Arm-Wrestling Champ Busted For Selling Apricot Seed 'Cancer Cure'

BELLEROSE, QUEENS — An arm-wrestling champion and his mother were busted for peddling apricot seeds as a cure for cancer under the business name Apricots From God, years after he did a stint in federal prison for running the same scam.

Professional arm wrestler Jason Vale, 51, and his mother were arrested early Wednesday morning at their Queens home for selling bottles of apricot seeds they claimed had a 90 percent success rate killing cancer cells, court records show.

Vale was taken to the hospital after his arrest for an undisclosed medical problem, and his 77-year-old mother was released on $100,000 bond, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Vale first got into trouble for the seedy enterprise two decades ago, when a judge ordered him and his business Christian Brothers Contracting Corporation to stop selling the apricot products, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Promoting unapproved drugs as a cure for any disease, including cancer, is a violation of the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned importing apricot kernels as a drug, and the National Cancer Institute has found the seeds, marketed as "vitamin B17" or laetrile, can cause cyanide poisoning and lead to death.

But Vale, 51, claimed apricot seeds rid him of two cancerous tumors and helped him go on to win city, state, national and world arm-wrestling titles in the 1980s and 1990s, according to The New York Times.

He kept his business going and was arrested in 2002 for flouting the court order, the federal complaint says. He spent five years in federal prison.

Federal prosecutors say Vale and his mother, Barbara, resumed selling the faux cancer cure in 2013 under the business name Apricots From God.

Vale himself claimed to eat 20 apricot seeds a day to cure his terminal cancer, according to the Apricots From God website.

"If my life is going to influence people to go the alternative route then I want to be the 'guinea pig' even if it costs my life," he says on the website.

The duo raked in at least $850,000 importing apricot kernels from China and repackaging them, shipping the unapproved drugs from their Bellerose home, according to federal prosecutors.

Officials from the city's Department of Environmental Protection found drums full of unnamed hazardous materials during an early-morning raid of the house Wednesday, ABC7 reported.