Fake Drugs Have Real Consequences for Patients
Black market medicine is terrible for patients all over the world, including Americans. At best, counterfeit and substandard medicine may not adequately treat a patient's illness. At worst, counterfeit medicines may cause poisoning or death.
Each of the following stories mentions people who have been sickened or died after being treated with fake medicine. Every day, American patients are harmed when they break the closed U.S. drug supply.
A grand jury in Northampton County in Pennsylvania charged Gustavo Rivera after prosecutors made their case that he was the person who sold a counterfeit Percocet pill that contained fentanyl to Kara Heckenberger. She died after taking that pill on August 9, 2017…
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a guilty plea from a Connecticut man who was distributing counterfeit Xanax. Data retrieved from the mobile phone of a Seymour resident that died led police to Kamil Golebiowski. In June 2017, two packages shipped from Canada to him were found to contain approximately 1,400 counterfeit Xanax…
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) have announced the arrest and indictment of a 23 year-old Highland, California man accused of selling counterfeit oxycodone pills that killed a La Jolla resident.
A Henderson, Nevada woman has been charged in federal court for allegedly selling the counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl that killed 26-year-old Christiana Kuerner on March 14, 2017. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Daniel Neill of the DEA said fentanyl seizures are increasing in the southern part of the state, with 20,000-30,000 pills being found at a time…
A former Rice University football player has been charged with causing the death of a 21-year-old student after selling the young man counterfeit hydrocodone pills made with carfentanil. Carfentanil is one of fentanyl’s many analogues. A lethal dose is so small it cannot be seen with the human eye…
On September 18, 2017, ten-month-old Leo Holz put something he picked up off of his parents’ bed into his mouth. That something turned out to be a fake oxycodone pill made with fentanyl. He is perhaps the youngest known victim of the counterfeit fentanyl pill crisis…
A federal judge sentenced Fany Madrigal-Lopez to 12 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit oxycodone pills made with fentanyl. Even after she learned of one customer’s death in November 2016, she continued to sell those pills until law enforcement finally caught up with her in August 2017…
In a brutal month spanning March 23 to April 23, 2016, fourteen people in the Sacramento area died of suspected drug overdoses, and 38 others were poisoned. At the beginning authorities had no idea why there was a sudden spike in overdose deaths and suspected “contaminated drugs.” They would not know until the month was out and the recovered pills had been analyzed that these deaths were caused by counterfeit pills made with deadly fentanyl. One of those who was lost was a 28-year-old father of three, Jerome Butler.
Carrie Luther, who lost her son to counterfeit Xanax made with fentanyl three years ago, travelled to Tennessee with Partnership for Safe Medicines Executive Director Shabbir Safdar to share her story with the Healthy Tennessee Opioid Summit.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted three men in Utah for the death of Jaydon Rogers earlier this year. Adam Patrick Hemmelgarn, Tyler Jabbar Perry, and Christian Scott Jimerson allegedly sold the counterfeit fentanyl pill to Rogers who was found unresponsive and died two days later at the hospital…