North Carolina Man Charged with Conspiring to Sell Fake Viagra

A 54-year-old North Carolina man was indicted Thursday for transporting and selling hundreds of counterfeit erectile dysfunction pills.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in the December 16th issue of the Charlotte Observer, reports on the story of a North Carolina man charged with conspiring and traffic of bogus medications.

According to the Charlotte Observer story:

• Federal authorities say Awni Shuaib Zayyad, 54, of Wilson, has been charged with several counts of trafficking in Viagra and Cialis and with conspiracy to sell counterfeit drugs.

• The U.S. Attorney's Office says he sold more than 500 fake Viagra pills on May 25. In August, authorities say, he transported 600 fake Viagra pills and 226 counterfeit Cialis pills.

• If convicted, Zayyad faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for trafficking and five years for the conspiracy. He also faces a total fine of $7 million.

This arrest is a good sign that law enforcement and industry in the United States is becoming more active in pursuing criminals engaged in the potentially lethal felony.

For too long now, counterfeit drugs has taken a back seat in enforcement and public awareness.

Hopefully consumers and the pharmaceutical supply chain will become more aware and proactive in their approach to dealing with fraudulent, adulterated, sub-standard and counterfeit medications.

To read the entire Charlotte Observer story, visit: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/12/16/1915936/nc-man-charged-with-conspiring.html#ixzz19RArld6L

To learn about anti-counterfeiting solutions, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/

Feds Drop Counterfeit Drug Charges Against Prominent Pharmacist

Federal prosecutors have dismissed charges against a prominent Madison pharmacist accused of importing and selling fake Viagra and other drugs.

In an update to a fascinating story that had been blogged about previously in Secure Pharma Chain, the Green Bay Press Gazette is reporting:

• Online court records show prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York dropped the case against Marla Ahlgrimm on Nov. 5. The records don't offer any explanation. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office involved in the case, declined comment. Ahlgrimm's attorney, Lester Pines, also declined comment.

• Ahlgrimm and a Middleton man named Balbir Bhogal were charged in September with working together to deliver counterfeit drugs, including Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Viagra, to FBI informants. Bhogal's case is still pending.

• Ahlgrimm founded Women's Health America, a Madison-based umbrella company that includes a pharmacy and a laboratory. The University of Wisconsin Foundation's website lists her as a board member.

This story has been very interesting to watch because of the prominance of the people implicated and the proximity of counterfeit drugs to the legitimate pharmaceutical supply chain.

Clearly as the facts become known it will become even more apparent that all members of the pharmaceutical supply chain must take sufficent measures to protect their inventories from fraudulent, adulterated, sub-standard and counterfeit medications. There are far too many ways for bogus drugs to enter the legitimate supply chain and poison the consumer.

Secure Pharma Chain will follow this story as it continues to unfold.

To read the entire Green Bay Press Gazette story, visit: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20101122/GPG0101/11220532/Feds-drop-drug-charges-against-Madison-pharmacist

To learn more about anti-counterfeiting solutions, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

ICE: Chinese Counterfeit Drug Distributor Sentenced to Prison

Chinese national convicted of dealing in counterfeit drugs in Texas sentenced to prison and deportation.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a press release on November 15th detailing the sentence of 12 months and a day in prison for conspiring to distribute counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and trafficking in pharmaceuticals with false labeling and counterfeit trademarks to Kum Leung Chow.

The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno, Southern District of Texas.

Kum Leung Chow, aka Lawrence Chow, 59, pleaded guilty to the federal charges on June 28 and sentenced on Monday to 12 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt. Chow was arrested on Jan. 27 and has been in federal custody since that date and will remain in custody to serve out his sentence. Chow is subject to deportation after he completes his sentence.

The ICE HSI investigation began in January 2009 and revealed that Chow used a Hong Kong-based company named Kingdom International Enterprises LTD to obtain and distribute counterfeit Viagra and Cialis pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. Viagra and Cialis are prescription drugs that are FDA-approved and used to treat erectile dysfunction. They are registered trademarks on the principal register in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Viagra is manufactured and distributed exclusively by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, while Cialis is manufactured and distributed exclusively by Eli Lilly.

