Man sold fake cancer drugs that looked ‘indistinguishable’ from real thing, feds say
An Indian national is accused of selling and shipping tens of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit cancer drugs to individuals in the United States, federal officials said.
Sanjay Kumar, 43, of Bihar, India, was indicted July 24 on one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and four counts of trafficking in counterfeit drugs, according to a July 25 news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Kumar was arrested June 26 in Houston after traveling to the U.S. to expand his business “selling fake Keytruda in the U.S. market,” officials said.
Keytruda is a cancer immunotherapy approved in the U.S. to “treat certain types of melanoma, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, gastric cancer, cervical cancer, and breast cancer,” according to officials.
“We believe that the government will not be able to prove that Mr. Kumar was knowingly shipping counterfeit medications to the United States. We expect that he will be cleared of these charges,” Kumar’s attorney, Kent Schaffer, told McClatchy News in a July 29 email.
According to court records, Kumar and his co-conspirators sold counterfeit oncology pharmaceuticals out of Chandigarh, India, to undercover agents posing as buyers using packaging and branding that was “substantially indistinguishable” from the real thing.
Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC is the only company legally permitted to manufacture and authorize the interstate sale of Keytruda, officials said.
Kumar and his co-conspirators were not authorized or licensed by Merck to use its registered trademarks or to make or sell Keytruda, court records show.
When an undercover agent offered $3,500 for two 100 milligram vials of the drug, Kumar said, “At this price, we can’t deliver real or genuine Keytruda.”
“Product will look like same but it’s not real,” he added.
Merck analyzed the counterfeit vials and confirmed the product lacked the active ingredients of the legitimate drugs, court records show.
According to Merck, the list price for a 200 milligram adult dose of Keytruda given every three weeks is $11,337.36.
Kumar sold counterfeit Keytruda for just under $6,000 for two 100 milligram vials, court records show.
The scheme involved the sale of counterfeit Opdivo and Adcetris as well, according to court records.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Food and Drug Administration.
This story was originally published July 30, 2024 at 7:04 AM with the headline "Man sold fake cancer drugs that looked ‘indistinguishable’ from real thing, feds say."
