Drug sellers charged for smuggling cancer drugs into US
pharmafile | February 18, 2014 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Sales and Marketing | Cancer, FDA, US, smuggling
Two individuals in the US have been prosecuted for smuggling adulterated and misbranded prescription cancer treatments from Turkey and other countries into the US.
They are also charged with conspiring to defraud the US government and FDA, as the drugs did not meet the regulator’s standards and were not approved for use.
The FDA led a joint international law enforcement operation that culminated in the arrest of two Turkish citizens: Ozkan Semizoglu and Sabahaddin Akman in Puerto Rico.
John Roth, director of the office of criminal investigations in the FDA’s office of regulatory affairs, said: “This case shows that those who prey on innocent patients in the US, even from outside our borders, are subject to criminal prosecution.
“The assistance of our international partners was critical in carrying out the undercover operation that led to the arrest of these individuals.”
The indictment charges the two men with one conspiracy count and three counts of smuggling illegal drugs into the US. Each smuggling charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and/or fines of up to $250,000.
The defendants obtained the illicit drugs and then used shipping labels to conceal the illegal nature of the consignments, including customs declarations falsely describing the contents as ‘gifts,’ ‘documents,’ or ‘product samples’ with no or low-declared monetary values.
They also broke large drug shipments into several smaller packages to reduce the likelihood of seizures by US Customs and Border Protection authorities.
Along with the FDA and Europol, the international operation involved several German government offices: the Bonn prosecutor (Staatsanwaltschaft); the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA); the Dusseldorf Police and the German State Criminal Police (Landeskriminalamt, LKA).
Special agents of the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service assigned to the US Embassy’s Regional Security Office in Ankara, Turkey and the US Consulate General’s Overseas Criminal Investigations Branch in Istanbul, Turkey also played a key role in bringing the operation to a successful conclusion.
Ben Adams
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