Chow offered boxes containing four Viagra tablets and boxes containing eight Cialis tablets for $10 a box on two Internet websites. The retail cost for each Viagra tablet is about $20, while each Cialis tablet is about $15.20. Working in an undercover capacity, ICE agents purchased about 1,120 Viagra tablets and about 360 Cialis tablets from Chow via the Internet on March 25, 2009, and April 28, 2009. Shipping documents accompanying the pharmaceuticals indicated they were exported from mainland China and Hong Kong.

The pharmaceuticals were later analyzed by the trademark holders and the FDA Forensic Chemistry Center which indicated the pharmaceuticals were counterfeit. These counterfeit pharmaceutical products may have harmed the public if law enforcement were not involved in monitoring the Internet.

Chow has been in federal custody since he was arrested Jan. 27; he will remain in custody to serve out his sentence.

The investigation of Chow was conducted by agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Criminal Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Louis, Southern District of Texas, prosecuted the case.

Continued enhanced enforcement is critical in dealing with the deadly criminal act of counterfeit medications.

All stakeholders of the pharmaceutical supply chain must take steps from bogus drugs ending up in their inventories.

To read the entire ICE Press Release, visit: http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1011/101115houston.htm

To learn about technologies that can detect fraudulent and counterfeit drugs inside their sealed container, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

Fake Drugs Mean Prison for St. Louis County Man

Man to be sentenced for trafficking in bogus erectile dysfunction drugs that were purchased on-line.

Robert Patrick in the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports about a St. Louis County man who has pleaded guilty to federal charges and admitted to selling thousands of counterfeit erectile dysfunction pills over the last several years.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch story:

• Mark Hughes, 47, ordered counterfeit versions of the drugs Viagra and Cialis online from China and India, and sold them either in an illegal and unlicensed pharmacy or via word of mouth, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bodenhausen said in court.

• Hughes' last shipment, of 1,000 pills, was intercepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2009 and delivered by investigators. Hughes house was then searched and he admitted buying roughly 11,000 pills. He sold them for $5 each, roughly one-third of the wholesale price, Bodenhausen said.

• Bodenhausen said that the pills either did not contain the correct drug or contained a less potent dose of the drug.

• In court, Hughes pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit goods and misbranding a drug, and could face at least two years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines when sentenced in January, depending on a number of factors.

This is an excellent cautionary tale regarding those who set out to scam people by buying bogus goods online.

Mr. Hughes is fortunate that the bogus drugs that he sold did not adversely effect the health or kill someone or he would be facing a far more serious consequences.

Bogus drugs are becoming one of the more significant health care issues of the 21st century. 11,000 doses of a potentially lethal, fraudulent or adulterated drug could poison and create a huge health care disaster within a communities population.

Kudos to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for intercepting these bogus medications.

To read the entire story, visit: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/article_0ac42318-dad5-11df-a1ce-0017a4a78c22.html

To learn about pharmaceutical anti-counterfeit solutions, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

£1 million of Fake Viagra Tablets Seized at Heathrow Airport

UK Border Agency Officials announced Thursday that 180,000 fake Viagra tablets had been seized at Heathrow Airport over the last 3 months.

The Border Agency officials warned that the counterfeit erectile dysfunction tablets, which were worth more than £1 million were destined for the black market, contained "potentially harmful chemicals which were likely to have the desired effect."

Clearly these bogus drugs would have gone undetected by their victims until their overall health was negatively impacted. In most cases it seems likely that the victims or their health care provider would not have any idea as to the real cause of their decline.

These isolated seizures are not isolated incidents and demonstrate how prevalent this deadly crime has become in developed countries.

No population is safe from fake medications spreading poor health, disease and death.

Bogus drugs that go to the black market end up in the legitimate supply chain through a variety of sources because of the huge profits realized by the criminals.

We are now seeing trusted health care professionals becoming involved in this deadly trade, lured by the money and the lax regulatory enforcement.

It is imperative that all members of the pharmaceutical supply chain become proactive in deploying solutions and technologies to protect their inventories and consumers from these deadly medications. As this deadly issue accelerates into the developed world, those that make the investment now will save lives and profit from their foresight.

To learn more about anti-counterfeiting solutions, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

Comparison and Combination of Spectroscopic Techniques for Detection of Counterfeit Medicines

ScienceDirect.com has made available an online report comparing spectroscopic techniques in the detection of counterfeit medications.

In this highly technical report, scientists studied Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and Raman spectroscopy to determine which techniques and associations were the best for discriminating genuine from counterfeit and imitations samples.

