Counterfeit drug manufacturers are getting smarter and smarter about producing the drugs that they pump out, many of them taking advantage of cutting-edge technology and solutions that simply weren’t available to counterfeiters in the past to refine the products they make, to legitimize the products that they make, and to innovate in the world of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, for example.
At the same time, the black market for steroids has always and likely will always have a bit of a stigma to it. Those that operate in this world understand that they are facing an uphill battle trying to encourage users to leverage these kinds of drugs, recognizing that folks – most folks, anyway – aren’t going to be all that excited about popping pills that they cannot independently verify as 100% safe and 100% effective.
Sure, they continue to be able to produce pretty significant sales just by offering drugs to those willing to take a risk with the substances that they pump into their bodies. But those seeking to improve their profits have to be much craftier and much more savvy – and many of them are starting to steal the reputation of legitimate pharmaceutical operations to sell their counterfeit drugs more effectively.
Major pharmaceutical companies are asking the federal government to step in
Major pharmaceutical operations all over the world have always had to worry about knockoff manufacturers stealing their drug formulas, stealing they are technology, and stealing their research – but now they have to worry about counterfeiters stealing their name and their reputation in an effort to sell their phony drugs, too.
One major pharmaceutical operation, AMGEN, has been hit harder than others when it comes to the phony steroid world.
Counterfeit drug manufacturers have been establishing companies and declaring them “subsidiaries” of this major pharmaceutical operation, lending legitimacy to drugs and drug manufacturing practices that are anything but. Consumers, drawn in by the big-name that these kinds of fake drugs are attached to, are moving forward with purchases of these counterfeit drugs – and many of them are learning the hard way that these steroids are anything but legitimate and actually put their short and long-term health at risk and at jeopardy.
One particular drug counterfeiter, a Mr. Tyler Bauman (who went by the nickname White Pride” in the steroid community), was incredibly aggressive with this kind of brand hijacking tactic.
He established a company known as ONYX Pharmaceuticals, advertised it as a subsidiary of the AMGEN Pharmaceutical company, and promised that the steroids that he had to offer were not only 100% safe and 100% effective but also 100% backed by the guarantee and reputation of this major pharmaceutical operation.
With more than $120 billion in value, the AMGEN operation is one of the most influential in the world of pharmaceuticals – and that lended a tremendous amount of credibility and credence to the phony counterfeit drugs that were peddled by Bauman.
Lawyers for this pharmaceutical company were incredibly aggressive about going after this fake operation, but many of the representatives of this pharmaceutical company also began to reach out to the Justice Department in the United States as well as other federal agencies (like ATF) to make sure that the counterfeit drug producer was shut down just as quickly as humanly possible and that he suffered significant consequences for this kind of brand hijacking.
And while the federal government moved quickly to assert and establish the legitimacy of the AMGEN company and the illegitimacy of the OYNX Pharmaceuticals “subsidiaries”, it’s unlikely that this will be the last time that this kind of strategy or tactic is taken advantage of in the counterfeit steroid and pharmaceutical drug world.
