The well-established and very lucrative traffic of anti-cancer drugs

Anti-cancer drug trafficking was dismantled last week.

15 people were arrested and 400,000 euros worth of drugs were seized by the police.

For the crooks who then export these treatments abroad, this new business is very lucrative.

And the modus operandi is well established.

INVESTIGATION

It is a new "market" on which the crooks have launched themselves: the trafficking of anti-cancer treatments.

The operating mode is very well established and the phenomenon has been exploding for about a year.

Hospitals and pharmacies are increasing the number of reports.

In France, there are now more than 800.

>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here

The operating mode is always the same.

First, a small hand, a collector recruited via the Snapchat social network, goes to a pharmacy anywhere in France to retrieve a box of an anti-cancer drug prescribed on a falsified prescription.

a drug that can be very expensive, up to 7,000 euros a box, as for this false patient who entered Pierre's Bordeaux pharmacy in mid-January: "he was between 25 and 30 years old. He was quiet, he was just a cane, nothing exceptional ", describes the pharmacist.

Identified thanks to the pharmaceutical file 

"I asked him if this was the first time he had this treatment. He answered yes and thanks to some tools that we have, like the pharmaceutical file, I could see that in the previous weeks, he had already had several deliveries of the same treatment. To verify, I called the hospital and they told me that there were falsifications on these prescriptions and it was a fake. a prescription sent by email ", continues the pharmacist.

"On drugs that are so expensive, these are quite rare things".

The professional therefore notified the police who arrested the collector.

But according to an investigator, these denunciations are quite rare.

Many pharmacies close their eyes and dispense the drugs without checking.

Boxes that can cost up to 14,000 euros

After being collected, the boxes, which can cost up to 14,000 euros per unit, are collected by touts, against around 300 euros.

They are then resold much cheaper than their original price and illegally exported abroad, to Egypt for example.

For health insurance, the damage is colossal and amounts to millions of euros, according to Colonel Ludovic Erhart of the Central Office for the fight against attacks on the environment and public health (OCLAESP). 

"France is targeted because we are lucky to have a very good health system: our chain of drugs is reliable and we can have them prescribed almost free of charge. This phenomenon also affects Lebanon, that is to say countries which can provide medicines to their population and which will then be plundered for countries which have less means to provide protection to their population, ”he explains.

Highly organized criminal groups

For the moment, a major sector has already been identified and dismantled by the police last week.

15 people were arrested and 400,000 euros worth of drugs were seized.

The sector exported to Egypt.

Overall, they are highly organized criminal groups, often based in the Paris region and whose heads of networks and intermediaries are already known to the courts, particularly for other types of trafficking, but who have turned to it, because that it is much more lucrative.