On April 2, The New York Times public a profile of Matthew Gallagher, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Los Angeles who with $20,000, the help of his brother and a dozen AI tools managed to create MEDVi. This telemedicine startup sells GLP-1 weight loss drugs and in 2025 had a turnover of $401 million and projects to reach $1.8 billion in 2026. The story went viral and seemed to show that the AI revolution can make you rich if you set up your own sole proprietorship (or almost), but in reality the NYT article left without mentioning important details and disturbing aspects of this business success.
800 fake doctors. In creating MEDVi, Gallaguer created more than 800 Facebook pages that posed as the profiles of individual doctors. Dr. Daniel Foster, Dr. Jacob L. Chandler or Dr. Alistair Whitmore do not exist: they are profiles created by AI, with photos generated with AI, and which precisely serve as support for women between 35 and 55 years old on Facebook who want to lose weight to see these profiles. The NYT article itself commented that photos with models generated by AI appeared on the MEDVi website and that some advertisements They were “AI Slop”.
The media talks about me or not really. The company’s official website also showed logos of Bloomberg or The Times as if they had published articles about it when in reality it had barely advertised in said media and then could show that it had appeared in said media. What the article does not mention is the scale of this Facebook profiling operation.
The FDA warns. On February 20, 2026, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) sent a warning letter (#721455) which was in fact part of a set of similar letters sent to 30 telemedicine companies. This type of letter is not a formal accusation, but rather an “informal and advisory” communication. The reason for the letter to MEDVi were two specific problems on its website. First, the images of the products showed the label “MEDVi”, which in American regulations implies that the company is the manufacturer of these medications, when in reality it is just an intermediary that orders them from external pharmacies. Second, phrases such as “same active ingredient as Wegovy® and Ozempic®” led one to believe that MEDVi’s compounded products had received FDA approval or evaluation, when compounded medications do not go through that process. The NYT did not mention the FDA letter.
Medications with uncertain (or no) effectiveness. Part of MEDVi business includes oral compound tirzepatidea product that does not exist in an FDA-approved form. This company falsely presented it as a safe and effective GLP-1 drug for weight loss, even though there is no regulatory-approved variant. The only approved oral GLP-1 requires an absorption enhancer and very controlled administration conditions: MEDVi was selling something that probably did nothing, and in fact laboratories like Lilly have warned of these types of products and have taken legal action to prohibit its sale. A group of people already sued several telemedicine companies for selling “snake oil” as if oral tirzepatide were magic when nothing has been proven. Again, there was no data on this in the NYT article.
1.6 million medical records leaked. MEDVi outsources its medical infrastructure to OpenLoop Health, which the NYT article mentions as “managing doctors, pharmacies, shipping and regulatory compliance.” In January 2026, a cybercriminal managed to access OpenLoop systems and claimed to have obtained the records of some 1.6 million patients including names, contact information, dates of birth and medical information. OpenLoop reported of the intrusion in March 2026 and confirmed that at least 68,000 were affected in the state of Texas alone.
If you want clients, the key is spam. MEDVi too has been sued in California for violating this state’s anti-spam laws. According to that lawsuit, MEDVi used an affiliate marketing technique that sent spam using falsified information, spoofed domains, and shipping addresses designed to avoid spam filters. Gallagher noted in The New York Times that “a total of $20,000 was spent on the software and the first month of marketing,” and it is not clear how much of the initial growth was due to practices that are now part of that new legal process.
A success story with a dangerous background. The story that NYT tells us is fascinating and seems to effectively point to that future in which a person will be able to set up a successful business with the help of AI. However, in this case the success achieved is overshadowed by the way in which AI was used and the way in which Gallaguer presented his business. The NYT seems to have verified that the company actually earned $401 million in 2025. The question that remains unanswered is what part of that income came from people who bought a drug that probably doesn’t work, promoted by doctors who don’t exist, through an infrastructure that ended up leaking their medical data.
Image | MEDVi
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