Dateline- Tonight Fake Drugs

[Guest guest]

June 2, 2006 | 11:10 a.m. ET

Traveling through the world of fake drugs (Chris

Hansen, Dateline correspondent)

I have three basic rules for doing investigative

reporting in countries where governments frown on this

sort of activity: get in quietly, get out quickly and

make sure the video tapes make it back to New York.

In the case of our investigation into the world of

counterfeit medicine we were fortunately able to

accomplish all three. We had heard from people in

federal law enforcement and major drug companies that

the production of counterfeit medicine is exploding in

places like China, Pakistan and India just to name a

few.

About a year ago, we decided to try to turn our hidden

cameras on this subject and now we’re going to take

you along as we see first hand how counterfeit

medicines can be smuggled into the U.S. without

detection and perhaps even more alarming, how they

could end up in your neighborhood pharmacy.

We posed as a company called The Hansen Group and

started trolling the Internet looking for suppliers of

counterfeit medicines. Within weeks, companies all

over the world began offering us everything from fake

Viagra to knock off Tamiflu, the drug that would be

the first line of defense during a bird-flu pandemic.

The supply line took us all the way to Hong Kong,

where in a modern hotel room outfitted with hidden

cameras, we met with a woman who told us she was a

major player in this illicit business. Even we were

surprised when the woman, who called herself Cherry

Wong, agreed to ship us thousands of fake Viagra

tablets a week, a deal that could be worth $10

million.

Pfizer, which makes Viagra tested some of Cherry’s

product and found it to be, in fact, counterfeit,

although it did contain some active ingredient.

It is an eye-opening investigation and personally

alarming to see how much counterfeiting is going on.

These drugs can obviously be very dangerous on many

different levels.

And while you might think that by avoiding buying

medicine over the Internet you can protect yourself,

think again. As you’ll see in our story, medicine

doesn’t usually go straight from the factory to the

pharmacy. There is a complex network of wholesalers

who buy and sell surplus drugs. In some cases, all it

takes is some phony paper work and some realistic

packaging for fake medicine to slip into the system.

The report on counterfeit drugs airs Sunday, 7 p.m.

June 4, on Dateline NBC.

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