February 3, 2025: A New York jury convicts precursor sellers
Major Stories
Chinese executives were convicted for shipping fentanyl precursors to the U.S.
After a two-week trial, Qingzhao Wang and Yiyi Chen, employees of the now-closed Chinese chemical company Hubei Amarvel Biotech, were convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to import a fentanyl precursor chemical after shipping more than 200 kilograms of fentanyl precursor chemicals to the U.S. between November 2022 and June 2023. Following the conviction, authorities seized the domain names of seven websites and four cryptocurrency accounts worth approximately $900,000 that were tied to the illicit precursor chemical business. Five additional websites tied to Amarvel Biotech were seized in June 2023.
The business advertized the use of deceptive packaging to ensure delivery (Southern District of New York)
Patient safety issues in the GLP-1 space this week
The Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to ProRx, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based compounding pharmacy, because its versions of the diabetes and weight loss drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide and the antibiotics vancomycin and tobramycin did not meet legal requirements—most seriously because it had sourced bulk drug substances from an unregistered establishment. Investigators also found serious deficiencies in the company’s production of sterile medicines.
A January 24, 2025 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined safety issues around compounded weight loss drugs noted that dosing problems are a significant issue with legitimately compounded GLP-1 drugs.
PSM has found ample evidence of this problem online. This user, for example had to go to the ER after accidentally injecting themself with 100 times the correct dose of semaglutide:
"I went to emergent [sic] care and later that night to the ER. There's nothing they can do but give you IVs and antinausea meds. It sucks. I took 8units, but was supposed to take .08. The syringe is skinny and the writing is so small on the HXXX brand. I was sick for over a month. Good luck."
Reddit comment, January 2025
Domestic News
CBP intercepted almost 70,000 illegally imported sedative pills. A tramadol trafficker has pleaded guilty.
Customs and Border Protection officers at Washington Dulles Airport discovered 69,813 Zolpidem Tartrate (Ambien) pills concealed inside each of the 96 spools of black yarn on their way from India to California.
ABC news interviewed people who have been treated with counterfeit Botox, including a patient of Joey Grant Luther, an New York aesthetician who allegedly treated his clients with counterfeit Botox.
Zolpidem (Ambien) pills seized at Washington Dulles Airport, January 2025 (CBP)
Michigan resident Donald Nchamukong agreed to plead guilty to charges related to illegally importing and selling drugs—including the opioid tramadol—from India. Between 2019 and 2022 Nchamukong and a co-conspirator, Doyal Kalita, used the internet and call centers in India to distribute drugs to people in the United States, allegedly processing the sales through bank and merchant accounts attached to shell companies. During the pandemic, the pair also allegedly fraudulently obtained a $200,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan to fund the illegal scheme.
After several high profile, high volume counterfeit pill cases, lawmakers in Massachusetts filed two bills aimed at tightening regulations around the sale and use of pill presses. Elsewhere in the country, law enforcement seized pill presses in Miami, Florida, and Detroit, Michigan, and an Indiana man who was caught with a variety of illicit drugs and a pill press was sentenced to more than 20 years in federal prison.
The FDA warned a California supplement company doing business under the names VitalityVita and Boulla to stop selling products that contained undeclared sildenafil and diclofenac.
International News
Illicit medicine seizures announced in Europe and Britain. Fake Botox sickened Australians.
Drugs seized during Europol's Operation Shield.
Europol’s Operation Shield V, a coordinated, 30 country initiative that ran between April and November 2024, resulted in more than 400 arrests and the seizure of over 400,000 packages of "illegal pharmaceuticals," almost 175,000 vials and ampoules and over 4.5 million pills and tablets.
Britain’s medicine regulator reported the seizure of 17 million doses of illegally traded medicines worth an estimated £40 million ($49 million). The bulk of the drugs were treatments for erectile dysfunction, pain, and sleep disorders, as well as sedatives.
Australian regulators in Victoria and New South Wales warned residents that an unregistered cosmetic practitioner had allegedly been injecting clients with unapproved Botox. People who allegedly received these injections have been hospitalized with an illness that resembles botulism. A similar outbreak was announced in the United States in early 2024.