March 10, 2026: Fake cancer drug distributor sentenced to almost four years in federal prison
Major Stories
Sanjay Kumar got 43 months for selling counterfeit Keytruda. PSM wrote federal agencies about a Super Bowl ad promoting diagnostic tests and compounded medicines with false claims. Miami’s Medical Crimes Squad arrested an unlicensed injector.
45-year old Indian national Sanjay Kumar received a 43-month federal prison sentence for conspiring to sell counterfeit Keytruda, an oncology drug, to undercover law enforcement agents between 2018 and 2024. The fake versions of the medicine he sold did not contain enough active ingredient to be effective.
A People magazine article recounted the dramatic arrest of a Miami-based cosmetic injector while she was preparing to inject an undercover client with an illegally imported alternative to Botox. The defendant is charged with practicing health care without a license, and possession of a drug with intent to sell, manufacture, or deliver and misrepresenting a license.
PSM asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to act on Hims & Hers’ Super Bowl ad, which promoted unapproved prescription treatments and diagnostic tests with unsubstantiated and misleading claims. Read the letters here.
Kumar's case is one of several fake Keytruda incidents in recent years. Watch to learn more.
PSM in the news
PSM executive director Shabbir Safdar is extensively quoted in the Lancet’s March 2026 article about the factors fueling an uptick in counterfeit obesity drugs. Read the piece here.
Domestic
News about prosecutions involving pill presses in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington; Indianapolis police seize kilos of illicit drugs and a pill press.
Federal judges sentenced a Spokane, Washington man to 20 years in prison for running a fentanyl pill press operation; a North Carolina man who was found with fentanyl pills and a pill press received a 35-year federal sentence for sex trafficking.
Tong Tran, of Worcester, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in federal court to possession with intent to distribute controlled substances. Tran was charged in April 2025 after he was caught shipping 2.4 kilograms of orange methamphetamine pills in the packaging of a children’s toy. A search of his home yielded over three kilograms of methamphetamine, a pill press, binding agent and additional equipment used to manufacture pills.
A Chattanooga, Tennessee parent has been charged with murder for the fentanyl poisoning death of his toddler son. When police found 110 suspected fentanyl pills, cocaine and a pill press at his residence.
Indianapolis police seized 26 pounds of illicit drugs, $36,000 in cash, firearms, and a pill press during the search of a vehicle and home.
The DEA shared this photo of one of the machines seized in Spokane, Washington in November 2023.
Regulators protecting patients in the news
FDA sent a second round of warning letters to telehealth companies for making false or misleading claims regarding compounded GLP-1 products offered on their websites,
The agency also posted a January 2026 letter to a 503B compounding facility in Florida, citing them for repackaging retatrutide, semaglutide, and tirzepatide without FDA-approved applications, distributing products with inconsistent drug potency, and releasing NAD+ contaminated with endotoxins that sent at least three patients to the emergency room.
Ohio’s board of pharmacy suspended a chiropractic practice in Mansfield after finding expired drugs and illegally imported Korean medicines in its active drug stock.
Learn about past safety incidents involving compounded medicines.
International
A U.K. man received a 10-year sentence for selling medicines without prescriptions. More counterfeit injections in India.
After 14 years on the run, U.K. courts have sentenced a Cheshire man to ten years in prison for organizing a ring that illegally supplied customers lacking valid prescriptions with more than more than £3.7million in controlled medicines and both authorized and unauthorized ED drugs.
Authorities in Pune, India have identified five firms that allegedly distributed a counterfeit injection medicine with no active ingredient from late July 2025 to early February 2026.