Apprehending the fake Viagra dealers.

Halai Ashish had been running his pharmaceutical business for a number of years. The business, which Ashish ran with the support of his pharmacist wife, Nanya Halai, was doing well and enjoyed tremendous amount of goodwill.

After a while, the British couple ventured into selling herbal weight-loss aids, after deciding to sell their business. Dissatisfied with the proceeds from the weight-loss aids, Ashish and his wife decided to venture into selling fake Viagra tablets – the popular magic pills invented by Pfizer, Inc., that was widely acclaimed for its effective cure of men suffering from erectile dysfunction.

Securing a deal to supply a Mexican company based in the Bahamas with the fake drugs, Ashish and his gang developed a vast network of contacts with which they were able to effectively smuggle fake Viagra tablets and other such drugs into the Bahamas through Great Britain.
Marking the packages as vitamin supplements for dogs as a way of concealing the drugs, the gang shipped the drugs out through such reputable companies like DHL.

The luck of Ashish and his gang finally ran out when some of the gang members were arrested for trying to smuggle fake Viagra tablets, along with a host of other counterfeit drugs, into the Stansted and Heathrow airports. Tests ran on the seized samples showed that up to 90 percent of the ingredients used in making the drugs were genuine, while most of the fake drugs were sold on the internet, and the case lasted from 2003 to 2004.

Investigations conducted showed that Ashish and his group belonged to a UK arm of a global distribution ring that specialised in trafficking fake and substandard drugs into such countries like Pakistan, India and China, and also have network that stretched into the US and the Caribbean.

Generally known as the biggest drug scandal in the history of the UK, the Ashish drug story is only a part of what has since become a very large trade in fake Viagra tablets on the internet.

An internet survey conducted recently shows that there are over 500 pharmaceutical companies selling Viagra tablets online, and just a negligible portion of the internet drugs sellers sell real Viagra tablets.

The fact that the Ashish gang went as far as prescribing the Viagra tablets to their prospective buyers shows that not all pharmaceutical companies that offer prescription before selling Viagra tablets online are sincere. One can only get real Viagra tablets from reputable online pharmacies, and this takes quite some research.

Another story of fake Viagra internet transactions that went bust is the case of a 30-man gang that was arrested by the Chinese police in the eastern province of Zhejiang, aftrer the gang was suspected to be selling and manufacturing fake Viagra tablets.

During the raid, over a ton of fake drugs, including about 18,000 fake Viagra tablets, were seized, and the drugs billed to be distributed in over 12 countries by the gang.

In Guangdong, 12 people possessing about one thousand kilogram of fake drugs and large volumes of raw materials for producing cheap sildenafil citrate, the generic name for Viagra tablets, were arrested.

On the 18th of December a freight cargo bound for Brazil, containing boxes branded Erectalis and Powergra, was intercepted by the French custom at the Paris main air hub. Each box contained four tablets cloned in the characteristic shape and colour of Cialis and Viagra pills.

The Viagra tablets and the Cialis were found not to be genuine after being inspected by representatives from Pfizer and Eli Lilly, the makers of Viagra and Cialis respectively