Father, 3 sons face Miami trial on charges of peddling industrial cleaner as ‘miracle’ cure

A father and his three sons — accused of peddling poisonous industrial bleaching agent as a miracle medical cure out of a self-styled Florida church — all sat silently in a row at the defense table in Miami federal court as prosecutors laid out the case against them.

Mark Grenon, 65, and sons Jonathan, 37, Joseph, 35, and Jordan, 29 — all with matching beige inmate uniforms, pony tails and flowing beards — had nothing to say during opening statements in their fraud trial, an unusual legal tactic considering they have chosen to represent themselves on charges that potentially could send them to prison for years.

Prosecutors depicted the four defendants from Bradenton as “con men” and “snake-oil salesmen” who used a phony religious front on a website, the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, to sell $1 million worth of their “Miracle Mineral Solution” in video pitches as a cure for 95% of the world’s known diseases, from AIDS to the coronavirus.

Prosecutors Michael Homer and John Shipley said the Grenons called themselves “bishops” and peddled MMS as “sacraments” to consumers across the United States in exchange for a “donation” to the Genesis church, before the Food and Drug Administration cracked down on the family for distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug in 2020.

The Grenons were charged that April with conspiring to defraud the U.S. government after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic when they defied FDA and court orders to stop distributing the toxic MMS substance. Their criminal case was the first pandemic-related enforcement action in Florida. In public warnings, FDA said it received several reports of hospitalizations and life-threatening conditions as people drank the dangerous substance.

MMS is a chemical solution containing sodium chlorite and water that, when mixed with a citric acid “activator,” turns into chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleach typically used for industrial water treatment or bleaching textiles, pulp and paper.

Before the trial began on Monday, U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga gave an instruction to jurors that the Grenons could not use the First Amendment, specifically religious freedom, as a defense because their so-called church was not a religious entity.

Homer, the prosecutor, zeroed in on that critical point when he asked FDA special agent Jose Rivera, who led an undercover investigation into the Grenons’ business, why they sold the “miracle” chemical solution through a religious website.

“To get around government regulation and not go to jail,” Rivera testified.

During his testimony, Rivera focused on three Grenon-produced videos that pitched the solution as a cure for cancer, lung cancer and COVID-19.

“We are trying to create a world without disease,” Grenon said in one video, pitching the MMS substance. “It’s been proven to be tremendously effective in curing cancer.”

Another video, dated March 8, 2020, was titled: “The coronavirus is curable. Do you believe it? You better!”

Homer asked the FBI agent if there’s a cure for the coronavirus, which can cause severe respiratory disease and death.

“No, there isn’t,” Rivera said.

To bolster his investigation, Rivera, under a different name, said he bought multiple bottles of the Grenons’ MMS product through their website at $15, $20 and $30 each. They were shipped to addresses in Florida and Georgia. In one instance, Rivera complained that his fictional wife, who was portrayed as battling cancer, did not improve after taking the substance for three weeks. The agent testified that he received an email from one of Grenon’s sons saying that she would have to use it for a longer period of time to be effective.

Prosecutors said the Grenon family’s religious front, the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, sold tens of thousands of MMS orders in violation of federal law since 2010.

It was in that year that Mark Grenon claims to have founded the organization with a man named Jim Humble in a plan to avoid governmental regulation and arrest as they promoted MMS as a miracle cure. Humble, a man who has dabbled in Scientology and professed to be a billion-year-old god, began promoting the substance as early as 2006 in self-published works after he claimed to have discovered its medical properties while on a gold-mining expedition in South America.

After Humble supposedly stepped away from the organization in 2017, Grenon continued to manufacture, promote and sell MMS with his three sons.

The Grenons utilized a “complex network of websites” to reach potential users, according to federal prosecutors, as well as “countless newsletters, posts, and articles.”

The Grenons caught the eye of federal agents during the COVID-19 pandemic when they began promoting MMS as a cure for the virus. At the time, many unproven and dangerous cures for the virus were circulating on social media.

In April 2020, federal authorities sent the Grenons a warning letter ordering them to stop sales.

“We can say cure, heal and treat as a Free Church,” Genesis allegedly said in a response letter. “There will be NO corrective actions on our part. ... You have no authority over us! ... Never going to happen.”

The Grenons’ open defiance of a court order ultimately led to criminal charges and a federal raid on the family’s Bradenton home, where federal investigators say they found loaded guns, nearly 10,000 pounds of sodium chlorite powder and thousands of bottles of MMS.

Jonathan and Jordan Grenon, the eldest and youngest sons, were arrested in Bradenton. Mark Grenon and the middle son, Joseph, fled to Colombia, where they were later arrested by Colombian authorities and held for extradition last year.

Information from the Bradenton Herald was used for this story.