(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A man who manufactured and sold a purported weight-loss product laced with a potentially deadly compound has been sentenced to a year in federal prison.
Jonathan E. McGraw, 33, obtained the substance known as 2, 4-Dinitrophenol, or DNP, from sources in China, federal prosecutors said Monday in announcing the penalty.
McGraw used the DNP as the primary ingredient in capsules that he made in his garage and marketed online as a weight-loss product called Scorpion DNP, prosecutors said.
DNP is a yellow chemical substance that causes rapid loss of weight, but also, potentially, hyperthermia, cardiac arrhythmia and death, federal officials have said. DNP has been used as a dye, wood preserver, and herbicide and has never been approved by the FDA for use as a drug.
McGraw pleaded guilty earlier this year to introducing a new drug into interstate commerce without approval, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago said. He was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee.
“Defendant was willing to subject hundreds of people to a risk of death in order to make money for himself,” a prosecutor said in a filing leading up to the sentencing.
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