10 years in jail for fake Viagra man
May 10, 2006

A man has been given a 10-year prison sentence for producing millions of fake anti-impotence pills.

Wang Weiping was also fined 2 million yuan (US$250,000) in a first ruling on Monday at Shaoxing Intermediate People's Court in East China's Zhejiang Province.

The 34-year-old, a legal worker at Kangdeli Health Care Co Ltd in Xinchang County of the province, was arrested in November last year on suspicion of producing and selling counterfeit drugs.

A total of 381,000 fake Viagra pills and 1.4 million counterfeit Cialis tablets, worth a combined total of 241 million yuan (US$29 million) on the market, were also seized from workshops at Kangdeli Health Care, according to a release from the court...

...Some of the fake pills were found to contain medical starch, which does not have any curative effect and others had too much sildenafil, the main ingredient of Viagra, and is detrimental to health in large doses, said the release...

...Erectile dysfunction drugs such as Viagra and Cialis were approved by the Ministry of Health and State Food and Drug Administration as prescription drugs in 1999.

In December last year, seven people in Zhengzhou in Central China's Henan Province were accused of selling 9.7 million fake tablets of Viagra.

Source: http://www.danwei.org/ip_and_law/10_years_in_jail_for_fake_viag.php