MEDVi’s website notes that “Certain materials on this website, including text, images, and other media, may be generated or enhanced using artificial intelligence technologies. No representation or warranty is made regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of such content.”
In 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that a single entrepreneur using AI would generate a business worth more than one billion dollars.
The L.A. entrepreneur Matthew Gallagher apparently is boasting that his telehealth startup MEDVi is among the first companies to make good on that prediction. On LinkedIn, he has called the firm, which markets GLP-1s and other pharmaceuticals, “the fastest growing company in history,” a phrase he has since removed from his profile. And on April 2, The New York Times presented MEDVi as a clear example of Altman’s vision, profiling Gallagher’s AI-powered path to a projected $1.8 billion in 2026 sales with two full-time employees, himself and his brother Elliot, along with contract engineers, account managers and outside agencies. The Times said it was given access to MEDVi’s financials to verify revenue and profits.
Gallagher told the Times he used AI services including ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, MidJourney and Runway to build the company, and let CareValidate, a telehealth-in-a-box platform, and OpenLoop Health handle the doctors, pharmacies, shipping and compliance.
Matthew Gallagher, CEO of MEDVi, proclaims that the company, which markets compounded medications, including GLP-1s and erectile dysfunction medications is the “fastest growing company in history.”
The FDA warning
On February 20, 2026, six weeks before the Times profile, the FDA sent MEDVi a warning letter for misbranding the compounded drugs generating that revenue. The FDA told MEDVi that its site falsely suggested MEDVi was the compounder of the semaglutide and tirzepatide it sold, and that claims like “Same active ingredient as Wegovy® and Ozempic®” and “Same active ingredient as Mounjaro® and Zepbound®” falsely implied FDA approval or evaluation. The agency warned that failure to fix the violations could lead to seizure or injunction. The warning added that “the violations cited in this letter are not intended to be an all-inclusive statement of violations that may exist in connection with your products.”
In its April 8 statement, MEDVi claimed that the FDA-cited site, medvi.io, belonged to an affiliate marketing agency and that MEDVi itself had “never received a letter from the FDA.” But the warning letter is addressed to “MEDVi, LLC dba MEDVi” at 131 Continental Dr., Ste 305, Newark, Delaware, uses MEDVi’s [email protected] email address, and cites MEDVi-branded claims on medvi.io including “Same active ingredient as Wegovy® and Ozempic®” and “Same active ingredient as Mounjaro® and Zepbound®.”
AI ad personas, unclear physician connections
A Drug Discovery & Development review conducted on April 3 of MEDVi’s website, Facebook advertising and public records found a pattern of apparent AI-generated personas, including some presented with medical titles, alongside marketing practices that appeared to go beyond the issues identified so far by regulators. A search of Meta’s Ad Library for “medvi” returned more than 5,000 active ads, many of them running under apparently fabricated physician personas. One Facebook page for “Dr. Robert Whitworth,” which ran sponsored ads for MEDVi’s QUAD erectile dysfunction product, was categorized as an “Entertainment website” and listed an address of “2015 Nutter Street, Cameron, MT, 64429,” a location that does not appear to exist. Other ads ran under names including “Professor Albust Dongledore” and “Dr. Richard Hörzgock,” used AI-generated video testimonials and recycled identical scripts across multiple fabricated personas. In several cases, the page displayed a doctor headshot while the ad itself featured an unrelated person delivering a patient testimonial. A fresh review on April 6 found that many of those apparently fabricated doctor personas appeared to have been removed from the site.
A Business Insider investigation published the same day scrutinized the historical use of apparent AI-generated doctor profiles in Meta ads for MEDVi, many tied to affiliates. Gallagher told Business Insider that “maybe 30%” of its advertising was through affiliates. BI identified profiles such as “Dr. Matthew Anderson MD” (linked to an Angolan phone number and previously associated with a gospel musician), “Dr. Spencer Langford MD” (tied to a clothing store in the Republic of Congo), and others showing signs of AI generation (garbled text, Gemini watermarks). Since BI raised the issues with Gallagher, the number of active Medvi-related ads dropped from over 5,000 to roughly 2,800.
Gallagher told Business Insider: “In line with the FTC, we have a clear policy of providing disclosure on any actor or AI portrayal of a doctor or not using them at all. If we find an affiliate doing this we work to take these ads down.” Business Insider also quoted Nancy Glick, National Consumers League’s director of food, nutrition, and obesity, as criticizing MEDVi. The organization has previously warned consumers against the use of unregulated GLP-1 products.
