Online  scammers are taking their game to another level, seeking to take advantage of those who have purchased their medications from an online pharmacy.

The Food and Drug Administration warned last week that scammer’s posing as FDA agents have been calling online pharmacy customers, demanding that they pay specified fines for purchasing their drugs online or over the phone.

According to the FDA

The criminals call the victims — who in most cases previously purchased drugs over the Internet or via “telepharmacies” — and identify themselves as FDA special agents or other law enforcement officials. The criminals inform the victims that purchasing drugs over the Internet or the telephone is illegal, and that law enforcement action will be pursued unless a fine or fee ranging from $100 to $250,000 is paid. Victims often also have fraudulent transactions placed against their credit cards.

The criminals always request the money be sent by wire transfer to a designated location, usually in the Dominican Republic. If victims refuse to send money, they are often threatened with a search of their property, arrest, deportation, physical harm, and or incarceration.

Anybody that gets a call simular to this should refuse the demand and call the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations Metro Washington Field Office at (800) 521-5783 to report the crime.

Remember, this is the reason you should never order meds from spam pharmacies that are unproven and malicious. If you need to order medications online, you should order them from safe verified pharmacies, that will give you quality medication and keep your information safe.

What if millions of spam e-mails were sent out every day with your name — or your company’s name — on them? What do you think that would do to your reputation?

Unfortunately, this is a nightmare that many legitimate Canadian pharmacies are living today.

As ITBusiness.ca reports:

“To most people, ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ means just another spam e-mail message promising cheap Viagra pills that is deleted in microseconds – but to David Zimmer, it’s a reputation nightmare for his business.

“Zimmer is the owner of Winnipeg-based The Canadian Pharmacy, a small company that legitimately sells pharmaceuticals over the Internet to American customers…

“But when his company is confused with the almost identically-named spammer group, his reputation takes a drubbing. ‘It’s a big pain for us,’ he says. He says he gets inundated with complaints from angry victims of these spammers who haven’t received their medication.”

The most frustrating part is, these spam operations aren’t based in Canada at all. The biggest, in fact, is the Russian-based organization that calls itself “Canadian Pharmacy.” It sends as many as 60 billion spam e-mails per day. It has been known to ship counterfeit and adulterated medications to unwitting consumers who order from its many sites.

Says Zimmer:

“I’ve considered changing our brand,” he says. “When people confuse us with Canadian Pharmacy, that hurts our ability to market ourselves by word of mouth.”

It doesn’t help matters that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has taken advantage of the confusion and tried to tar legitimate pharmacies with the same brush as rogue spammers — a dishonest but effective PR ploy that has duped more than a few members of the U.S. news media.

ScamWatch, an Australian government Web site dedicated to protecting consumers, offers the following five warning signs that you’ve received a pharmacy spam e-mail –

1. You receive an unsolicited email offering cheap or hard-to-get pills or treatments. Often, these emails will promote well-known drugs such as Prozac or Viagra.

2. The subject title of the email has nothing to do with the products on offer.

3. The words in the email are spelt incorrectly or have apostrophes and spaces in the middle of the words. This is done to try to avoid anti-spam filters.

4. The email or website will sell you drugs that you would normally need a prescription for, even if you don’t have a prescription.

5. The pharmacy’s website is based overseas or does not include a contact telephone number or street address.

The site also recommends the follow seven ways to protect yourself –

1. Use your common sense: the offer may be a scam.

2. Be very careful about offers for medicines, supplements or other treatments: always seek the advice of your health care professional.

3. Do not open suspicious or unsolicited emails (spam): delete them.

4. Do not click on any links in a spam email, or open any files attached to them.

5. Never call a telephone number that you see in a spam email.

6. Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.

7. Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website that you are not certain is genuine.

eSoft, a Web security company, researches urls across the Internet to provide up-to-the minute threat assessments on fraudulent sites, according to Richard Stiennon at Information Security Resources. The most notable development of the past week, eSoft reports, has been a spike in fake pharma sites.

