Our reporters Li Junde, Ma Sijia, Feng Kaihua
Drugs sold online and "old Chinese doctors" who consult online are not in reality; the qualification certificates of medical practitioners and the licenses for practicing medical institutions are all produced with the image processing software "P"; the fake food production batch numbers are used to produce drugs , The green light all the way; more than a year, 6,000 people were deceived... The case of the production and sale of counterfeit drugs recently concluded by the People’s Court of Jinfeng District, Yinchuan City, Ningxia exposed many problems in online drug sales.
Online sales of medicines are popular because of their convenience and cost savings.
As early as 2019, sales of online pharmacies in my country have reached 125.1 billion yuan, and the market scale is still expanding.
However, the regulatory system is not yet compatible with the rapidly developing online drug sales market. It is urgent to upgrade the regulatory technology, strengthen the deployment of professionals, and consolidate the responsibilities of third-party platforms to effectively protect the lives and health of the people.
The boss who is engaged in coal mine operation has turned into an online pharmacy.
In May 2019, Mr. Ouyang Min from Shenzhen saw a drug advertisement on the Internet. The advertisement claimed to have formal business qualifications. The drug has been clinically verified for five to seven years and has a significant effect.
So he added the WeChat ID of the "Doctor Huang" of Huang's Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in Yinchuan City attached to the advertisement.
"Doctor Huang" claimed that Mr. Ouyang's disease could be cured in dozens of days, and proposed that he needed to pay a deposit first, then send the medicines, and follow up online three days after taking the medicines.
After paying the deposit, Mr. Ouyang quickly received 40 sachets of medicines from the express delivery, with a payment of 1,186 yuan.
After taking it for three days, he felt no effect and he also experienced dizziness.
WeChat asked "Doctor Huang", but found that the other party had blocked himself.
So Mr. Ouyang reported to Yinchuan City Health Supervision Office.
After receiving clues provided by the administrative law enforcement department, the Yinchuan Municipal Public Security Bureau's Environmental and Food and Drug Safety Protection Branch carried out more than three months of investigation and quickly destroyed the manufacturing and sales dens in Yinchuan, Ningxia and Nanning, Guangxi, and in 2019 At the end of July, 14 suspects were arrested and brought to justice.
After investigation, this criminal group has sold counterfeit drugs to more than 20 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across the country and overseas countries through the Internet. There were more than 6,000 victims and the amount involved was more than 13 million yuan.
According to the investigation by the public security agency, the principal culprit of the case, Li Mouxian, was in a coal mine business. He and his girlfriend Ding saw that someone was selling kidney-tonifying drugs on the Internet with high profits, and they had the idea of running this business.
Li Mouxian invested 300,000 yuan, Ding Mou found an acquaintance Duan Mouxia and registered "Heyi Shenghui Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd." with his identity, but the company did not have the qualifications for food and drug production and distribution.
Later, Ding contacted Zheng Momin, a friend who worked in a pharmaceutical company in Guangxi, and asked if he knew anyone who could produce Chinese patent medicines for men’s kidney and kidney nourishment.
Zheng Moumin recommended to Ding Mo, who claims to be an "ancestral traditional Chinese medicine doctor" who does not actually have the qualifications to practice doctors.
Huang used to help with pediatric massage and breastfeeding postpartum conditioning in a Chinese medicine clinic.
He formulated a prescription by searching for books and materials, and found Deng, a shareholder of an Anhui teabag company, on the Internet, and asked him to help purchase Chinese medicine and process it into teabags.
Deng's company does not have the qualification to process medicines, but in order to make money, he buys all Chinese medicinal materials in the market near his home, asks someone to help crush them, process them into semi-finished products and mail them to Huang.
Huang hired someone to process and package the medicine, printed the production batch number and qualifications of Deng's food company on the outer packaging, and delivered it to Ding by express delivery.
Ding has designed nine packages with different brand names, such as "Zhongqi Mountain Ginseng" and "Wild Cinnamon". They promoted different curative effects, but they were all the same medicine.
In order to promote drugs, Ding asked someone to publish product advertisements on third-party websites, and through image processing and other technologies, attached the "Huang Yuxia" practicing physician qualification certificate and Yinchuan Huang's Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic with the software "P" in the advertisement. Photos of false door heads.
Subsequently, Li Mouxian and others hired 10 salesmen who were not qualified to sell medicines, and distributed a computer and 4 or more mobile phones to each of them. Each mobile phone was registered with a different WeChat account.
When someone added the WeChat account attached to the advertisement to ask for a doctor to buy medicine, the salesperson responded with the words learned through training.
According to a confession by the salesperson Tian Moucai, the sales are mainly under the name of "Doctor Huang". According to the call sheet, he answers the questions of different male sexual dysfunctions, and then "symptomatically" prescribes one or more products with different names and no real content. Undifferentiated medicine.
If a customer suspects it is a counterfeit medicine, it will be blocked.
