Police nail suspects selling fake Viagra
Some of the fake pills seized by police.
Twenty suspects have been caught for allegedly producing and selling fake Viagra, Cialis and Levitra pills, Shanghai police said on Thursday.
The fake pills were allegedly produced with Tadalafil as a main ingredient, a substance used to treat erectile dysfunction but which is not approved for use in China, police said.
Police said they started their investigation in November last year when they found that the fake pills were being delivered in parcels.
A man surnamed Chen based in Shanghai who was in charge of the deliveries was first identified, along with locations in other provinces where the fake pills were produced, police said.
Through their investigation, police found that three people headed the gang which started to produce the fake pills from August last year without authorization from the companies which own the brands.
The fake pills were sold on the Internet to different parts of China, as well as to other countries, police said.
The prices of the fake pills were significantly lower than those of the authentic ones.
The suspects were rounded up in a recent police action in Sichuan, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Henan provinces, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Shanghai, with over 220,000 fake pills seized. The authentic counterparts of the fake pills are worth over 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million), police said.
Police said the companies which own the brands addressed a letter of thanks to them after the case was solved, calling it evidence that the Chinese government and Chinese police stand their ground against the infringement of intellectual property rights.
Shanghai police said they have solved over 390 cases where intellectual property rights were infringed so far this year, and the total amount of the authentic counterparts of the fake products in the cases surpassed 2.3 billion yuan.
