April 21, 2025: Kentucky doctor pleads guilty after injecting patients with semaglutide from unregistered sources
Major Stories
A Kentucky doctor treated weight loss patients with research chemicals.
Physician Matthew Lewis, who owned Lewis Family Care in Ashland, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to receiving a non-FDA approved drug and fraudulently selling it to patients. According to his plea agreement, Dr. Lewis bought semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy, from unregistered suppliers in California and Georgia selling versions of the drug that were explicitly not for human use. Lewis’s clinic made $250,000 by injecting unknowing patients with the unapproved drugs between May 2025 and February 2024.
Screenshot from the website of one of Lewis's suppliers (April 2025)
Domestic News
CBP seized 90,000 alprazolam pills being smuggled into the U.S. Pill counterfeiters were sentenced in Kentucky, Oregon, and Texas.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned a California business to stop selling Advance King, a joint pain supplement that contains undeclared prescription steroids, a muscle relaxant, and diclofenac, a non-steroid pain medicine.
U.S. Border Patrol agents in California seized 11 boxes that contained more than 90,000 pills of Farmapram, a Mexican brand of alprazolam (Xanax), from a black pickup truck near Camp Pendleton.
An Iranian man has been charged with money laundering and controlled substance distribution for his alleged role in the creation of Nemesis Market, a darknet platform that sold illicit drugs, including counterfeit oxycodone and Percocet that contained fentanyl, acetylfentanyl, heroin, and/or protonitazene.
Advance King was the subject of an FDA warning to consumers in February 2025.
A federal court in Kentucky sentenced Alessandro Sabbagh to six-and-one-half years in prison for his part in a drug conspiracy that manufactured counterfeit generic alprazolam pills and sold them across the U.S. via darknet marketplaces between January 2017 and October 2021. Sabbagh will forfeit more than $5 million, his proceeds from the scheme.
Portland, Oregon resident Juan Jose Varela-Espinoza received a ten-year federal prison sentence for fentanyl possession. A search of Varela-Espinoza’s residence and vehicles in July 2023 yielded nearly 16 pounds of powdered fentanyl, 57,700 fentanyl pills, cash, stolen firearms, and two pill press machines.
Robert Jessie Martin, of Alto, Texas was sentenced to 220 months in federal prison for his part in a methamphetamine distribution ring. In July 2023, law enforcement searched his property and seized five firearms, methamphetamine, five rotary pill presses, and 30,000 pressed pills made with methamphetamine.
Pills seized in Worcester, Massachusetts, April 2025
A man in Worcester, Massachusetts was charged in federal court after he allegedly shipped almost two-and-a-half kilograms (more than five pounds) of orange pills concealed in toy packaging. A search of his residence in April 2025 turned up more than three kilograms of methamphetamine, cash, a pill press, and additional equipment and supplies used to manufacture pills.
An article about the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Northeast Regional Laboratory mentioned the seizure of counterfeit Xanax pills made with bromazolam, a novel benzodiazepine similar in structure to alprazolam.
Patient safety issues in the GLP-1 space this week
A vendor posted on April 19 asking Reddit users’ opinions about the proportions of a hypothetical supplement combining both cagrilintide and retatrutide, both of which are still in drug trials.
Neither drug is FDA approved, and the speculation of a supplement seller and a random assortment of Reddit users is no substitute for the careful assessment of professionals developing medicine.
Northern Irish authorities are warning residents against buying weight loss injections on social media. Investigators with BBC Northern Ireland documented the problems through test buys, receiving syringes of a supplement called carnitine when they tried to buy semaglutide via Facebook. Even if customers receive genuine GLP-1s there is no way to verify they have been made under safe, sterile conditions.
International News
Counterfeit medicines in Canada, the U.K., Vietnam, and India.
Counterfeit diazepam that tested positive for nitazenes (Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of Novel Substances, 2024)
Health Canada announced the seizure of counterfeit erectile dysfunction medication and other unauthorized health products at an herb shop in Toronto.
After two deaths, authorities in Cumbria, England warned residents not to take fake diazepam pills that have been circulating online and on the street.
In Vietnam, Thanh Hoa provincial police dismantled a nationwide counterfeit pharmaceutical ring, confiscating boxes of the antibiotic tetracycline and cough suppressants, as well as supplements to treat joint pain. Vietnam’s Drug Administration reassured citizens that the fake medicines had not been found in public hospitals.
Indian authorities seized 1,400 tubes of counterfeit Thrombophob, an ointment that reduces blood clots and swelling near the surface of the skin, and counterfeit epilepsy treatments.