (curved penis)
- Have a stomach ulcer
- Have a bleeding problem like haemophilia
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They were soon employing 200 people to pack capsules with ‘extract of golden speargrass’ and flogging it across the States.
Soon their miracle pill had penetrated every part of America - and kept people wanting more.
Harvey recalls: “Erb and I had taken a 24 cent pill and were selling it for $7 and selling it like crazy. People couldn’t keep it on the shelf crazy.”
But while their business model was thriving, their supplier hadn’t been totally upfront about what the product contained - and it was in fact sildenafil.
Instead of going down the route of admitting the truth and getting the drug licensed, Harvey and Avore carried on selling it until they were caught out in 2011.
The pills’ stratospheric success, and complaints from some users about side effects, caught the eye of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who threw them under the microscope and realised the reason it proved so potent was because it contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra.
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Harvey admitted conspiring with others to manufacture and distribute erectile dysfunction products under false pretences and with the intent to conceal from the FDA the use of a regulated ingredient. While Erb Avore disappeared.
However, lots of pills remained in circulation. In 2013 the family of a man from Missouri, US, claimed he had died after taking Stiff Nights.
David R. McElwee, 39, suffered a loss of blood pressure, which ultimately led to a fatal heart attack, after taking a product sold under the brand name Stiff Nights, according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of his children.
His lawyers said he had bought a two pill blister pack of Stiff Nights from an adult bookstore before going on a date with his girlfriend.
He suffered from high blood pressure and was taking the prescription medication Lisinopril.
After a night of heavy drinking, David ingested a single pill. Approximately 45 minutes later, his blood pressure dropped and he went into cardiac arrest.
There should be many people serving prison time
Jeff Abraham, CEO of Promescent
He was taken to a local hospital where he remained in a coma for three days until he passed away.
The family later won $1million in compensation from the adult store’s insurers as there was no way to track which of the manufacturers of Stiff Nights had distributed the pill taken by Mr McElwee.
But it is feared that other people may have suffered health issues after taking the drug but not reported it due to the stigma around sexual stimulants.
Jeff Abraham, CEO of US sexual wellness brand Promescent, says in the programme: “I guarantee you there’s more because most people, when someone passes away, don’t go rummaging through their drawers saying, ‘Hey, they took a gas station boner pill last night, that’s what caused it!’.
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“There should be many people serving prison time.”
The Great Erection Deception: The Stiff Nights Story airs on ITV at 10.45pm tonight and is available to stream on ITVX.
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