As of April 3, the site heyfeels.com had overlapping doctor names with MEDVi, but with different pictures.
The doctors shown on the MEDVi site as of April 5, 2026.
The advertising strategy is part of a broader pattern. Federal and state regulators have identified compounded GLP-1 advertising specifically as a category of concern. For instance, in December 2025, a bipartisan coalition of 35 attorneys general wrote to Meta alleging the company was permitting companies to advertise weight-loss products with deceptive, AI-generated before-after comparison photos. “The use of artificial intelligence to fabricate images, spokespeople, and medical claims crosses a line and makes these ads particularly dangerous,” it said. In late 2025, Reuters reported that Meta was “earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads,” claiming Meta projected one-tenth of its 2024 revenue was “from ads for scams and banned goods.”
MEDVi’s own website fine print acknowledges the practice. At the bottom of the site, a disclaimer reads: “Individuals appearing in advertisements may be actors or AI portraying doctors and are not licensed medical professionals.”
Last May, Futurism documented that MEDVi’s website featured AI-generated patient photos, deepfaked before-and-after weight loss images (traced to photos that had circulated online for years with faces swapped by AI), AI-generated Ozempic box imagery with clear errors. Meanwhile, logos from the New York Times, Bloomberg and Forbes implied editorial coverage that at that point did not exist. When Futurism contacted doctors listed on MEDVi’s site, at least one, osteopathic practitioner Tzvi Doron, said he had no association with the company and requested removal. In the Times profile, Gallagher acknowledged that MEDVi’s initial site featured AI-generated photos and before-and-after weight loss images using faces swapped from photos found elsewhere online.
A keyword search for “medvi” on Facebook turned up more than 5,000 results.
MEDVi’s site previously listed two physicians: Dr. Ana Lisa Carr and Dr. Kelly Tenbrink. Both are listed at Ringside Health, a concierge practice in Wellington, Florida, that serves the equestrian community. MEDVi’s site did not identify either physician as being affiliated with Ringside Health. On MEDVi’s site, Dr. Tenbrink was listed under the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and an ABEM credential page shows him as certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Carr was listed under St. George’s University School of Medicine, her medical school. The Florida Department of Health practitioner profiles for both physicians state that neither holds certifications from specialty boards recognized by the Florida board.
On April 10, after this story was first published and after Drug Discovery and Development requested comment from both physicians, MEDVi removed Dr. Ana Lisa Carr and Dr. Kelly Tenbrink from its website entirely.
The regulatory gap
MEDVi’s business model depends on a narrowing regulatory gap. Federal law generally bars compounders from making copies of FDA-approved drugs, but sections 503A and 503B of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act allow compounding under certain circumstances, including during shortages. FDA determined on December 19, 2024 that the tirzepatide injection shortage was resolved, and on February 21, 2025 that the semaglutide injection shortage was resolved.
Since then, many sellers have pivoted to “personalized” formulations that add ingredients such as vitamin B-12 and argue the result is not “essentially a copy.” But FDA said on April 1, 2026 that a compounded product combining semaglutide and another active ingredient such as vitamin B12 may still be “essentially a copy” unless a prescriber documents a patient-specific “significant difference.” In March 2026, Eli Lilly has warned against the practice of compounding tirzepatide with vitamin B-12.
Lawsuits and allegations
MEDVi reported 250,000 customers by the end of 2025, with the Times quoting Gallagher’s description of the growth as “insane” and accelerating. MEDVi’s current homepage says “500,000+ MEDVi patients.” The site promises “unlimited 24/7 support” and “doctor-led plans & coaching.” Both doctors’ practices are connected to CareValidate, one of the two telehealth platforms Gallagher told the Times he relies on. MEDVi’s site says the care is provided by OpenLoop Health clinicians, who “retain the decision to prescribe compounded GLP-1s to patients.”
OpenLoop Health is a Des Moines, Iowa telehealth infrastructure company that recently disclosed a significant cyber breach. On January 7, 2026, a threat actor breached OpenLoop’s systems and claimed to have exfiltrated records from approximately 1.6 million patients, including names, contact information, dates of birth and medical information. OpenLoop notified the Texas Attorney General in March 2026, confirming at least 68,160 affected individuals in that state alone. The company now faces multiple class action lawsuits.
In November 2025, a North Carolina consumer filed a class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against OpenLoop Health and compounding pharmacy Triad Rx. The lawsuit, which Fierce Healthcare disclosed, alleges the firms manufactured and sold what the complaint characterizes as “modern-day snake oil”: compounded oral tirzepatide tablets with “no demonstrated mechanism of absorption or efficacy.” MEDVi is not named as a defendant, but the complaint alleges the plaintiff purchased the pills through MEDVi, which it describes as one of dozens of consumer-facing telehealth storefronts in a network operated by OpenLoop.
