Illegal diet pills seized in China
Chinese police have raised a factory that was creating counterfeit diet pills after they received information from a bereaved mother whose daughter died after taking the drugs.
Law enforcement officials busted into a factory in Keohsing, which appeared to be producing legal drugs. In actuality, it was creating illegal slimming pills made from a mixture of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and Western medicine.
The key suspect in the case is believed to have looked up information about the production of diet pills on the internet and then used the information to create his own pills. Many illegal companies have done this, discovering the ingredients of popular pills like Xenical or Reductil and then trying to recreate the drugs themselves.
Police believe that the criminals were selling the diet pills for NT$2,500 for a box of 80 and altogether seized 200 kilograms of pills, worth nearly Nt$100,000. They added that it was possible that the suspects made profits from the diet pills exceeding NT$15 million.
The crackdown came about after they were helped by the mother of a girl who took illegal slimming tablets that were believed to contain amphetermines. It is thought that the drug affected her psychologically, causing her to fall from a building to her death 4 years ago.
Since then, her mother has been determined to discover other groups running illegal factories or illegally selling diet pills and other weight loss tablets and has been providing tips to the police about them. The police have warned that she could now be at risk from the suspects, who are thought to be seeking revenge against her.
Since the raid, she has had her home broken into 8 times and property stolen, forcing her to move house.
The trade in illegal diet pills has grown massively with the advent of the internet. Criminal gangs have been encouraging factories, especially in South East Asia, to manufacture counterfeit drugs when are often sold as the genuine article on the net. Many websites claim to offer genuine Xenical or Reductil, which are in fact poor copies of the real thing. They are sold without prescription, putting customer’s lives at risk as both Xenical and Reductil should only be used under a doctor’s supervision.
The counterfeit drugs also often contain dangerous chemicals. There has also been concern in the US and UK about Chinese herbal remedies which are marketed as weight loss tablets but which have been discovered to contain undeclared ingredients or caused side effects.
The suspects are now awaiting trial and can expect a substantial jail term and fine.
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