Jonathan E. McGraw

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, Jonathan E. McGraw, 33, of Newberg, Oregon, was sentenced in Chicago to a year and a day in federal prison for manufacturing and selling a purported weight-loss product that contained the unapproved additive 2,4-Dinitrophenol, known as DNP. The office's release is dated November 22, 2021, and says U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee imposed the sentence on the preceding Friday, which was November 19, 2021. The release says McGraw obtained DNP from sources in China, used it as the primary ingredient in capsules that he made in a makeshift lab in his garage, and marketed the capsules online as a weight-loss product. It says he falsely labeled the product as pesticide in an effort to deceive regulatory and law enforcement agencies, and that DNP has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration or any other regulatory agency for human consumption in the United States. McGraw acknowledged in a plea agreement that he knew his customers' use of DNP created a risk of death or serious bodily injury, and he pleaded guilty earlier in 2021 to a federal charge of introducing a new drug into interstate commerce without approval. The Reddit connection is stated in the release: McGraw sold the capsules to customers throughout the United States through his website, ScorpionDNP.com, and through postings on other sites, including reddit.com. McClatchy News, reporting on the same release and the government's sentencing document, added that buyers had to purchase a minimum of 40 pills, that Bitcoin was the only accepted payment, and that an undercover FDA agent bought two shipments in October and November 2017. Officials put his gross sales at between $95,000 and $150,000 over more than 1,000 shipments and sales, while McGraw said he grossed about $30,000. In the sentencing memorandum, according to the Justice Department release, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick D. Young argued that McGraw's conduct "exposed hundreds of individuals to a significant risk of harm or death." The Portland Mercury, in a February 7, 2018 article by Doug Brown, referred to a since-deleted post in an r/ScorpionDNP subreddit and reported that Reddit deleted the Scorpion-DNP account and that McGraw quickly created ScorpionDNP2. The Justice Department release itself does not name a subreddit or account.