[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROCCO CASTORO: Hi, I'm Rocco.
I'm an editor here at VICE.
And today we're going to go out to Westchester to check
out the amazing Amega wand, It's made out of granulated
minerals and other fun stuff.
Supposedly it will stimulate your bioenergetic fields and
do everything from cure muscle aches and back aches and
kidney problems to transform a $5 glass of box wine into the
tastiest vintage you've ever drank.
That's wild.
I can't believe that.
I think it's going to be something like a Botox party
where people get wanded and they try to sell you the wand.
So I'm not sure what to expect, but
it's going to be weird.
So we're here now Paul's house.
He's going to be hosting the wanding party tonight.
PAUL SAENZ: Rocco.
ROCCO CASTORO: Hi, how are you doing, Paul?
He's also a representative of Amega Global.
And he sells the wands, shows you how the wands work.
He's going to wand me.
He's going to wand everybody.
And it's going to be awesome.
So what are you wanding right now?
PAUL SAENZ: He's had shoulder pain, like
when he throws a baseball.
ROCCO CASTORO: And is this the first time you've been wanded?
MIKE: Yeah, yeah.
ROCCO CASTORO: And what were your thoughts on it?
What are you feeling right now?
MIKE: You know, general tingling.
Tinglingness.
Little bit.
But--
ROCCO CASTORO: I just didn't expect you guys to be wanding
right when we came in, so it's great.
PAUL SAENZ: The wine's right there.
Grab a glass.
-Is this unwanded wine?
ROCCO CASTORO: One of the principles that the Amega wand
claims to operate on is something called zero-point
energy, It's a very complicated
quantum physics principle.
If it actually uses zero-point energy, it's breaking several
fundamental concepts of physics, and it's a major
breakthrough.
BRAYDEN OLSON: Uh yeah, I can seriously feel something.
Like for real.
PAUL SAENZ: I'm kind of a semi-pro, I guess, musician,
and I also work in construction as a project
manager, installing wireless cellphone sites.
Which is kind of ironic considering this whole thing.
I mean the technology and the idea behind the Amega,
basically, is to strengthen your bioenergetic fields.
We're getting blasted by the cell tower down the street, by
the cell phone in our pocket that we're putting up to our
heads all the time, what they call electropollution,
something that's new to mankind in the
last 50 or so years.
I got into it from a friend that I was working with in
wireless who turned me on to some
multi-level marketing programs.
I asked them if they had anything else it was new that
they want to turn me on.
They told me about Amega, and I got my wand a month later.
It's stainless steel, and inside from about here up
there is a mixture of crystals and minerals that they put
through a process called AMized fusion that's Amega's
proprietary technology.
Works on any food, any liquid.
ROCCO CASTORO: And what does it do to the food?
PAUL SAENZ: It makes it taste better.
It basically oxidizes it.
I've tried it with wine, water, soda, fruit juice.
And it basically kind of takes away that
back end bitter taste.
It makes it smooth.
Smooths it out.
ROCCO CASTORO: I'm going to try the
unwanded wine first here.
It's definitely bitter.
Yeah, you're right about the back end.
PAUL SAENZ: It's smooth.
ROCCO CASTORO: It does taste--
PAUL SAENZ: It's smoother.
ROCCO CASTORO: That's a little weird.
PAUL SAENZ: Do you feel zero-point energized?
CHASE: Seems like people haven't really heard about it.
Because if they had, then it would be like something that's
bigger than it already is.
I mean if this is truly healing people and making this
wine better, I wonder why people-- why it's not like--
it should be like peanut butter or something, right?
PERS: It's like 100 years ago if you said, I'm going to send
a TV show invisibly through the air, people would say,
you're not going to do that, because you can't do that.
So that's like, to me, the wand, is like, yeah, you're
not actually making any physical contact, but there's
so much out there that is unseen to the naked eye.
PAUL SAENZ: Before I got the wand, I was pretty
skeptical about it.
And I was like, OK, I'll believe it when I see it.
I've had miraculous experiences with this.
And today, what's your pain level at?
Zero to 10, 10 being got to call 911, go to the hospital?
BOBBIE JO: I'd say about a six.
PAUL SAENZ: Wow, so that's pretty high.
ROCCO CASTORO: So we're wanding Bobbie Joe right now.
Some lower back problems.
BOBBIE JO: The nerve damage is caused by a type of bone
cancer I have which is called Ewing's sarcoma.
ROCCO CASTORO: A bone cancer?
BOBBIE JO: Yeah.
ROCCO CASTORO: They don't claim to
cure or heal anything.
But they say it's zero-point field energy.
It's accessing the zero-point field energy in your body and
enabling your body to kind of heal itself.
