HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Purported Deepfake Advertisement Falsely Depicting Physician Endorsement Used to Sell Lipedema Cream to U.S. Patient Beth Holland

December 3, 2025

Beth Holland, a U.S. resident, was deceived after buying a lipedema treatment, Svelta Venastra, following an online advertisement allegedly using deepfake technology to falsely depict endorsements by medical professionals and public figures, including her own physician, Dr. David Amron. This misleading ad, which circulated on Facebook, incorrectly portrayed the product's effectiveness and led Holland to spend around $300 on a cream that failed to alleviate her condition. Such incidents underscore the need for responsible AI in healthcare, including safe and secure AI practices.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
beth-holland, david-amron, oprah-winfrey, kelly-clarkson, carnie-wilson

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1341

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.