PSM2012 – James Dinkins, Executive Associate Director of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations

James Dinkins, Executive Associate Director of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) spoke on the risks to Americans for purchasing medications online from fake websites.

Dinkins said that the counterfeit medicine industry has changed and become a global industry, exploiting the easy access of technology to take advantage of consumers. Said Dinkins, "Criminals world wide have unprecedented access given the globalization of communications through the internet."

The new innovation in counterfeit medicines are copycat websites.  Legitimate business websites are copied to look identical, and then fake products are sold instead of the legitimate.  They even counterfeit the security label that says the site is secure.  Yet it contains no legitimate materials, no legitimate prescriptions, and the site is insecure.

ICE, as a result, has been seizing counterfeit medicine sites and have to-date impounded over 800 domain names.  After seizing those domains, they replace the materials on the site with public service announcements educating people about the risks of purchasing medication from fake online pharmacies.  Despite the small size of the domains, ICE has monitored over 100 million hits by consumers after seizure. 

For more information on their strategy, consumers can go to iprcenter.com.