The medications tested were counterfeit and imitations of Viagra and Cialis two of the most counterfeited products globally.

According to the report:

It is shown that for the Viagra® samples, the best results were provided by a combination of FT-IR and NIR spectroscopy. On the other hand, the best results for the Cialis® samples were provided by the combination of NIR and Raman spectroscopy (1400–1190 cm−1).

These techniques not only permitted a clear discrimination between genuine and counterfeit or imitation samples but also the distinction of clusters among illegal samples. This might be interesting for forensic investigations by authorities.

Secure Pharma Chain endorses all techniques and testing as it relates to being able to detect and interdict fraudulent, adulterated and counterfeit medication however technologies are in use today within the supply chain that allow for the accurate testing of pharmaceuticals within their sealed, unit of sale container.

Unlike Spectroscopy, these technologies do not require destruction or degradation of the product, laboratory testing or technicians to run and analyze testing results.

EDXRD allows the end user to deploy forensic level testing without opening up the container for testing or sample prep. Additionally EDXRD can accurately test products within the supply chain by warehouse resources within seconds.

To date the EDXRD testing has accurately, efficiently and effectively protected the supply chain end user from receiving or shipping adulterated, fraudulent or counterfeit drugs including Cialis and Viagra.

Spectroscopy is an excellent technology when you need very specific forensic sampling, but when you need to know if your inventories are safe before you ship them,

you don't need a laboratory to interdict counterfeit medications.

To read the entire survey report, visit: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TGX-504127R-1&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F02%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f9acd7f0661b04a5da0138dbac9966fa.

To learn more about EDXRD anti-counterfeiting technologies, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

BusinessWeek: Pfizer Taking the Financial Spoils of Counterfeiters

Simeon Bennett in the July 8th BusinessWeek, writes about Pfizer going after the financial spoils of convicted counterfeiters.

Overall this is an excellent encapsulation of a new tactic of Big Pharma of attacking counterfeiters financially while detailing with excellent statistics and examples of the overall danger of this issue.

Initially, the story details the case of Martin Hickman, who made a fortune and is now one of the first successes of Pfizer’s new strategy.

Hickman between 2003 and 2007 sold more that $8.9 million of bogus Viagra and other drugs via 150 websites according to Britain’s MHRA.

Hickman used the proceeds of his counterfeiting business to by a high end flat in Chelsea, a villa in Spain, Bentley, Range Rover and hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry.

According to Pfizer when Hickman was finally caught in 2007 for his illegal activities he was sentenced to only 3 months in jail for contempt of court and ordered to stop advertising Viagra on his websites. This lax penalty forced Pfizer to employ other tactics to fight counterfeiters.

Highlights from the BusinessWeek piece on Hickman and the Pfizer strategy are:

• “The point is to make them realize that there’s no sense from a business perspective in counterfeiting our products, because if we find you, we’re taking your money away,” says John P. Clark, a 55-year-old U.S. law enforcement veteran who now serves as New York-based Pfizer’s chief security officer.
• The spoils of Hickman’s crimes helped settle a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the world’s largest drugmaker three years ago. It’s the biggest example of a new approach Pfizer is taking to fight counterfeiting of prescription drugs, an industry that’s almost doubled to $75 billion over five years, according to the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
• Pfizer, whose erectile dysfunction pill Viagra is one of the most copied medicines, once relied on local authorities and criminal courts to hunt down offenders. Now it’s taken matters into its own hands, hiring former U.S. customs officials, FBI agents, Turkish narcotics experts and Hong Kong police to hunt counterfeiters. In China, they’re tracking fakes to the source, raiding derelict warehouses for evidence of illegal drug-making. In the U.K., they’re using civil courts to hit fake pill peddlers where it hurts most.
• Previously, the company would refer cases of counterfeiting to regulators and police for criminal prosecution. Civil suits allow Pfizer to conduct investigations and raids itself with a judge’s authorization, according to Clark.
• In a second criminal prosecution in June last year, Hickman pleaded guilty to six counts of selling and supplying fake and unlicensed medicines and money laundering, and was sentenced to two years’ jail, according to the MHRA. The regulator is now taking legal action to seize his assets, William Mach, a spokesman for the MHRA, said in an e-mail.

