Durek Verrett

In July 2022 Verrett was criticized in Norway for advertising a medallion he sells and that he claims cures COVID-19. The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman said undocumented claims that products can cure diseases violate Norwegian law.

Together Märtha Louise and Verrett have organised seminars titled "The Princess and the Shaman," which also were widely criticised for the claims made by Verrett about healing cancer and for exploiting Märtha Louise's constitutional role as princess for a private business venture. In June 2022, Märtha Louise announced that she and Verrett were engaged. Verrett has claimed that his mother had foreseen, when he was still a child, that he would marry a Norwegian princess.

Verrett has claimed that he will become the first black person who becomes a part of a European royal family. In October 2022 Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Märtha Louise's brother, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the matter of Verrett's position in their family is difficult and will take time to solve.

In November 2022, Märtha Louise relinquished her remaining royal duties to focus on her alternative medicine business with Durek Verrett.

In 2019 his book Spirit Hacking was set to be published in Norway, but the major publisher Cappelen Damm dropped the book a week prior to its scheduled publication over concerns over its content. It was later published by a small publisher. In the book Verrett advocates numerous "absurd medical theories." He claims children get cancer because they want it, and suggests that chemotherapy doesn't work and is only given to cancer patients because the doctors make money from it. He also writes that casual sex attracts subterranean spirits, that make an impression on the inside of women's vaginas, which he sells exercises to "clean out". Verrett also says that he can turn atoms and literally reduce age. Cancer experts called Verrett's views on cancer "dangerous." Major newspaper Dagbladet described the book as "the ravings of a lunatic." Verdens Gang called the book "nonsense, garbage and dirty talk," and said it is an unoriginal "rehash of the standard repertoire of the most cynical part of the alternative [i.e. New Age] culture."

Verrett grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Foster City, California, and changed his name to Durek Verrett in 2014. He claims to be a 6th generation shaman. He has claimed that his mother is of Norwegian-West Indian descent and that his father is of Haitian origin. In a 2009 interview Verrett claimed to be "born into the lineages of Haitian voodoo and indigenous Norwegian medicine".

He was formerly married to Zaneta Marzalkova, a Los Angeles resident of Czech nationality. They married in 2005 when she was 21 years old. In 2008 he reported his then-wife to the immigration authorities as an illegal resident, and as a result she was jailed and deported from the country. They divorced in 2009, and Verrett has claimed that his wife "exploited" him. From 2007 to 2015 Verrett also had a boyfriend, a masseur named Hank Greenberg, who was also his business partner. They broke off their engagement prior to their planned wedding in 2015, and Greenberg later accused Verrett of being manipulative, violent and dangerous, and said he has a "brainwashed" cult of followers where "his word is law." Verrett lived for six years with his then-manager Tiana Griego, who said that "Durek controlled my whole life. It was as if he became jealous of anything that stole his attention. I was not allowed to start a serious romantic relationship or raise my son. It was all about Durek."

Durek Verrett (born November 17, 1974 as Derek David Verrett) is an American businessman, alternative therapist, self-professed shaman and author. He advocates several conspiracy theories and has been characterized by Norwegian media and other critics as a conman. He is engaged to Princess Märtha Louise of Norway.