July 14, 2025: Counterfeit Keytruda peddlers sentenced in federal court
Major Stories
Indian nationals Avanish Kumar Jha and Rajnish Kumar Jha received 30-month federal prison sentences for selling counterfeit medicines—including vials claiming to be the cancer drug Keytruda filled with over-the-counter heartburn medicine—to U.S. buyers. The brothers, who pleaded guilty in June, will also pay $100,000 in fines and may be required to pay $81,000 in restitution. Federal law enforcement had been investigating the men since 2019, but they could not be prosecuted until they were extradited from Singapore, where they were arrested in 2023 during a trip to discuss larger drug sales with undercover agents.
Read court documents attached to this case in our prosecution document library.
Keytruda promoted on the Jha brothers' Facebook page in 2017
Domestic News
Warning letters to a compounder and two manufacturers over CGMP violations, pill press news in Mississippi and New York, and guilty pleas from Snapchat drug dealers
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted a warning letter it had issued to a former 503B compounding facility in North Carolina over violations of Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP). The agency also posted letters to manufacturers of over-the-counter products in Florida and Utah for CGMP violations. These included the failure to adequately test high-risk drug components for the diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, contaminants that killed 300 children in Uzbekistan, Gambia, and Indonesia in 2022.
A post from Banister's Snapchat account (U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of North Carolina)
Three New York men and a New Jersey man were sentenced to a cumulative 44 years in federal prison for manufacturing and distributing counterfeit Adderall pills made of methamphetamine via the dark web. In February 2024, law enforcement searched a commercial facility and two residences related to the ring, seizing two pill presses, three high-speed grinders, about $150,000 in cash, firearms, and approximately 75,000 counterfeit pills.
The Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and Philadelphia, Mississippi police busted a counterfeit pill operation, seizing a pill press and a variety of drugs, including approximately five kilograms of fentanyl combined with pill binder and more than 600 counterfeit hydrocodone, Tylenol, and Percocet pills made with fentanyl, tramadol, and hydrocodone.
Nick Banister, A former Raleigh, North Carolina, firefighter and his wife, Amanda, pleaded guilty to running a large-scale drug trafficking operation that used the dark web to distribute drugs, including Xanax and Adderall, across eastern North Carolina. The couple advertised their drugs on Snapchat.
Legislation
Connecticut’s governor signed House Bill No. 7192, which introduces pharmacy benefit manager reforms and transparency requirements around prescription drug pricing and rebates for health insurance companies and requires a feasibility study for Canadian prescription drug importation.
New Hampshire’s House Bill 2, which passed into law at the end of June, repealed state laws that established and funded a prescription drug affordability board.
Keep up with state legislation in the areas of pill presses, prescription drug affordability boards, and drug importation.
Patient safety issues in the GLP-1 space this week
On July 11, a Reddit user asked whether others had purchased Mounjaro in Mexico. The post produced a lively discussion, but respondents didn’t seem to realize that Mexican pharmacies catering to Americans have a more-than-20-year history of selling dangerous counterfeits to U.S. patients.
Reddit post, July 11, 2025
Counterfeit Gardasil vaccine, COFEPRIS, June 2025.
In just the last three months, COFEPRIS, Mexico’s own drug regulator, has reported seven counterfeit lots of Ozempic, diabetes medicine with no active ingredient, counterfeit cancer treatments, and other fake injectables, including a vaccine, an antibiotic, and autoimmune and multiple sclerosis drugs.
Stepping outside the regulated medicine supply chain is dangerous. Protect yourself by getting your Mounjaro with a prescription from your doctor at a licensed U.S. pharmacy.
International News
Fake Botox reported in Australia. News about counterfeit API and oncology drugs in India.
Fake Botox found in Australia, July 2025 (TGA)
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration reported that multiple vials of fake Botox had been stopped at the border. The counterfeits had persuasive packaging, but closer inspection revealed typographical errors and false batch numbers.
An article in the New India Express discussed recent crackdowns on drug counterfeiting operations in Delhi, noting that officials have found fake versions of critical cancer medicines such as Opdivo, Perjeta, Keytruda, Erbitux, and others. Officials from the Drugs Control Administration in Himachal Pradesh seized two suspected counterfeit active pharmaceutical ingredients from a wholesale drug facility in Shimla, India.
A Nigerian paper interviewed victims of counterfeit medicines and gathered input from experts about how to fix the country’s significant problem with fake drugs.