As it relates to the industry and the scope of the issue, Mr. Bennett’s piece includes:

• Pfizer isn’t alone in taking civil action. Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of the impotence drug Cialis, investigates phony pill makers with Pfizer because their products are often copied together, said Bruce Longbottom, legal counsel for Indianapolis- based Lilly.
• “The civil action gives the financial deterrent where they’re actually hit in the pocket book,” Longbottom said in a telephone interview. “We do think that sends a message that’s a little bit different from what a criminal action might give us.”
• International criminal syndicates are increasingly turning to prescription drugs because they offer higher returns and lower risks than narcotics, according to Aline Plancon, an Interpol officer who works with police worldwide to investigate counterfeiters.
• “These people mastered the technology of making pills, because they are doing narcotics,” she said. “They know that the risks of being punished are low compared to the benefit.” Plancon estimates that $1,000 spent making heroin can earn a return of $20,000. The same investment in copied medicines can earn as much as $450,000.
• The global trade in counterfeit drugs will rise to $90 billion by 2015, according to the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says it’s hard to put a value on the problem because of “a paucity of reliable data.” Trade in all counterfeit and pirated goods rose to about $250 billion in 2007 from about $200 billion in 2005, the OECD estimated in November.
• There were 2,003 discoveries of counterfeit, illegally diverted or stolen medicines worldwide last year, compared with 195 reported in 2002, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, a Vienna, Virginia-based nonprofit organization that monitors fake medicines.

Bennett's backgrond on the human toll of counterfeiting include:

• Counterfeits take a toll on human life. Fake medicines against malaria and tuberculosis alone are responsible for about 700,000 deaths a year, the London-based International Policy Network estimated in a report last year.
• “A mother who buys fake medicine to treat malaria does not know that she is paying for her own death or that of her sick child,” Jacques Chirac, a former president of France, said in a speech to the World Customs Organization’s council on June 24. Chirac’s charitable foundation is working to combat fake drugs.
• In the U.K., Pfizer says its civil suits have reduced the availability of fake drugs over the Internet. The drugmaker says it has sued at least seven other counterfeiters there, and last month settled its first civil suit in the U.S.
• “Even if you have a few bucks, we’re going to take it,” Clark says. “It’s not going to be there in the Caymans, so you can’t turn around and just tap your bank account and start the operation over again.”

Secure Pharma Chain Blog is excited about Pfizer’s and Pharma's new strategy to go after the proceeds of this criminal act and encourages all members of the supply chain to take further proactive steps including the deployment of anti-counterfeiting technologies to interdict this deadly threat before it reaches consumers.

To learn more about anti-counterfeiting technology: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

To read the entire BusinessWeek article, visit: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-08/pfizer-spies-find-spanish-villa-gold-rolex-in-fake-viagra-bust.html.

Counterfeit Viagra Found in Australia’s Legitimate Supply Chain

In a June 21st press release Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the government agency tasked with protection the nation’s pharmaceutical and health care products announced the following:

The TGA is urgently investigating the source of the counterfeit Viagra (sildenafil) that has been supplied in Australia and has entered the wholesale/pharmacy supply chain.

The counterfeit product is labeled as 100 mg tablets in packs of 4 with Batch Number 314833021 and Expiry Date 04 2012.

To date there is no evidence that the product is harmful. The TGA has analysed a number of the counterfeit tablets and has found that sildenafil is present but not in the correct dose. However, because this batch has not been manufactured under controlled conditions it is not possible to extrapolate these test results to other samples of this batch. Therefore consumers in possession of Viagra tablets bearing this batch number and expiry date are advised not to take them but to return them to the pharmacy at which they were dispensed.

The details of the batch and expiry date for the product can be found embossed on the white left-hand panel of the carton flap.

No other batches of product have been implicated.

Pharmacies across Australia have been advised to quarantine stocks of this batch to prevent any further distribution.

This incident reiterates the need for supply chain authentication by all members of the pharmaceutical supply chain (production to dispenser) to eliminate the risks of consumers receiving fraudulent, adulterated or counterfeit medications.

Secure Pharma Chain Blog endorses the the deployment of a variety of solutions including authentication of drugs within their unit-of-sale container to verify the legitimacy and efficacy of the product to the consumer.

To read the press release, visit: http://www.tga.gov.au/alerts/medicines/viagra.htm.

To learn more about pharmaceutical supply chain solutions, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.