A Slough man has been sentenced to 250 hours of community service after he was found guilty of selling fake Viagra and Cialis over the internet using Ebay. In a sting operation he was caught out by undercover agents from Eli Lilly, the owner of Cialis. The man, who has been named as Azim Dad, continued to sell the fake medication online while he was under investigation by the Medicines anf Healthcare Regulatory Agency. Mr Dad's house was raided by police and counterfeit medications with a value of £50,000 were discovered. This case follows a similar one last week where a registered pharmacist from West London was convicted of importing £200,000 of fake Viagra from Pakistan.
It is very difficult knowing who to trust when buying medication online but we have set out some common sense guidelines on our consumer precautions page. So long as the website is dispensing from a registered pharmacy then the medications that are supplied should all be genuine. The drug manufacturers have now put in place a number of safeguards to make it extremenly difficult for counterfeit medications to get into the legitimate supply network. A number of medications now come via a "direct to pharmacy" route, thereby eliminating the possiblility of fake drugs getting to a genuine pharmacy.