US security expert claims Internet pharmacy makes $150M from spam

A study of the producers of spam e-mail messages has found that the biggest operators in the illicit sector are making considerable profits from the sale of counterfeit or imitation drugs, according to research carried out in the USA. Pat Peterson, the sponsor of the study, is an expert on anti-spam solutions and a fellow of the networking and communications technology and services giant, Cisco Systems. He has spent 18 months examining the e-mails sent via Storm, a type of computer virus that allows a person's computer to be secretly used to send mass e-mails. One on-line pharmacy identified in the study, which claims to be based in Canada, has an annual turnover of $150.0 million offering product which really originates in Mumbai, India, or Shanghai, China.

Among the study's findings is a shift from traditional fraud involving the offering of a service for the purpose of stealing a person's credit card details, to actually supplying a plausible imitation of the product. In the case of branded prescription medicines, such as the most commonly-touted erectile dysfunction drug, Pfizer's Viagra (sildenafil citrate), the more entrepreneurial spammers are offering fake tablets containing between 100% and 110% of the active ingredient.