A federal grand jury in San Diego has indicted 18 persons on racketeering and other charges in an Internet business scheme that generated more than $126 million in gross revenues from the illegal sale of prescription pharmaceuticals.
Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said the 313-count indictment, returned July 27 and unsealed yesterday, targeted an online pharmaceutical distribution network known as Affpower, which operated throughout the United States and abroad.
Mrs. Fisher said named in the indictment were three physicians, two pharmacists and one pharmacy operator; an administrator and manager; two recruiters of physicians and pharmacies; a credit card processor; and eight affiliate Web site operators.
From August 2004 through June 2006, she said, the Affpower enterprise received more than a million Internet orders for controlled and non-controlled prescription pharmaceuticals from customers in all 50 states, and generated in excess of $126 million in gross revenue.
Charges included racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering; distribution and dispensing of controlled substances and conspiracy to distribute and dispense controlled substances.
“The fraudulent and illegal sale of prescription drugs over the Internet poses a serious threat to the health of Americans who turn to the Internet in their need for pharmaceuticals,” Mrs. Fisher said.
“The defendants allegedly exploited that need and provided little or no doctor review while prescribing possibly dangerous drugs, even as they generated millions of dollars in revenues for themselves.”
According to the indictment, the Affpower enterprise sold controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs through numerous affiliated Web sites to customers lacking prescriptions for the drugs from a personal physician.
It said Affpower paid licensed doctors from different states and Puerto Rico to review health questionnaire answers provided by customers over the Internet and issue prescriptions solely on the basis of those answers.
The indictment said Affpower doctors conducted no physical or mental examinations before issuing prescriptions, had no contact with customers, and no physician-patient relationship with any customer for whom the doctors prescribed drugs. It also said Affpower doctors usually reviewed hundreds of customer orders per day and were typically paid $3 per review.
In some cases, the indictment said, Affpower doctors issued prescriptions for pharmaceuticals even when a customer’s answers to the health questionnaire suggested the ordered drug could pose a danger to the customer or that the customer did not have a medical condition for which the ordered medication was an appropriate treatment.
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