BOBBIE JO: I feel a heck of a lot better, I have to say.
ROCCO CASTORO: How far down could you go before this?
BOBBIE JO: To here.
And then to go any further I would be--
ROCCO CASTORO: --excruiting pain
BOBBIE JO: --holding myself going, OK, stretch.
ROCCO CASTORO: And now you can touch your toes?
BOBBIE JO: Yeah.
ROCCO CASTORO: Now I realize this is proprietary but where
does this-- do they explain where they discovered?
Is it AMized?
Is that how you say it?
PAUL SAENZ: AMized fusion.
ROCCO CASTORO: And that's pretty secretive
then, I would imagine.
PAUL SAENZ: That's the secret.
They don't really tell you much about it.
You basically read as much as I know about it.
ROCCO CASTORO: As much as you know.
How many have you sold, if you don't mind me asking?
PAUL SAENZ: Umm, I don't know six?
ROCCO CASTORO: Six?
PAUL SAENZ: Six or seven, yeah.
ROCCO CASTORO: How much does it, what's it retail for?
PAUL SAENZ: It retails for $305.
Are you familiar with multilevel marketing at all
and how it works?
ROCCO CASTORO: Somewhat.
PAUL SAENZ: It's basically like a pyramid,
ROCCO CASTORO: Yeah.
PAUL SAENZ: The guy who started selling
this on January 1.
I'm five generations down from him.
His name is Sam Adams.
He's making like $3,600 a day.
ROCCO CASTORO: Jesus.
Just googling around, I actually found a company in
Hong Kong called Quantum.
Their product was a pendant.
It was actually banned by the government because it was
found to have uranium and thorium in it.
Has that ever worried you or anything, that it might
contain anything radioactive?
PAUL SAENZ: No, no.
I mean, they say they're completely green.
ROCCO CASTORO: I want to do my back, because that's where I
do have pain.
PAUL SAENZ: You should feel it then, you should try the back.
ROCCO CASTORO: OK, let's try the back.
PAUL SAENZ: Where are we at with time?
-About three minutes?
Maybe a little bit more than three minutes.
I've been counting for three minutes.
PAUL SAENZ: Trying to notice the difference.
ROCCO CASTORO: Give me a couple of minutes.
Give me a couple of minutes for the powers of persuasions
to wear off, if there are any.
So we just got finished with the wanding party.
Had some different outcomes.
I didn't really feel too much.
I didn't want to be impolite, so I didn't say it didn't work
at all, which is kind of what I felt.
BRAYDEN OLSON: When they were waving it over me that there
was a sort of magnet.
ROCCO CASTORO: I didn't feel anything like that.
-I didn't really feel anything.
ROCCO CASTORO: It's still very interesting.
Even the powers of persuasion, that it's just a piece of
metal, and there's nothing special, that people can be
convinced that they feel better, which
obviously Paul is.
And he's a very nice guy.
And he seems to genuinely believe that the wand was
helping his health and his well being and his mood.
But what is it?
I would really like to get my hands on a wand and find out
what the fuck this thing is made of.
So it's been a few weeks since the wanding party, and we
actually just got some copies of the embargoed issue today,
which features the wanding story.
And between the party and now a couple things happened.
Paul let me borrow a wand for about a week.
And I wanded everything in sight--
myself, my friends, apples, oranges, everything.
And I didn't notice any differences.
Before I returned it, I actually took it down to the
New York Polytechnic Institute and had a Geiger counter put
on it, because I suspected that it might have some
radioactivity.
Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
And we also put an RF meter on it.
And it wasn't emitting any kind of megahertz, which was
something else that Paul and other Amega representatives
have claimed.
I did also speak with other Amega representatives after I
couldn't get a hold of Sam Adams, whose the head
distributor in North America.
He didn't return any of my phone calls.
The other guys I talked to had nothing but great things to
say about the Amega wand and claimed that it's helped their
health, their friends' health, and helped their
pocketbooks a lot.
The final person I talked to is renowned astrophysicist
Bernard Haisch.
BERNARD HAISCH: Hello?
ROCCO CASTORO: Hello, Bernard?
BERNARD HAISCH: Yes, speaking.
ROCCO CASTORO: Hi, this is Rocco.
Just with your professional background and expertise in
the subject, could you summarize zero point energy?
ROCCO CASTORO: As far as Amega's claims that their
AMWand can harness or focus this energy, what do
you think of that?
ROCCO CASTORO: Well, thank you so much, Bernard.
You just debunked everybody in three minutes.
BERNARD HAISCH: OK.
ROCCO CASTORO: Bye-bye.
[MUSIC PLAYING]