And that’s how the arm wrestler ended up in prison.

Now, after allegedly refusing to stop peddling apricot seeds as a dubious “answer to cancer,” Vale has been arrested again for the illicit online scheme along with his mom, who allegedly assisted him in the apricot operation.

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Agents with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arrested the mother and son on Wednesday at their Queens home on charges of contempt of court, alleging that Vale, 51, has continued to violate a 2000 court order that banned him from selling the seeds as a purported cure for cancer. This marks the second time Vale has been arrested for contempt after continuing his Apricots From God enterprise despite warnings to shut it down; he was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to five years in prison for the crime. Jason and his 77-year-old mother, Barbara Vale, are also charged with introducing items into commerce by making false statements.

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On Wednesday, officials from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection also found drums of hazardous liquid in the home’s garage, although it’s unclear what the substance was, WABC reported.

According to the federal complaint, Vale and his mother have raked in $850,000 since 2013 selling apricot seeds and related products containing amygdalin or laetrile. The FDA does not support these products for treating or curing cancer, making their sale for medicinal purposes illegal. In fact, the National Cancer Institute has found that the cyanide contained in apricot seeds or laetrile can cause poisoning, which can be deadly. Vale’s website does not appear to contain any such warning.

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“The Answer to Cancer is known!” Vale writes on the website. “Just a few seeds per day” — although Vale prefers to eat up to 30 per day, he says.

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Barbara Vale was released on a $100,000 bond later Wednesday, while her son was taken to the hospital after his arrest for an undisclosed medical issue, NBC 4 reported. Attorneys for both Jason and Barbara Vale declined to comment.

Jason Vale’s story began when he survived cancer at 18 after a “grapefruit size tumor” was removed from his torso, and again at 19, when the tumors returned, his lawyer told a judge in 2000. He endured chemotherapy, but when the cancer came back again several years later, Vale didn’t want to go through the brutal treatment again.

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So he turned to apricot seeds — and claimed they worked.

The arm wrestler would go on to win two national titles and the 1997-1998 world super heavyweight arm-wrestling championship in Petaluma, Calif., reportedly the lightest arm wrestler to ever win the title. His basement turned into a makeshift wrestling ring, except the mat was on a small table, where some of the best arm wrestlers from around the country sat across from one another. All the while, according to reports in the Village Voice and Queens Chronicle at the time, he used his rising platform in the arm-wrestling world to share his story, to thank God — and to credit the apricot seeds.

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He started selling them on the Internet in the mid-1990s, a legally murky time for the nascent World Wide Web. According to a 2004 Queens Chronicle report, Vale’s business, named Christian Brothers, obtained mailing lists of AOL members and sent out more than 20 million spam emails touting the power of apricot seeds and laetrile to treat cancer.

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By 1997, he was on the FDA’s radar.

“I used it, shouted about it and then got thrown in prison for the sale of the legal food, apricot seeds,” Vale wrote on his website, “despite not one personal complaint and hundreds of individuals claiming victory over their illness.”

The agency sued him in 1999 to compel him to stop the online sale of the seeds and related products. Pressed on his beliefs during a deposition in 2000, Vale said he believed apricot seeds “can help a person in a lot of different areas in their health.”

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“But ... I personally don’t think it’s a cure,” he concluded. “I believe there is no cure.”

He said he would have a hard time quitting the sale of the seeds if a judge ordered him to stop, but said he would ultimately agree to comply.

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He didn’t. He emerged from prison in 2008 still preaching the powers of the seeds, both for arm wrestling and cancer.

“I want to be No. 1 again, not for myself, but as part of my mission to show the world the power of apricot seeds,” he told the New York Times in 2008, adding: “The same way that arm-wrestling gave me an edge against cancer, as a competitor, the apricot seeds are also an edge. They are the answer to cancer.”

The National Cancer Institute says otherwise. In a 1982 government-sponsored study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the institute found that laetrile produced “no therapeutic benefit” against cancer, and that in fact, 90 percent of patients’ cancer worsened within three months after beginning the treatment.

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Vale and his mother, by contrast, have claimed that out of the thousands of customers who have ordered products from Apricots From God, they have received no complaints. Vale has urged cancer survivors to “please remember to continue your entire life on the seeds,” or else risk the return of cancer.

In fact, on his website, Vale specifically claims: “No matter how many people we CURED with apricot seeds, the vitamin B-17 that is found in them and some other aids, it does not matter. As a matter of fact, we have had over a 90 percent success rate with the apricot seeds and other aids, but our records do not matter.”

The FDA challenged their supposed lack of complaints by including an email addressed to Barbara Vale from a customer, who had purchased products from the website, including B-17 powder.

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The day after eating a “scoop” of the product, he was suffering “severe poisoning,” experiencing vertigo and vomiting, he said. His mother and a friend had eaten the apricot kernels and “felt their thinking went blurred,” he wrote. He said he had read the articles saying that “amygdalin as a cancer cure” was a bunch of quackery, but “I’m a bit concerned now."