Feeding A Lie?

At last count, more than a million people had bought CortiSlim weight loss pills, the $200 million baby of a California company called Window Rock. The pills gained popularity being sold through television ads, which promised to melt fat by targeting a stress hormone.

But as CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, the Federal Trade Commission has filed a false claims lawsuit against the company, saying there's no evidence to support that claim.

The FTC's Heather Hippsley explains, "The commission charged that CortiSlim did not work as claimed. That you could not lose 10 to 50 pounds of weight using the CortiSlim pill alone."

Former CortiSlim spokesman Greg Cynaumon identified himself in the ads as "Dr." But Cynaumon isn't a medical doctor, he's a correspondence school Ph.D. He says CortiSlim works, but that his collaborators misled him about studies needed to back up their claims. He says, "As far as doing their homework and the due diligence and the testing that a product should go through before it's released, I later found out they didn't do it."

The FTC is suing Cynaumon and his former partners, including pill designer Shawn Talbott and Window Rock President Stephen Cheng. Cheng, who's done time in federal prison for selling bootleg CDs, says scientific studies do support CortiSlim's claims, and that the company is cooperating with the FTC.

Despite the lawsuit, CortiSlim is still being sold through radio and television ads, but without some of the spectacular weight loss claims. And it still has its big supporters.

John Andruzzi credits CortiSlim with helping him go from fat and stressed to lean and relaxed. He says he's lost over 40 pounds.

But Andruzzi didn't just take CortiSlim, he also started dieting and exercising. The FTC says that's probably why people like him have lost weight, though Andruzzi maintains, "I do think that the pill had an effect on me, that it still does."

Without clinical studies that prove CortiSlim really targets that stress hormone, it can only legally be sold as "part of a total diet and exercise plan." Meantime, if the FTC wins its lawsuit, it aims to reduce the size of CortiSlim's profits and refund the money to customers.