Complaint Review: ABH PHARMA INC.

I had been mixing my own anti-anxiety blend together and making capsules for personal use, so I had an amazing formula that really worked for me. The formula contained a few main ingredients and various other synergetic compounds. My friends and family convinced me that I should start selling my formula to the masses after they tried my custom made capsules and loved them!

I started doing some research on where to have my capsules made and I found ABH Pharma Inc. via google and decided to contact them to get a quote. I was connected with the President of the company, Frank Cantone, during my first contact with the company. I was very pleased to get to work with the President of the company, even though I was just a small-fry. I sent them my complete formula and they gave me a quote for making it and it fit within my budget so I decided to order. I had a close friend design my label (he’s a graphic designer) and ABH reviewed my label for compliance. After a few revisions I received approval of my label and production was eventually completed.

I was so happy to finally receive my product and get started with my first business venture. When I received the product I opened up a bottle, extremely excited to see my first professionally-made product, and to my surprise the color of the powder inside the capsules was completely off! The usual color of the blend I made at home (using pure raw ingredients) was a yellowish color, but the color of the powder inside the capsules ABH made was completely white! I figured that maybe my ingredients just weren’t as pure as the ingredients they were getting (I mean, that must be it, right?) so I sent an email to Frank Cantone to see what was up. They basically told me to rest assured that the product I received was completely fine and matched the label claim perfectly; they even sent me a certificate of analysis that shows the product testing! Well then, this puts my mind at ease.

I decide to try to product and it has none of the usual calming effects of my personally made capsules. Now I’m starting to get worried. I decide to give some of the capsules to my friends and family (the same ones who loved my home-made capsules) and they said the same thing – THERE’S NO EFFECT.

I decide to open up the capsules and taste the powder inside. My home-made capsules have a very bitter taste and the capsules ABH sent me are flavorless. It’s just a gritty, white powder inside. Now I’m really starting to worry.

Now that I’m sufficiently worried I finally decide that I must have this product tested. I search around for a lab to test these capsules to find out exactly what was inside. After spending a ton of my hard-earned money on this lab testing I come to discover that THERE’S NOTHING BUT RICE FLOUR AND A SMALL AMOUNT OF MAGNESIUM IN THESE CAPSULES ABH MADE FOR ME. The product was supposed to contain 6 active ingredients buy only one of them was present, and it wasn’t even the full amount of Magnesium I originally requested!!!

I remembered that I had a test report that was sent to me from ABH which showed testing for the ingredients in my product so I sent that to the third-party lab to ask them if the test report was fake. The lab informed me that the test report that ABH sent me WASN’T EVEN SHOWING TESTING. The column on the test report that is supposed to say what type of testing method that was used for the ingredient just said “by input,” which basically means that they didn’t actually test the product and that they’re just listing out the ingredient amounts that they claim to have put into my product.

I was absolutely furious! I contacted Frank Cantone again and explained to him the situation, that I had the product tested and discovered that they are a fraud company. They claim that they have something called a “retained sample” of my product, which is apparently a bottle of my product that they hold on to after they manufacture a custom order so that if they ever receive a complaint they can check their retained sample to verify the complaint. They even sent me a picture of the retained sample and sure enough it has the yellow color that I was expecting my product to have. It definitely wasn’t the same capsules that I received in my bulk shipment.

I showed them that the powder inside of the capsules that I received is bone-white. They claim that they have no way to prove that I didn’t replace the capsules in the bottles to scam them so they can’t do anything to help because their retained sample doesn’t match my complaint.

After being bounced around between Frank Cantone, Chris Theoharides, and the owner himself, Dr. Jahirul Islam, I’m left without any recourse. At this point, I have decided that I will be taking legal action to recoup my losses.

My guess is that they are picking random small companies to scam. I believe that they are accepting an order, creating 1 or 2 bottles of the real product to keep as their “retained sample” and then shipping the customer a batch of placebo pills that they bottle as the real product. That way, the FDA has no way of knowing that ABH is pulling this on their customer’s because they have their “retained sample” that contains the ingredients that the customer manufactured while the customer is left with a big batch of placebo pills. Then they can just turn the blame on their customer and claim that they are the ones scamming by switching out the product in the bottles and attempting to get a refund.

After discovering that the name of the owner of ABH Pharma Inc. is Jahirul Islam, I decided to do some research and discovered that ABH Pharma Inc. wasn’t always the name of their company. Their company used to be “ABH Nature’s Products Inc.” and they received warning letters from the FDA for not testing some of their products and for various other offenses -

http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2012/ucm375464.htm

Here is a link to an archive of their old website -

https://web.archive.org/web/20160109165421/http://abhnature.com/

Here is a link to their new website - http://abhpharma.com/

I assume that they changed the name of their company so that their new potential customers wouldn’t find the FDA warning letter that their company received. I imagine that they lost a lot of business due to the warning letter and had no choice but to change their company name and relocate their headquarters. Now that they have a new company name, when a customer eventually comes across the FDA warning letter the company names don’t match, so the customer ends up brushing off the FDA warning letter as being directed at a different company with a similar name and ABH can claim that FDA warning letter isn’t directed at their company.

I also discovered that the owner of ABH Pharma Inc., Jahirul Islam, is the owner of https://tbnlabs.com/ It looks like they are taking powder from their customer’s production runs and using it to sell their own products. If you are contracting a manufacturer for a body-building supplement I would definitely avoid using these guys because it looks like they will take your formula and directly compete with you!

BE VERY CAUTIOUS ABOUT USING THIS COMPANY IF YOU ARE A SMALL STARTUP AS THEY ARE LIKELY TO SCAM YOU OUT OF YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY, JUST LIKE THEY DID WITH ME!!!!