Kevin Xu a citizen of the Peoples Republic of China was sentenced to seventy-eight months imprisonment for distributing counterfeit and misbranded drugs in the United States, on January 1th, 2009.
Xu was sentenced after being found guilty in a jury trial that took place in August 2008. Xu was indicted in 2007, as the result of an undercover investigation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigation (FDA).
Xu described to undercover agents his ability to manufacture all manner of brand name prescription drugs, and included a list of 25 different prescription drugs he could produce, including Plavix (used for treating blood clots), Casodex (for the treatment of prostate cancer), and Tamiflu (used for the treatment of influenza) along with several other life-saving drugs.
Xu had been conducting his business throughout Europe, but the investigation that resulted in his arrest only began once he attempted to break into the United States pharmaceuticals market. The US investigation into Xu’s activities uncovered the startling volume of business that he was conducting in the United Kingdom. As a result of this discovery, massive drug recalls were declared by the UK’s Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and a counterfeit drug distribution ring based in the United Kingdom was apprehended.
MHRA Director of Inspection, Enforcement and Standards, Gerald Heddell, as well as FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and OCI Director John Roth are all speaking at the 2012 Interchange on September 28, 2012.
Learn more about the world of counterfeit drug crime and the agencies that are fighting it on behalf of patients. Register today for your last chance to join in the conversation.
Read MoreThe Partnership for Safe Medicine’s Executive Director, Scott LaGanga, is presenting on Thursday September 20th, at the The PDMA Sharing Conference. The conference, held at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, is held over three days starting September 19th.
Mr. LaGanga will bring attendees up to date on the risks and dangers associated with counterfeit drugs, a real concern for American consumers.
Read MoreIn a recent interview with Pathogens & Global Health, Dr. Paul Newton, Head of the Welcome Trust-Mahosot Hospital-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Collaboration in Vientiane, Laos, offered his expertise on the growing problem of counterfeit medication in the treatment of tropical diseases.
Dr. Paul Newton works in the heart of Malaria country in Southeast Asia. As a result, he has a very clear, first-hand perspective on the role counterfeit and substandard drugs play in drug resistance and the human cost of counterfeit medication. He is also well acquainted with the drug supply chain problems that plague malarious regions.
Read MoreThe new Director of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Criminal
Investigations, John Roth, will be the luncheon speaker at the Partnership for Safe Medicines 2012 Interchange on September 28.
Roth joins the esteemed panel of Interchange speakers that includes keynote speaker Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the FDA, and panelists Gerald Heddell, Director of Inspection, Enforcement and Standards of the UK’s MHRA, and James Dinkins, Executive Associate Director, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Read MoreA key member of a criminal drug gang that sold vast quantities of counterfeit drugs in the United States has been convicted, but his fugitive boss is who the Feds are really after.
A Puerto Rican man, Francis Ortiz Gonzalez has been convicted of conspiracy and seven counts of trafficking in counterfeit pharmaceuticals after a 6 six-day trial in Los Angeles. The trial followed a grand jury indictment from June 2009. Ortiz Gonzalez is set for sentencing on November 8th of this year, announced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Read MoreAugust 2012 found The Partnership For Safe Medicine’s Executive Director Scott LaGanga meeting with Chinese government and business authorities in Beijing to discuss counterfeit medications.
The timing of the visit coincided with a government seizure of $180 million worth of counterfeit medications said LaGanga, noting that there is still much to be done to curb counterfeit drug production in China. “While a critical development, our work is only getting started and it will take the public-private partnership of government, industry, stakeholders and individual patients before we can make a dent in this issue,” wrote LaGanga in a blog post.
Read MoreIn Russia two gang members were arrested for selling expired cancer medications to pharmacies and hospitals, repackaged as if authentic. Meanwhile a Miami pharmacy technician stole fragile, refrigerated cancer medications in order to re-sell them.
In July 2012, Russian police arrested two counterfeit drug gang members for allegedly selling $15.4 million of counterfeit cancer medications.
Melanie Haiken, writing for the MSN Wellness Blog, highlights the seven most likely drug counterfeits that US consumers could end up purchasing.
Counterfeit drugs are a scary threat to US consumers, writes Melanie Haiken in her article, 7 Scariest Counterfeit Drugs. You might think you are taking a pain reliever or lifestyle drug for weight loss or erectile dysfunction (ED) but instead you end up with any number of hidden poisons such as road paint, antifreeze, or an undeclared and unapproved medication like Sibutramine.
Read MoreThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an updated alert that Reumofan Plus and Reumofan Plus Premium contain undeclared prescription drug ingredients that have impacted public safety.
The agency announced it has received reports of “fatalities, stroke, severe bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract, dizziness, insomnia, high blood sugar levels and problems with liver and kidney functions,as well as corticosteroid withdrawal syndrome,” in the two months since initially announcing the recall on the product in June.
Read MoreMalaria is a major concern for public health officials throughout much of the world. Now a new report indicate US citizens returning from Africa are coming home with drug-resistant malaria, while The Lancet tells us up to one third of all malaria treatments are counterfeit.
News from Alertnet reports that US travelers returning from visits to sub-Saharan Africa are bringing home artemisinin-resistant malaria. Though no indication of large-scale malaria drug resistance has yet appeared on the African continent, it is a worrying trend that may presage full-scale drug resistance in African malarial strains.
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