Avoid #covidscams - A Partnership for Safe Medicines Public Education Campaign

Avoid #COVIDScams and Counterfeiters: Tips to Purchase Medicine Safely

Ask your pharmacist about how much medicine you should buy: hoarding can create unnecessary shortages.

If you are experiencing hardship contact NeedyMeds, RX Outreach and Medicine Assistance Tool to find patient assistance programs to help you afford your medicines.

If you are buying over the counter or prescription medicine online, buy from a .pharmacy pharmacy. Pharmacies in other countries are not safe, even if they "look safe" to you.

Download our guide, AVOID SCAMS & COUNTERFEITS: Quick Tips to Safely Purchase Medicines Online (in English and Spanish) to learn more, and our #covidscams bookmark, which is a quick reference about five kinds of online crime that have spiked since the coronavirus emerged.

For up to to the minute news, track our coverage about the five types of COVID-19 scams.

Adopt this campaign and help spread the word!

Post our one pager to your website and to social media. Use the hashtag #covidscams to help raise awareness of criminals using the crisis to prey on people. Drop us a note at editors@safemedicines.org to let us know you're helping! Click here for sample tweets.

Tell Congress to kick COVID-19 scammers off the Internet!

Learn more and write congress on our TAKE ACTION page.

#covidscam News

Still image, April 29, 2020 covidscams video

April 29, 2020 episode: After 114 years of protecting Americans, the FDA is still hard at work—on #COVIDscams

April 29, 2020

The FDA was established to protect Americans from adulterated food and medicines and from criminals selling ineffective, outrageous, and sometimes harmful treatments. Unfortunately, fake cures are fertile ground for profiteers, and no matter how many products the FDA seizes, more crop up. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic the FDA has been working overtime to stop the sale of harmful and ineffective COVID “treatments.” This week PSM did some research in the FDA’s warning letter archives to survey fake COVID-19 cures.

#covidscams episode for April 22, 2020

April 22, 2020

In this edition: Senators take up ASOP’s Call To Arms on domain name scams, more fake test kits, and the nearly infinite pool of #covidscam domain names.

screenshot of April 14 video

#covidscams episode for April 15, 2020

April 15, 2020

In this edition: ASOP letter to the White House, more fake test kits and treatments and HR 5663, the Safeguarding Therapeutics Act

ASOP and 40 Patient Organizations Reach Out to Vice President Pence to Put a Stop to #Covidscams

April 15, 2020

In a letter dated April 9th, the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP) has requested that the Vice President prioritize evidence-based messaging and focus energies on provable therapies for treating COVID-19. The letter also asks the Vice President to address the “systemic, structural Internet policy problems that enable COVID-19 scams online.”

As L.A. City Attorney Tackles One Fake COVID-19 Test Kit Company, Another Sets Up Shop

April 14, 2020

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office is being kept very busy trying to shut down LA area COVID-19 testing schemes that being offered without FDA or local health department approval.