Fake Viagra and Cialis anti-impotence drugs
French customs officials have intercepted a shipment of 224,000 fake Viagra and Cialis anti-impotence pills worth 2.4 million euros ($3.5 million), the Budget Ministry said on Monday.
The copies of the best-selling drugs were found on December 18 during a search at the French capital’s main air hub at Roissy, in a freight cargo on its way to Brazil from India.
“Branded Powergra and Erectalis, each box contained, in fact, four tablets in the characteristic shape and color of Viagra or Cialis pills,” Budget Minister Eric Werth’s office, which is also in charge of customs, said in a statement.
“The companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly, which respectively own the Viagra and Cialis brands, quickly confirmed the counterfeit nature of these products and the 224,000 pills were seized,” Werth’s office added.
Fake Viagra maker given 10-year prison term
A man has been given a 10-year prison sentence for producing millions of fake anti-impotence pills.
Viagra, the anti-impotence drug, is made by Pfizer. [file photo]
Wang Weiping was also fined 2 million yuan (US$250,000) in a first ruling on Monday at Shaoxing Intermediate People’s Court in East China’s Zhejiang Province.
The 34-year-old, a legal worker at Kangdeli Health Care Co Ltd in Xinchang County of the province, was arrested in November last year on suspicion of producing and selling counterfeit drugs.
A total of 381,000 fake Viagra pills and 1.4 million counterfeit Cialis tablets, worth a combined total of 241 million yuan (US$29 million) on the market, were also seized from workshops at Kangdeli Health Care, according to a release from the court.
Viagra is produced by the New York-based Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, while Cialis is manufactured by Indianapolis-based Lilly Icos LLC. Both are well-known drugs to treat impotence.
Some of the fake pills were found to contain medical starch, which does not have any curative effect and others had too much sildenafil, the main ingredient of Viagra, and is detrimental to health in large doses, said the release.
Workshops to make the fake drugs were also found in Guannan County of Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang’s neighbouring province.
All counterfeit pills, production machines and materials to make the fake drugs were confiscated.
Wang began making the fake pills in Shaoxing in April last year, and established another manufacturing base at Guannan in Jiangsu Province in June.
Local police and drug administration officials uncovered the case during a crackdown on the production of fake pills.
No counterfeit drugs have actually been found in the marketplace, said Zhang Guojing, director of the Shaoxing Food and Drug Administration.
Wang’s operation is the biggest, in terms of the financial worth of the pills, to have been uncovered in Zhejiang Province.
Erectile dysfunction drugs such as Viagra and Cialis were approved by the Ministry of Health and State Food and Drug Administration as prescription drugs in 1999.
In December last year, seven people in Zhengzhou in Central China’s Henan Province were accused of selling 9.7 million fake tablets of Viagra.
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Police bust online Viagra gang
The leader of a gang selling fake Viagra over the internet has been given a four and a half year jail sentence.
Ashish Halai, 33, ordered fake Viagra tablets from suppliers in China and Mexico for 25p each and sold them for as much as ?20 online to people in the US and Europe who were too embarrassed to go to their doctor.
Three other members of the gang were also found guilty and will be sentenced later.
The case came to light after an investigation by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which estimated that the gang netted at least ?2m from the scam.
Mick Deats, head of enforcement at the MHRA, said: “The MHRA treats every report of a counterfeit medicine as a serious incident. This successful prosecution should serve as a clear signal to those contemplating the supply of counterfeit medicines.
“The public are strongly advised to avoid buying medicines online, where the risk of being provided with counterfeit medicines is greatly increased.”
Halai is a chemist who sold his practice in Bayswater, London but continued to use the name to sell herbal supplements.
The court heard that Halai began selling fake anti-impotence drugs in 2002 passing them off as Viagra and Cialis. He packaged the drugs so skilfully that experts said it would take a trained eye to spot the difference.
Police seized over ?1.5m worth of the fake drugs when they swooped on the gang. The drugs were imported using business courier services and were disguised as pet supplements.