A CNBC investigation into illegal weight loss drugs reveals a marketplace where criminals brazenly counterfeit the drugs or ship the real product from overseas.
BOULDER, COLO. — Not far from the majestic Rocky Mountains is an ordinary suburban neighborhood, a tree-lined street and a modest light gray home.
The owners of the home in Boulder say they have no connection to the company — though they've received mail and a 1099 IRS tax form addressed to Laver Beauty.The drug CNBC purchased was shipped via DHL from an office building in Shijiazhuang, China, about a four-hour drive from Beijing. The package that arrived at CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, was a plain cardboard box with no refrigeration except for two melted ice packs. Ozempic is supposed to be stored refrigerated.
Law enforcement sources told CNBC that the Ozempic received from China is part of a larger ongoing federal investigation into Ozempic packages being shipped to the U.S. "We saw that the demand increased and quite often as it happens in these situations, criminals try and fill a gap where the supply and demand aren't balanced for a particular product, and we started seeing real counterfeit versions of the Ozempic product on the market," said Andy Morling, deputy director of criminal enforcement for the U.K.'s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.Andy Morling, deputy director of criminal enforcement for the U.K.
"It looks to all the world like Mounjaro, comes in a box that's labeled as Mounjaro," he said."And it has pens that are labeled as Mounjaro. But it's not Mounjaro at all." "I am not surprised, unfortunately, any of these new type of drugs that we're seeing, whether it be weight loss drugs or other drugs," Sal Ingrassia, the port director overseeing U.S. Customs and Border Protection at JFK, told CNBC."We'll see them either diverted, counterfeited or illegally shipped through this facility."
Ingrassia said he expects the number of interceptions of weight loss products to double this year over last. BrandShield CEO Yoav Keren showed CNBC various sites that the company flagged and that ultimately got shut down, including a Facebook account and a TikTok account that impersonated GLP-1 makers and sold versions of the drug.
"It's kind of a whack-a-mole, but we're on them. We're chasing them, this is our technology, we find them very quickly," he said.Counterfeit Ozempic has been reported in 15 countries, according to the World Health Organization, which issued a global alert in June warning of the health risks of purchasing fake products.
Last fall, the Turkish National Police conducted raids throughout Istanbul as part of a coordinated international crackdown.
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