Poland raids major erectile dysfunction drug counterfeiter

Police in Poland have come down hard on a ring they say had perhaps the world’s largest counterfeit Viagra operation.

Authorities there have arrested 14 people and seized equipment and pills from a house near Bydgoszcz. They grabbed 100,000 fake pills for erectile dysfunction and 430,000 vials of steroids that had an estimated value of $4.4 million (€3.95 million), according to Radio Poland citing the AFP news service.

Police said the operation had sold millions of euros worth of the counterfeit drugs over the internet, sometimes labeling them as branded erectile dysfunction drugs and sometimes using their own brands.

"It was the world's largest factory making anti-impotence drugs according to representatives of four companies whose products were counterfeited," police spokeswoman Agnieszka Hamelusz told AFP.

The counterfeiters had gotten their APIs from China through Greece, Britain and Romania. Police said the manufacturing operations were in hidden rooms that could only be accessed through secret passageways.  

Erectile dysfunction drugs are perhaps the most counterfeited in the world. Earlier this year, U.S. authorities charged a Pakistani man, Junaid Qadir, who they had been seeking for four years for importing into the U.S. counterfeit Viagra and other fakes. Qadir had been indicted by a federal grand jury back in 2012 but was at bay until last year when he was arrested in Germany and held until he was extradited to U.S.

- read the Radio Poland story

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