The operations director of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign and his longest-serving aide previously peddled sham brain pills for a multi-level marketing company that customers and federal regulators called a pyramid scheme. The aide, Tara Terpstra, would go on to work for El-Sayed, who calls himself a doctor and has railed against "snake oil salesmen" who "sell people shit they don’t need."
Terpstra, whom El-Sayed first hired in 2016 at the Detroit Health Department, previously worked as an independent distributor for Nerium, the alleged "pyramid scheme." Terpstra, who now works for El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, promoted Nerium’s products, including a coffee extract called EHT that she billed in a July 2015 post as a "cutting edge…age-defying supplement" that could be used as an "Alzheimer’s treatment" and other neurocognitive conditions.
Terpstra touted Nerium’s products for both their purported health benefits and as a lucrative money-making opportunity in dozens of social media posts.
"If you want to write your own paycheck and make your own hours, or just need to make some extra income every month, there is HUGE opportunity here!" Terpstra said in an October 2015 post. Terpstra claimed that Nerium sellers could earn bonuses ranging from "iPads, a Lexus, and…straight cash."
In 2013, the famously pockmarked Goodfellas star Ray Liotta, who died in 2022, sued Nerium, accusing the company of airbrushing one of his photos and using his image without permission as part of an online ad campaign for its skincare products in order to boost its "product-based pyramid scheme."
In 2017, a group of Nerium distributors filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of operating an "illegal pyramid scheme" in which the company took money "in return for the right to sell products that are falsely advertised and do not provide the health benefits promised, and reward the select few for recruiting other participants into the pyramid."
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission sued Nerium, alleging the company operated an illegal pyramid scheme in which its distributors recruited others with promises of "lifestyle-changing income." Only a small percentage of Nerium sellers actually made a profit, according to the FTC, and its bonus programs, like the offer of a Lexus, were deceptive. "In fact, Nerium does not purchase a Lexus for anybody," the FTC alleged. Instead, Nerium gave a tiny fraction of distributors a $500 monthly check to put toward a lease for a Lexus.
And the company made false or unsubstantiated claims about EHT, including that it could prevent or treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, according to regulators. In 2019, the FTC reached a settlement with Nerium’s EHT suppliers over false claims it made about the products.
A federal judge ruled in favor of Nerium in 2023, determining that it was not a pyramid scheme under federal law.
Terpstra’s role in hawking Nerium’s brain pills raises questions for El-Sayed, an Ivy League-trained epidemiologist who has made his medical credentials and leadership of Detroit's health department central to his Senate campaign. El-Sayed, who claims on his campaign website that he "rebuilt" the Detroit Health Department, has already faced allegations of embellishing his medical credentials by referring to himself as a physician, leaving the impression that he treats patients. El-Sayed has a medical degree and Ph.D., but he never completed the internship and residency required to be a licensed physician, and never practiced medicine. Instead he worked in the field of public health and as an academic researcher, fields which don’t require a medical degree. El-Sayed, who referred to himself as "Dr. Abdul El-Sayed" in a new ad released on Thursday, cannot legally practice medicine.
El-Sayed has been a vocal critic of unproven health remedies and has portrayed himself as a leading voice against medical misinformation.
In 2022, he ripped Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who now leads the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, for "sell[ing] people shit they didn’t need" on his popular television show, the New York Post reported.
"What happens when corporations, influencers, and snake oil salesmen prey on our insecurities to sell us something we don’t need, or worse, something that could harm us?" El-Sayed asked on his podcast, America Dissected, where Terpstra worked as a producer.
As the New York Post reported, El-Sayed faced scrutiny for promoting dubious health companies on the podcast, including products from Thrive, which sells a product called Moon Juice Brain Dust.
It is unclear how El-Sayed first connected with Terpstra and whether El-Sayed was aware of her work for Nerium before he hired her. But Terpstra has become one of El-Sayed’s closest aides over the past decade.
One of her first apparent tasks under El-Sayed at the Detroit Health Department was to create and manage El-Sayed’s Wikipedia page, Wikipedia logs show. A Wikipedia user with the handle "tjterps" created the page on July 6, 2016, and wrote details about El-Sayed’s personal life, career, upbringing, and educational background. "Tjterps" noted that El-Sayed had a sandwich named after him—"The Abdul"—when he studied at the University of Oxford in England.
Terpstra followed El-Sayed when he quit the Detroit gig to run for Michigan governor. El-Sayed’s campaign paid Terpstra $30,000 as a consultant, and his political action committee, Southpaw Michigan, paid Terpstra’s company, Purple Tulip, $109,000 for consulting work in 2020 and 2021, records show.
Terpstra worked for El-Sayed when he took the Wayne County health director role in March 2023, a gig that overlapped with their work on the America Dissected podcast. Terpstra now works for El-Sayed’s campaign, where the campaign pays her $6,400 monthly salary to serve as operations director.
El-Sayed has heaped praise on Terpstra, calling her in an episode of his podcast an "all around phenomenal human being and good friend."
"I could not get through my life without Tara Terpstra," he said in another episode.
El-Sayed’s campaign and Terpstra did not respond to requests for comment.
