The “lazy coffee trick”: how a fake weight-loss ad works, from Facebook to the shop’s terms and conditions

The story is made up, the payment is very real

In short: a sponsored Facebook ad from a page called “Elena Popescu” tells the story of a woman who lost more than 25 kilograms by stirring “a little something” into her coffee. The link isn’t in the ad. It’s in a comment written by the page itself, and it leads to an “article” on a site posing as a health publication, Monitorul Sănătății (“The Health Monitor”), and from there to the Slimqa shop, which sells Slim Coffee Booster. I followed the whole path and found three layers: an affiliate who lies to get you to the site, a shop that sells a generic powder at a premium price, and terms and conditions that make getting your money back almost impossible.

The campaign targets Romanian readers, so the quotes below are translated from Romanian.

The ad looks like a personal post. “Elena, 50, from Bucharest” describes how a doctor coldly told her she had “the metabolism of an 80-year-old woman confined to bed”. Two weeks later her colleague Rodica supposedly confided that she had lost “19 kilograms in 11 weeks, without any diet”, just by mixing something into her morning coffee. The story is backed by “a pharmacologist at the University of Bucharest”, with no surname. The ending: “after 12 weeks I had lost more than 25 kilograms”.

The numbers don’t match because they don’t come from the same story. They’re pieces of different kits, put together in a hurry.

The “About the advertiser” panel, which Facebook shows to anyone, says a lot:

• the name: “Elena Popescu”, one of the most common names in Romania;
• the account is based in the United States, although “Elena” walks down Calea Victoriei in Bucharest;
• the page was created on 10 July 2023 and has changed its name 3 times.

A page that keeps changing its name is usually a bought or recycled page, reused for different campaigns.

For ads shown in the European Union, you can find out more in the Meta Ad Library (facebook.com/ads/library): choose the country, search for the page, open the ad and look for the “Beneficiary and payer” section.

I did exactly that. In the Meta Ad Library (ID 2051900242864978), the ad had been running since 8 October 2026 and, in about 11 hours of activity, had already reached 22,498 accounts in the EU. Under “Advertiser and payer”, the name is neither “Elena Popescu” nor a supplement company, but “Zoe Makeup- Ranchi Makeup Artist”, the page of a make-up artist from Ranchi, India.

A page called “Elena”, run from the United States, paid for under the name of a make-up business in India, selling a slimming coffee to Romanians. The most likely explanation is a hijacked or bought account, used only to pay for the ads. It is a pattern worth remembering: when the page, the country it is run from and the payer don’t match, something is wrong.

The Romanian text has errors a native speaker wouldn’t make: a wrong grammatical gender (“o blocaj hormonal”), a holiday “on the coast, at the Black Sea” (a Romanian would just say “at the seaside”), and metaphors that sound odd in Romanian, such as “biological prison”.

The link leads to coffeeforweight.com, to a page that imitates a news site: a Monitorul Sănătății logo, a menu, a search box, an author, a date, a reading time, comments. The headline: The “lazy coffee trick” that helped a 52-year-old woman from Ploiești lose 12 kg of fat in just two weeks.

The story doesn’t match the ad. There it was Elena from Bucharest, with a “hormonal block”. Here it’s Maria Popescu from Ploiești, with a wedding in Transylvania and a rude photographer.

If you open the domain’s home page, you get a server error (nginx). There is no website; only the exact address from the comment works. “How they hide from checks” below explains why.

The “22 comments” from women in Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara or Brașov come from no one. They are fixed text in the code, with frozen times (“24 minutes ago”). They are dated 20 April 2026, so the template has been circulating for at least six months.

• the first commenter is also called “Maria Popescu”, like the article’s heroine;
• the comments are written as a dialogue: one is sceptical, another reassures her, another “just ordered”;
• the comment form doesn’t send anything anywhere;
• the footer states that “all comments and statements are from real people”.

