18 indicted in Internet
pharmacy operation
A U.S. federal grand
jury in San Diego has
indicted 18 people on
racketeering, fraud and
money-laundering charges
stemming from a massive
Internet pharmacy
operation based in Costa
Rica.
It is the first time
racketeering charges
have been filed in
connection with a
fraudulent Internet
pharmacy case, federal
officials said.
The business, called
Affpower, sold
pharmaceuticals to
hundreds of thousands of
customers using unlawful
prescriptions, according
to the indictments,
which were unsealed
yesterday.
In a two-year period
ending in June 2006, the
Costa Rica-based company
generated us$126 million
in revenue, said
Lorraine Concha,
assistant special agent
in charge of the
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency in
San Diego.
The 313-count indictment
names three doctors and
two pharmacists among
the defendants. None are
from San Diego, though
the wide-ranging
investigation was
conducted from there.
Customers would fill out
online questionnaires
and a network of doctors
around the country, and
some overseas, would
give a cursory review of
the form, according to
the indictment.
The doctors were paid
us$3 for every form they
reviewed. The doctors
had no physician-patient
relationship and
conducted no physical
exams before writing the
prescription, which is
illegal, Concha said.
“The doctors who were
working with Affpower
would take five seconds
to review and approve
and then issue a
prescription,” she said.
The indictment says that
the prescriptions were
written without a
legitimate medical
purpose, only to sell
drugs customers wanted.
Among the drugs sold
through a network of Web
sites were Viagra,
Prozac, diet pills and
birth control pills.
Federal agents have
arrested most of the
defendants in the past
few days in Texas,
Florida, Colorado, New
York and Oregon.
Though based in Costa
Rica, Affpower spread
its operations out
across the globe.
Computer servers were
located in Cyprus,
credit card payments
were processed through a
company in Israel and
revenues were placed in
bank accounts in Cyprus,
Concha said.
Concha said that more
than 700,000
prescriptions were
written and filled
between August 2004 and
June 2006, when the
operation was shut down.
Customers often paid
twice as much, or more,
for prescriptions than
they would have through
normal channels, she
said.
If convicted, the
defendants face 20 years
on the racketeering
charges alone, and the
same sentence if
convicted of charges of
mail and wire fraud, and
money laundering.
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