Riway paid Eliminalia ~€370K to hide Purtier Placenta warnings

Riway has been outed as a client of the Eliminalia reputation management agency.

Leaked documents reveal Riway’s Taiwanese subsidiary paid Eliminalia €370,000 EUR to bury Placenta Purtier health warnings.

Eliminalia is notoriously known for their blackhat approach to “erasing” their client’s past.

Riway was outed as  an Eliminalia client via a leaked documents obtained by Forbidden Stories.

Forbidden Stories cite themselves as a

network of journalists whose mission is to protect, pursue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison, or murder.

Eliminalia is a Spanish company run by founder Diego “Didac” Sanchez (right).

Thankfully with respect to Riway, Eliminalia didn’t resort to prison or murder. Instead they targeted coverage of their illegal exploits via threats and manipulation.

Riway is an MLM company that markets a range of nutritional supplements.

Riway’s flagship supplement is Purtier Placenta, purportedly made from deer placenta.

On the executive side of things, Riway is operated from Singapore by CEO Lim Boon Hong (right).

BehindMLM first documented illegal medical claims being made about Purtier Placenta in 2018.

At the time Riway affiliates were running around claiming Purtier Placenta cures depression, diabetes, arthritis, psoriasis, leukemia, infertility, cancer (stages one through four), multiple sclerosis and slipped discs.

None of these claims were or are true.

Earlier that same year the Philippine FDA issued an advisory, warning against illegal Purtier Placenta medical claims.

In 2019 Singapore issued a fraud warning pertaining to claims Purtier Placenta could “cure cancer and other diseases”.

In 2020 Riway affiliates were running around claiming Purtier Placenta was a COVID-19 treatment.

Singapore followed up in 2021 by prosecuting Riway for illegal unsubstantiated medical claims. Riway was eventually fined $3000.

Outside of illegal medical claims Riway was also banned in Japan for six months in 2021. Following an investigation into Riway, Japanese authorities concluded the company was operating as a pyramid scheme.

Long story short, Riway had a lot of heavy baggage they wanted scrubbed from the internet, which led to almost €370,000 in fees paid to Eliminalia.

As part of their February 17th coverage of the leaked Eliminalia files, OCCRP reported;

Riway Taiwan, a “health product” manufacturer, turned to Eliminalia when it was being prosecuted in Singapore for falsely claiming its products could cure diabetes and treat cancer.

Other countries, including the U.S., had previously warned that its Purtier Placenta product — marketed as a miracle cure for terminal illnesses based on stem cells from deer placenta — was a scam. (editor’s note: OCCRP has confused the Philippine FDA with its US equivalent)

Riway Taiwan paid Eliminalia almost 370,000 euros in April 2021, though many of the links it wanted targeted seemed to be advertising its products, rather than criticizing them.

As reported by Forbidden Stories, tactics used by Eliminalia include:

• impersonating European Union officials;
• abusing GDPR laws; and
• filing bogus DMCA claims (supported by fabricated backdated articles)

Based on the data they’ve reviewed, Forbidden Stories claims Eliminia successfully removed articles from “hundreds of journalists” between 2015 and 2021.

Eliminalia claims its services remove “unwanted and erroneous information” for clients with a “right to be forgotten,” but nearly 50,000 internal company documents leaked to Forbidden Stories contradict this narrative.

The files show how Eliminalia worked for scammers, spyware companies, torturers, convicted criminals, corrupt politicians and others in the global underworld to hide public-interest information.

Previous reporting, including by Rest of World, identified some of Eliminalia’s clients – but this leak, which includes confidential emails, client names, contracts and other legal documents – gives a fuller understanding of the opaque company’s operations.

In addition to targeting legitimate media coverage of his clients,

Sánchez and his business partner José María Hill Prados also run at least 50 companies globally, including a surrogacy company facing litigation for child trafficking.

Outfits like Eliminalia are able to do what they do due to outdated DMCA laws and well-intentioned but asinine European GDPR laws.

Data protection laws, Eliminalia and other firms realized, could be weaponized to remove content from the internet. Two laws – the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and GDPR – were easily exploitable.

As part of their reporting, OCCRP reached out to Riway for comment. The company failed to respond.

Forbidden Stories reached out to Eliminalia for comment. They declined to comment.

Upon learning of pending coverage of their exploits, Eliminalia quickly rebranded as Idata Protection.

Company filings reviewed by Forbidden Stories confirm the rebrand, possibly resulting from investigations by journalists and researchers that generated negative press.

But when two members of the consortium visited the office, an employee said, “the company is called Idata Protection, but we belong to Eliminalia.”

Sánchez, the founder, was no longer in Barcelona, according to the employee.

As with OneCoin scammers the Steinkeller brothers, also clients of Eliminalia, I vaguely remember getting a removal request pertaining to Riway back in the day.

Likely due to it being cookie-cutter in nature, I unfortunately didn’t archive any Riway correspondence.

I had a quick look on Lumen Database and noted BehindMLM being cited in multiple bogus defamation notices sent out by Riway. Here’s a June 2022 example.

To date BehindMLM has not removed any of our published Riway articles.