A "vast network of scams" of websites claiming to sell cachets of chloroquine, this anti-malaria that could have an effect in the treatment of coronavirus, has been dismantled by the Strasbourg research section, as its chief tells it, François Desprès, on Europe 1.

"A vast network of scams" has just been dismantled by the Strasbourg research section. At the heart of the scam: chloroquine pills promised by fraudulent sites to Internet users wanting to get this anti-malaria which Professor Raoult ensures effectiveness in the treatment of coronavirus.

A hope on which the scientific community has not yet reached a consensus and which benefited the crooks behind the websites, as told on Europe 1 by Colonel François Desrés, head of the Strasbourg research section: "We were able to put these 70 sites 'offline' and establish that there had been 43,000 connections in March, mainly in France and Italy," he explains, describing "a vast scam that took advantage of the popularization of this drug ". "But no complaints have been filed since people were both ashamed of having been defrauded and on the other hand, this drug is prohibited from being sold online," he added.

Hacked French platforms

The sites in question claimed to sell chloroquine tablets at one euro per unit, against four euros for a box of thirty sold in pharmacies. True empty shells, they referred to four sites registered abroad: canadian-pharmacy24.com; eu-medstore.com; my-european-strore.com; big-pharmacy.com.

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But that's not all. Web pages, legally hosted by the Eklablog or Overblog platforms, have also been hacked in order to link to these fake sellers. A technique allowing them to obtain a high referencing on Google and to attract even more customers, specifies the daily.

"A risk of endangering others"

"We risked having a lot of victims. It was a question of preventing people from being abused. If necessary, there was also the risk of endangering others since if there is medicine, it can also be a counterfeit medicine and it is a public health priority to avoid any dissemination of this type of medicine. It was above all curative and preventive not to allow scammers to continue to approach our French victims ", concludes François Desprès.

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And if chloroquine is the subject of in-depth studies by scientists and may be prescribed in some very specific cases, "if you have no criteria for severity there is no reason for you (en) prescribe ", specified doctor Jimmy Mohamed on Europe 1, adding that" it is useless to ask your doctor and even less to go to a pharmacist for that ".