The complaint lays out the science behind the allegation: tirzepatide is a large peptide molecule that digestive enzymes destroy before it can reach the bloodstream. The only FDA-approved oral GLP-1, Rybelsus, required a specialized absorption enhancer called SNAC to achieve roughly 1% bioavailability, and even then must be taken under tightly controlled conditions.
A Facebook ad profile advertising for MEDVi has a non-existent address.
The complaint brings claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, state consumer protection statutes, and common law fraud. It alleges MEDVi was one of at least a dozen nearly identical telehealth storefronts, each with a designated OpenLoop patient waiting room, all marketing the same product through the same backend infrastructure. Another physician, Dr. David Mansour, appeared in a January 2026 MEDVi press release but is no longer listed on the site. All three doctors were cited by name in the complaint, which alleges the “Meet the incredible doctors we’ve partnered with” presentation was part of the marketing scheme.
MEDVi was also served and failed to appear in Siuksta v. MEDVi, LLC, a federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit filed in May 2025. The case was voluntarily dismissed after the court noted the default. Separately, docket listings show James v. Medvi LLC, No. 8:26-cv-00641, in the Central District of California, with a complaint filed on March 20, 2026.
A March 20 class action case, James v. Medvi LLC, filed in federal court in California accuses MEDVi of benefiting from affiliate spam. It cites an email with the subject line “This might be the easiest way to start Ozempic” sent from a nonsensical .us email address, [email protected], with an email that routes to a MEDVi landing page with tracking parameters. Filed under California’s anti-spam law, the suit alleges statutory damages of $1,000 per violating email. It says the class numbers at least 100,000 people.
Social media defenses
After the feedback from the New York Times piece was decidedly mixed, Gallagher has taken to social media to defend the company.
In one deleted X post, he mocked detractors as having low testosterone, calling them the “Karens of the internet.” In another reply, he pushed back against X user (and Shutterstock founder) Jon Oringer, who had sarcastically proposed a “fake-doctor affiliate-as-a-service platform,” by equating MEDVi’s AI-generated physician personas with standard medical stock art used in advertising. Gallagher wrote: “The guy who SELLS images of doctors to marketers pretends not to understand marketing. The irony is beautiful,” and followed up with a screenshot of a stock-style doctor image.
That posture is difficult to square with MEDVi’s April 8 statement that the company had only “recently become aware” of ads featuring “potentially AI-generated medical practitioners.” By April 3, Gallagher was already publicly mocking critics and equating the fake-doctor imagery with ordinary stock-art marketing.
On April 3, 2026, Gallagher posted a longer defense of the white-label telemedicine model:
Watching in realtime as people learn about white label, drop shipping, and affiliate marketing is like seeing cavemen “fire bad”
White label telemedicine is a huge benefit with a net positive for humanity. It has been the driving force behind big pharma lowering prices and making healthcare accessible to everyone from home.
Low energy people think offering life-changing weight loss medication, prescribed by a doctor, is a trendy “pill mill”. Wait til you see what’s possible with longevity services and peptides.
I’m bullish on humanity. If you are too, I’ll help you build.
On LinkedIn, some congratulated him on the AI-first execution and philanthropic goals. Others questioned the numbers. One SEO professional noted that MEDVi’s reported traffic appeared far too low to support the claimed user base and revenue. A digital health founder wrote: “Something doesn’t add up” while an accountant recommended an audit by a reputable company or the public. One user linked to a viral YouTube video “billion dollar ai company was built on lies” with more than 1 million views within three days while a few claimed customers posted direct complaints.
Drug Discovery & Development reached out to MEDVi, Matthew Gallagher, OpenLoop Health, Dr. Kelly Tenbrink and Dr. Ana Lisa Carr for comment, and did not immediately receive a response. In an email to Drug Discovery & Development, Nicholas Chimicles, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, declined to comment further on the litigation but said the firm was aware of the recent New York Times profile of MEDVi.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Dr. Kelly Tenbrink’s certification did not appear on the American Board of Emergency Medicine’s site. The article has been corrected. The separate finding that his Florida Department of Health practitioner profile currently lists no specialty board certifications recognized by the Florida board is unchanged.
A sample of the ads displaying on Facebook for Medvi as of March 18, 2026.
Filed Under: Metabolic disease/endicrinology