Clicking “Privacy policy” shows something else: the list of rules an ad network imposes on weight-loss pages, translated into Romanian. The page breaks every one of them:

They pasted into the page the very rules they break.

There’s no visible buy button on the article page. Almost every link (the menu, “Log in”, “About us”, “Contact”, even the “Order Slim Coffee Booster” button) is intercepted by a script that sends you back to a quiz: “Answer 3 questions and get UP TO 60% OFF!”.

What the code actually does:

• every answer leads to the same result: “Congratulations! You’ve unlocked 60% OFF!”;
• the 10-minute countdown is decorative; nothing happens when it runs out;
• the stock always starts at 227 packs and drops at random, so it looks as if others are buying right now.

Only after the third question does the one button that leaves the page appear: “Order now with 60% off”. The quiz makes you feel you’ve won something and starts the time pressure.

This is also where the product appears: a SLIMQA Slim Coffee Booster box with all its text in English (“Supports fat burning”, “Food supplement”, “Net wt 60g, 30 sachets”). A supplement sold legally in Romania must have a label in Romanian.

The button leads to slimqa.com, to a page for choosing a package.

(1 euro is roughly 5 lei.)

• The “old price” of 298 lei is the same for every package and never appears as a real price. It’s an invented anchor that makes the discount look huge.
• There is no “60% off” for one box. One box is 50% off. You only get past 60% if you take three. Further down the same page, the promised discount becomes 48%.
• The packages are ordered 30, 90, 60. The most expensive sits in the middle, with “7 out of 10 people choose this package”, “best seller” and “you save 597 lei”.
• The total isn’t shown, only the price per box.
• The “money-back guarantee” appears only on the 3-box package (see “The traps in the terms and conditions”).
• “4.8 stars, over 5,000 members” has no independent platform behind it.

One box holds 60 grams. At 149 lei, that’s about 2,500 lei (around 500 euros) per kilogram of powder.

The offer page address looks like this:

slimqa.com/offer3/ro?affId=blitz&c1=1479&c2=136135798&utm_medium=affiliate&c4=SLIMQA_1479_136135798&sessionId=…

• utm_medium=affiliate: you came from an affiliate;
• affId=blitz and c1=1479: the network and the affiliate;
• c2 and sessionId: your click, so the affiliate gets a commission if you pay.

The “Elena Popescu” ad and the “Monitorul Sănătății” page are made by an affiliate, paid per sale. The shop gets customers, the affiliate gets a commission, and if anyone complains about the lies, each can point at the other.

According to the terms on slimqa.com (updated 12 May 2026):

• site operator: Haur B.V., registered in the Netherlands, with an address in Amsterdam;
• seller: Haruki Limited, based in Larnaca, Cyprus;
• both addresses come with a note not to send returns there;
• the applicable law is the law of Cyprus;
• the operator calls itself “solely an intermediary” and leaves the seller full responsibility for the product, including its marketing claims.

Complaints go through an e-mail address and a single online form, “Submit a request”, in English. The Romanian version of the site has no contact page of its own: the link sends you to a version in another language, even if you ordered from a Romanian page.

Besides slimqa.com there is also slimqa.ro, which calls itself the “Official SLIMQA Romania site”:

• the domain was registered on 15 September 2026, less than a month before I wrote this article;
• the real server is hidden behind Cloudflare, so you can’t see where the site is hosted;
• it has the same packages and prices (99, 119 and 149 lei per box, an “old price” of 298 lei), but the promised discount is now “up to 67%”;
• the home page names no company, only an e-mail address. Only the order page has a link to the terms, and it leads back to slimqa.com, to the same Haur B.V. and Haruki Limited;
• that link is an affiliate link: it carries affId=blitz and utm_medium=affiliate, like the link from the “Elena Popescu” ad, but a different affiliate code (c1=3384 instead of c1=1479).

In other words, the “official site” is just another affiliate sending buyers to the same shop, paid a commission on every sale. When I checked it, none of the 36 security services queried flagged it. That doesn’t make it safe: a new domain simply hasn’t been reported yet.

