On April 12, an article was published on the website magic.nicehealth13.com claiming that Giorgi Orkodashvili is a Georgian student who discovered a unique method to improve vision without surgery and received a scientific award for it. The article includes a screenshot of Euronews Georgia, creating the impression that the information was published by that media outlet. It also features an alleged interview with Giorgi Orkodashvili, in which Nika Gvaramia is presented as the journalist.
The claim that Georgian student Giorgi Orkodashvili was awarded for an innovation in the field of ophthalmology is disinformation and is being spread on a fraudulent website to promote the sale of a drug. The photo showing him holding a diploma was actually taken on May 12, 2018, after a school awards ceremony in the U.S. The rest of the photos are unrelated to Orkodashvili. The interview provided in the article is fictitious.
This is not the first time Giorgi Orkodashvili’s photo, in which he is holding a diploma, has been used in a medical scam. In 2019, the same photo was used to claim that he had invented a medicine to fight papilloma and was introduced as a young scientist named Levan Gurashvili.
This time, the website is using Giorgi Orkodashvili’s photo with his real name, but still for fraudulent purposes. The article on magic.nicehealth13.com claims that Giorgi discovered a unique formula capable of significantly improving vision without surgery.
To “prove” that Orkodashvili was awarded for a medical breakthrough, they use the photo of him holding a diploma. In reality, this photo was taken on May 12, 2018, in Fremont, Nebraska, USA, after a school awards ceremony he attended while on the FLEX exchange program. Notably, Orkodashvili is no longer even a student.
The website is dysfunctional, and clicking on any link leads to the same image, which, when clicked, displays a message saying that the customer has won a discount coupon that provides a 100% discount on the mentioned drug. To activate the discount, users are asked to enter their name and phone number.
The drug, called Prozrenie, appears only on suspicious and fraudulent websites, such as healthlabsexpress.com, where the Georgian texts are written in incoherent sentences. Advertisements for the drug also appear on several Facebook pages (e.g., Word weaver, My world), where, similarly, users are asked to click on the link and enter their name and phone number to purchase the medication.
The purpose of the article is to collect people’s personal data and, presumably, to sell the drug. The screenshot of the Euronews Georgia broadcast is used to make the information appear credible.
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Fictitious Interview and Photos Unrelated to Orkodashvili
The article features a supposed interview with Giorgi Orkodashvili, with politician Nika Gvaramia portrayed as the reporter. The interview is entirely fabricated, with Orkodashvili allegedly saying that he was inspired to develop the medication after his grandmother experienced vision loss. This passage is accompanied by a black-and-white photo showing an elderly woman with two small children. According to the caption, the photo shows Giorgi Orkodashvili as a child with his grandmother. However, a reverse image search revealed that the photo was taken in Svaneti during a Georgian wedding and was shot by photographer Alexander Belenkiy. The image has been available online since 2014, and the original version is in color.
Another photo, which the article claims shows the eyes of Orkodashvili’s grandmother, has actually been used in various scientific journals.
The article also claims that the project was coordinated by Dr. Aleksandre Aleksidze, a Doctor of Biological Sciences and a professor at the Department of Physical Chemistry of Pharmaceuticals at the Faculty of Pharmacy. According to the article, Nika Gvaramia also interviewed him. While Aleksandre Aleksidze is indeed a real ophthalmologist and the photo used in the article is authentic, the interview itself is fabricated.
The article includes several more photos supposedly showing Giorgi Orkodashvili. One of them, according to the description, depicts him speaking at an international conference of ophthalmology attended by top experts in the healthcare field. However, this photo has been found on various Russian-language websites. It was also used in an official announcement for the 22nd Annual Conference of Lawyers of the Krasnodar Region in 2022. Giorgi Orkodashvili does not appear in the image.
Another photo in the article shows a young man draped in the Georgian flag. The photo caption claims that the young man is Giorgi Orkodashvili. This image can also be found on various travel platforms.
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Fake Accounts Pretending to Be “Satisfied Customers” Leave Comments
It is worth noting that at the end of the article, there are comments supposedly written by satisfied customers. Myth Detector checked several of these accounts and found that they use stolen photos from the internet and present themselves as Georgian users. For example, one of the commenters, identified as Gvantsa Gasanova, uses a photo that is actually registered on a Russian-language platform under the name Elvira. Moreover, the comments are written in poor language and appear to have been translated into Georgian using an automatic translation tool.
Another photo uploaded in the comments can be found across various websites online. For instance, it was used in a 2017 article published by the Iranian website tehrantimes.com.
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