Ding Mou, Duan Mouxia and others also instructed, try to use voice instead of text when chatting, especially not to use terms such as "impotence", "premature ejaculation" and "Chinese medicine" to prevent being detected by the Internet; in order to avoid risks, do not Sell medicines to people suffering from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
Reporters browsed through the China Judgment Documents website and related news recently and found that such cases of counterfeit drugs have occurred frequently in the past two years.
The main culprit in this case also saw the high profitability of others selling kidney medicines on the WeChat platform, and moved this idea.
In addition to social platforms such as QQ, WeChat, and Weibo, criminals also sell counterfeit and inferior drugs on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Xianyu, and sell weight-loss capsules containing prohibited drugs in the name of food.
"I can't see it, what should I do?"
The reporter's investigation found that in recent years, with the rapid development of the drug online sales market, the current drug sales supervision system is facing various challenges.
Hei Shenghu, Director of the Drug Circulation Supervision Division of the Ningxia Drug Administration, said that Ningxia currently has more than 60 personnel responsible for the supervision of drugs, cosmetics and medical devices, and there are more than 9,000 companies and institutions that only distribute drugs in the region. The supervision has been exhausted."
There are only one or two administrative agencies with drug testing capabilities in Ningxia, and testing equipment and technology are relatively backward.
It is understood that currently, online drug supervision in Ningxia is in the form of signing a contract, entrusting the Southern Institute of Pharmaceutical Economics of the State Drug Administration to form a monthly monitoring report, and after finding clues about violations of laws and regulations, it is transferred to the inspection department for offline investigation and punishment.
"But all the companies that can be monitored are legally operating companies that have been filed. Illegal operators can't see them. What should I do?" Hei Shenghu said.
In addition, “counterfeit medicines” sold for specific groups are concealed, and many medicines are sold under the name of health food, which is difficult to characterize.
"Many counterfeit medicines are not good or bad, especially like aphrodisiac drugs. The average consumer is reluctant to complain, causing great difficulty in law enforcement." said Du Peng, a policeman from the Legal Brigade of the Huan Food and Drug Branch of the Yinchuan Public Security Bureau.
The reporter paid a return visit to the informant Mr. Ouyang.
He said that the reason why he was deceived was that on the one hand, he believed that such diseases were “inconvenient to publicize” and he was unwilling to see a doctor and buy medicine through formal channels; on the other hand, he also saw the "Doctor Huang" qualification certificate on the webpage, which he felt credible. .
“Forgery of false documents online is very low cost, and consumers with specific needs are easily deceived.” said Du Peng, a policeman from the Legal Brigade of Yinchuan City’s Huan Food and Drug Branch. People with "stubborn diseases" such as andrological diseases and rheumatic diseases, "sell more weight-loss drugs with banned drugs, and it is impossible to find them."
Most of the third-party platform companies are in economically developed provinces such as Guangdong and Zhejiang.
"In those areas, such cases are concentrated, and we are beyond our reach, and cross-regional investigations are very difficult." Du Peng said.
Du Peng said that the trajectory of counterfeit drugs network circulation is not easy to verify, and it is difficult to hold accountability to third-party platforms.
In the Yinchuan case of manufacturing and selling counterfeit drugs, third-party platforms that charge high fees to help criminals promote false advertisements clearly violated relevant regulations in the Advertising Law and the E-Commerce Law.
However, when law enforcement officers handed over clues to the Guangzhou Municipal Market Supervision Administration, they found that because Li Mouxian and others had been arrested, the advertising fees had not been paid for several months. Nothing more.
Install the "Internet" of drug sales into the "Law Net" as soon as possible
Online sales of medicines are popular because of their convenience and cost savings.
According to the "White Paper on Drug Purchase Research of Chinese Residents" released by iResearch, nearly 90% of residents expressed their willingness to purchase drugs on e-commerce platforms.
Industry experts and grass-roots law enforcement personnel believe that the current drug regulatory system is not yet compatible with the fast-growing online drug sales market. It is urgent to upgrade regulatory technology, strengthen the deployment of professionals, and consolidate the responsibilities of third-party platforms to sell drugs. The Internet is included in the "Law Net" to effectively protect the lives and health of the people.
Hei Shenghu, Du Peng and others suggested that various localities should be supported to establish and improve online drug sales regulatory agencies to enrich professional monitoring capabilities; at the same time, local regulatory agencies and judicial organs should strengthen cross-regional collaboration to deal with the increasing number of online cross-regional crimes.
Many online drug sellers promote their products through third-party platforms.
Hei Shenghu suggested that regulators should strengthen the docking with platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, QQ, Taobao, and Pinduoduo, and use clues monitored by big data on third-party platforms to conduct precise strikes.
Experts suggest that in order to consolidate the responsibility of third-party platforms, it is also possible to explore the establishment of a third-party platform's first payment model. Once counterfeit or illegal drugs appear, the third-party platform will take the lead in paying consumers, prompting the platform to raise the barriers to entry.
The masses are an important force in curbing the crime of selling counterfeit drugs online.
Hei Shenghu said that the masses should master basic drug screening capabilities, learn to check drug production batch numbers, qualifications, etc. on the official website of the State Drug Administration, and try their best to see a doctor and purchase drugs through regular channels, and promptly report any criminal clues.