Authorities from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security have collaborated in the take-down of a North Carolina peddler of counterfeit drugs. Awni Zayyad was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for selling phony Viagra and Cialis.
He and an unnamed co-conspirator are accused of trafficking more than a thousand fake pills, which the indictment says are "substantially indistinguishable" from the real medication, according to a local press report.
The arrest was part of Operation Guardian, a coordinated government initiative to combat the import and distribution of harmful, foreign-manufactured products.
Last week, the FDA, an Illinois county sheriff, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the Post Office collaborated on the take-down of Amin Rupani, the middleman in an operation that sold counterfeit valium made in China. That bust involved a package of 20,000 pills.
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