The F-Factor Defamation Settlement That Took Six Years

Six years after she started posting about the F-Factor diet on Instagram, fashion influencer Emily Gellis walked into a New York courtroom and formally ended the saga. The F-Factor defamation settlement puts a price on a years-long online feud: two hundred forty thousand dollars, paid out at five hundred dollars a month for the next forty years, plus a public apology that will sit pinned to the top of her social media feeds. It is an ending that took nearly six years of litigation to reach, and it shows what can happen when a viral campaign runs ahead of the facts.

Gellis, forty, and Tanya Zuckerbrot, fifty-five, had never met, according to the reporting. Zuckerbrot, a registered dietitian with a master's degree in nutrition and food studies from NYU, spent twenty-five years building a wellness business that drew in New York's elite and a celebrity clientele. She launched her F-Factor fiber and protein powders and bars in two thousand eighteen, and within two years, she said, the company was generating more than one million dollars a month and had been valued at more than forty million dollars. Then an Instagram campaign by a woman she had never met started tearing that business apart, and the F-Factor defamation settlement now puts a dollar figure on the damage.

The campaign began at the start of the pandemic, in two thousand twenty. Gellis, who described herself as an accidental activist, began sharing anonymous testimonials from followers who said they had suffered serious physical and mental health problems while following the F-Factor diet. In just seventy-five days, she posted more than four thousand five hundred Instagram stories and posts about Zuckerbrot and F-Factor, according to court papers. Those posts became the paper trail at the heart of the F-Factor defamation settlement. Gellis accused the founder of poisoning people and called her the scum of the earth.

Gellis linked the products to everything from gastric distress and hair loss to panic attacks, urinary tract infections, miscarriages, and even death. She claimed the fiber powders contained dangerous levels of arsenic and called Zuckerbrot's retail partner Bloomingdale's to warn it was selling "poison." Zuckerbrot pushed back in August of two thousand twenty on the Today show, releasing a certificate of analysis for her chocolate fiber and protein powder. NBC News had the document independently reviewed by two nutrition consultants, who said the trace amounts of metals, including arsenic and lead, were at safe levels. "Anything grown in the soil, even organically ... can contain trace amounts of metals," Zuckerbrot said at the time. "It does not mean that they are not safe for consumption." Refinery29 published a detailed explainer of the F-Factor controversy back in 2020, when the feud was still escalating.

When the complaint count collapsed

The numbers Gellis leaned on did not survive discovery. She had claimed that more than ten thousand people contacted her with complaints about F-Factor; evidence obtained during the case showed she had received fewer than one hundred, and Gellis has since acknowledged that her claims about the sheer number of supposed victims were inaccurate. Thousands of social media posts were not thousands of individual complaints, and reports of symptoms did not, without medical evidence, establish that F-Factor products caused them. That is the evidentiary collapse the F-Factor defamation settlement finally puts behind both women. By the time it became clear, the damage was done: the allegations had become a national story, and the New York Times ran a major feature, "The Great Diet Crash: A Crusade Against Tanya Zuckerbrot's F-Factor Diet," with Gellis posing for a glossy photo shoot. Health scares that start as viral posts have a long tail; this site recently covered a similar dynamic when TikTok's garlic honey trend raised botulism concerns, another case of food advice outrunning the evidence.

The attacks also turned personal. Gellis compared Zuckerbrot to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and members of the Sackler family, called her a "danger to society," and accused the mother of five of using drugs, failing to pay taxes, and engaging in criminal activity, allegations the F-Factor defamation settlement forced her to retract. Of those personal allegations, Gellis was blunt in the apology she filed in New York Supreme Court as part of the settlement: "None of these statements were true."

An apology with agreed-upon language

In the court-filed apology, Gellis said that what began as an inquiry had evolved into a sustained and harmful campaign that was not grounded in verified facts. She said she had not relied on medical, scientific, or qualified expert analysis, and had instead presented unverified and anonymous information from social media as fact. She acknowledged going after the relationships behind Zuckerbrot's business: she contacted Bloomingdale's, Zuckerbrot's retail partner, to say it was selling "poison," and she reached out to brand partners, celebrity clients, and ambassadors, pressuring them to denounce Zuckerbrot, drop her, and distance themselves from F-Factor. She also admitted she had blocked Zuckerbrot, her employees, and others who tried to respond, cutting herself off from anything that might have challenged what she was posting. Instead of pausing to reassess, she said, she continued.

For Zuckerbrot, the personal cost went far beyond the millions she lost in business and the more than one million dollars she spent on lawyers. She said Gellis ultimately posted more than fifty thousand videos about her and F-Factor. Zuckerbrot said no one could understand what she had lived through: people had watched her life being destroyed as entertainment, when to her it was anything but gossip. She said she could not leave the house, had panic attacks in supermarkets, and felt hunted; the campaign, she said, left her suicidal, and she described the experience as living with a cyber stalker. The ordeal fits a pattern this site has tracked in other stories about abuse aimed at women online, where the pile-on itself becomes the punishment.

A forty-year payment plan

The terms of the F-Factor defamation settlement are unusually specific. The financial portion is straightforward: five hundred dollars a month for forty years, for a total of two hundred forty thousand dollars. Zuckerbrot told the court she wanted the figure to reflect the emotional harm, explaining that it matched the medical bills for the trauma treatment that, she said, helped save her life. The monthly payments, she said, will serve as a reminder of the pain and suffering she endured. A detailed breakdown of the court documents on the Fraud Files blog reports that Gellis must also record a lengthy video apology using language agreed to as part of the deal, keep it pinned to the top of her Instagram and Facebook accounts for three and a half years, and leave it in her feeds for another year and a half after that. She cannot alter it, archive it, make it private, or disable public comments, and if she defaults, Zuckerbrot can seek a judgment for the unpaid balance. Read the full breakdown of the settlement terms on the Fraud Files blog. The video, according to the blog's account, ends with Gellis saying she was wrong and that she was sorry.

Both women confirmed the settlement in court, and in accordance with a court order entered on September 22, 2026, their agreed response to questions about it is simply that the litigation between Zuckerbrot and Gellis has been settled. The settlement is a compromise of disputed claims, not a legal admission of wrongdoing, but the apology itself is unambiguous. Gellis said her actions had created a hostile online environment that contributed to humiliation and isolation. She said she could not undo the damage, but she could take responsibility for her actions, fully and publicly, and she addressed Zuckerbrot directly with a repeated, emphatic apology.

With the F-Factor defamation settlement behind her, Zuckerbrot is now preparing to relaunch F-Factor in two thousand twenty-seven, and she has no interest in rebranding. "Absolutely not," she said. She added that she was proud of F-Factor and the thousands of people who had lived healthier lives because of it, and that she was excited to bring the products back to market and to the F-Factor community. The F-Factor defamation settlement closes a chapter that began with a few thousand Instagram stories and ended with a forty-year repayment plan. Zuckerbrot, meanwhile, is planning to bring the products back in two thousand twenty-seven under the same F-Factor name, and the online drama that nearly ended the brand will now share her feeds with its relaunch.