• The same order of packages: 30, 90, 60 days, with the most expensive one in the middle, marked “Best seller” and “7 out of 10 people choose this”.
• The “old price” isn’t even consistent. One box is supposedly reduced from £79.95, a box in the 2-pack from £59.95 and a box in the 3-pack from £69.95. The same product can’t have three different original prices, so the discounts are calculated from invented numbers.
• The real totals: £54.90 for one box with delivery, £79.95 for two and £109.95 for three.

• “Made for The UK”, yet the same paragraph says the formula is produced in an EU facility, while the Romanian site calls itself the “official SLIMQA Romania site”.
• “FDA Approved”, with the FDA logo. The US Food and Drug Administration does not approve food supplements, and it has no say over a product sold in the UK or the EU.

The checkout answers a question I couldn’t answer from the Romanian pages. There is a single checkbox: “I agree to terms and conditions, refund and cancellation policy as well as to save my payment details for future purchases”. You can’t accept the terms without also agreeing that your card is stored, and the terms allow subscriptions, repeated charge attempts and charging other payment methods on your account. The box isn’t ticked in advance, but it bundles two very different consents into one click.

The sales page says in large letters “30-day money-back guarantee”. The terms tell a different story.

• Refunds apply only to unopened products. You can’t try it and then ask for your money back.
• No refunds for products bought at a discount. On the offer page, every product is presented as discounted.
• You pay for the return, and the original delivery isn’t refunded.
• The returns address isn’t public. You only get it after filling in a form.
• If you refuse the parcel, they can keep up to 150 lei.
• You can cancel an order only within the first hour.
• Checking the return takes 7-14 working days, and the refund another 5-20.

• subscriptions automatically create new orders until you cancel, at least 48 hours before the next payment;
• if a payment fails, including for an “additional offer”, they can retry the charge for up to 30 days;
• bank fees caused by these retries aren’t their problem;
• if the payment method fails, they can charge any other payment method on the account.

I didn’t place an order, so I can’t confirm whether a subscription starts automatically. The terms allow for one, and the UK checkout ties accepting the terms to saving your card for future purchases. If you ordered, check your bank statements over the following months.

Twelve ingredients in 2 grams of powder a day (60 g across 30 sachets) means very small amounts of each. Some, such as bitter orange combined with caffeine, or berberine, can interact with medicines. If you have a heart condition or take regular medication, ask your doctor before trying any supplement like this.

The site says the product is made in “FDA-approved facilities”. The US agency does not approve dietary supplements, and for a product sold in Romania, European and Romanian rules are what matter.

Searching for “Slimqa Slim Coffee Booster” turns up dozens of “reviews” on free platforms (hackmd.io, Google Sites, Medium, Jimdo), in English and German, with generic text and order links. The same campaign runs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The goal: anyone searching for “Slimqa reviews” finds praise, not warnings.

• Who pays for the ad? Tap the page name, then “About the advertiser” or “Page transparency”. An account based in another country, or with several name changes, is a warning sign.
• Is the link in the comments? An ad that sends you “below, in the comments” is usually trying to get around Facebook’s review.
• Does the publication exist? Search for its name separately. A real newspaper has a home page, an archive and an editorial team.
• Does the address match the publication? A “Health Monitor” on coffeeforweight.com isn’t a publication.
• Do the numbers match? If the ad, the link and the article promise different results, the story is made up.
• Results without effort? “No diet, no exercise” is almost always false.
• Does the doctor exist? Search for the full name. If nothing comes up, you have your answer.
• Countdowns, limited stock, quizzes that “unlock” discounts? Pressure techniques, not offers.
• Look at the checkout address. affId, utm_medium=affiliate or c1= mean you were brought there by an affiliate on commission.
• Read the terms before paying. Look for “subscription”, “refund”, “discounted products”, and check who sells and from which country.
• Is the label in your language? In the EU, food supplements must be labelled in the language of the country where they’re sold.