Athletes Sued for Endorsing Arizona Company’s Teeth Whitening Lights

A potential class-action lawsuit in New York is taking aim at a Phoenix company that makes teeth-whitening products, alleging that its celebrity promoters are exaggerating the product’s effectiveness and that the company falsely claims the product can protect against COVID-19.

Law360 reported that a complaint filed on Dec. 14 in New York federal court alleges that a LED mouthpiece created by Snow Teeth Whitening LLC does not whiten customers teeth, as the company claims it does. The lawsuit’s plaintiff is Burton Kraus, the report said.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers player Rob Gronkowski, professional boxer Floyd Mayweather and Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Chuck Liddell have been endorsing the product since the two became celebrity minority owners of the company in 2017. This was after Snow Teeth CEO Joshua Elizetxe appeared on the Shark Tank-like show MVP on the Verizon mobile network. Gronkowski was executive producer and a judge on the show.


Snow launched its first teeth whitening device in July 2017 and appeared on the show the next month. By the end of 2018, the company claimed that it was making close to $5 million a month in sales and was expected to double in size with the release of its $300 wireless device.

The lawsuit also alleges the company claims it has customers in more countries than actually exist and has made statements about having Food and Drug Administration approval, even though the FDA does not approve teeth whitening products. Snow allegedly even made up awards they said they’d won.

The complaint also alleges that a serum that accompanies Snow’s LED light is not the proprietary product the company says it is but is rather a mixture of two types of peroxide, the report said.

Attorney Steven Mintz, who is representing Kraus, is seeking to represent a class that includes all New York residents who have bought the product. The suit is asking for at least $149 (the retail price of the product) in damages for each member of the class, among other penalties.

In a Dec. 15 press release touting the popularity of its product, Snow Teeth Whitening claims its whitening kit is “proven by Dental Advisor, a leading dental publication, to have an 87% approval rating among dental professionals after conducting their own clinical evaluation,” and is “further validated by another independent lab study by Prestige Testing, a consumer research firm, dedicated to helping improve products in oral care and dermatology through clinical evaluations. Prestige Testing’s clinical lab study found that 97% of participants reported having whiter teeth after a 4-week use of Snow’s products.”

The press release stated that the company’s product is “also registered by the FDA, although it does not require FDA approval.”

Click here to view Gronkowski’s endorsement of the product.