Writes Stiennon:

eSoft has determined that there has been a major spike in fraudulent pharmacy sites just this past week. Much like the fake SpySweeper site these pharma-fraud sites present a convincing storefront that appears to sell Viagra and Cialis.

They have a sophisticated shopping cart system and take your money but do not bother with actually fulfilling orders.

eSoft provided me with data on seven different templates they have discovered. The quantity is amazing. In four days last week they detected:

1,104 canadian_pharm_light_blue
993 canadian_pharm_blue
27 top_pharmacy
23 canadian_pharm_white
18 health_sol
6 canadian_pharm_blue2
1 canadian_pharm_p_images

That is 543 of these sites per day over four days — and only for these seven templates.

eSoft reports that many of these sites (one of the suspect templates is pictured at left) can be traced to the Russian mafia. Concludes Stiennon:

“If the Russian Mafia is involved expect to see these stolen credit cards used in so called carding schemes where counterfeit credit cards are manufactured using the data collected from these sites.

“End users will have to be very careful when using their credit cards to purchase anything. The threats to ecommerce are escalating.”

We’ve written previously about online pharmacy scams that include the use of fake seals from organizations like PharmacyChecker.com, VIPPS and the CIPA.

I came across a case this week where someone was tempted by this ruse. From a Q&A column in a Florida newspaper:

“For months I’ve been getting online pharmacy e-mails and am skeptical about their legitimacy. Claim to be U.S.-based store, no prescription needed. Even lists codeine and OxyContin as well as Viagra. It’s tempting but am very leery of an illegal scam.” — Ted P., Port Charlotte.

Ted’s e-mail solicitation was short and direct: “You can buy any meds you need! Forget about prescriptions and doctors. Save your money now! Go visit http://pillzcctop.com.”

The site — US Healthcare Inc. — claims, “We care about your health.” Displayed at the bottom are both the Better Business Bureau logo and the PharmacyChecker.com seal. The latter indicates that a Web site markets prescription drugs dispensed from a pharmacy in good standing. There’s no phone number or address for US Healthcare.

Not only does it offer the painkiller OxyContin, but the depressants Valium and Xanax as well as the stimulant Ritalin. All are among the most commonly abused prescription drugs, according to the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.

William Raggio with PharmacyChecker.com confirmed the seal on the site is an invalid image and that the company has never even applied for qualification. Karen Nalvin at the BBB West Florida confirmed its logo was a fake since it didn’t link to the BBB when clicked.

It’s the easiest thing in the world for a rogue pharmacy to grab a PharmacyChecker, VIPPs, CIPA or BBB seal from a legitimate Web site and then place it on their own. It literally takes just a few clicks of the mouse. The wonders of Web technology, right?

The good news is, it’s not too difficult to check to make sure a seal is being used legitimately. These verification authorities generally have lists of all authorized pharmacies on their sites, and if they don’t, they will respond to your call or e-mail.

Of course, as a member of our site, you don’t have to worry about this — because we do this background check for you. We guarantee that all pharmacies in our network have been approved by PharmacyChecker.com and other verification authorities, and that all are licensed and accredited in their home countries.

The FBI recently published an excellent article on its Web site on the topic of Internet pharmacy safety. Here it is in its entirety:

DON’T PUT YOUR HEALTH
In the Hands of Crooks

It couldn’t be easier—ordering prescription drugs online with a few clicks of the mouse and having them delivered right to your door, without ever having to see a doctor.

But is it safe? Is it legal?

Often not. And you need to know the risks.

Yes, there are plenty of legitimate U.S. pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies (including online ones) that follow all the laws and regulations and put public safety first.

But there are many that don’t—they are just out to make a fast buck at your expense. These shady businesses fill orders without prescriptions. They pay doctors just to take a quick glance at your brief medical questionnaire. They don’t know if you are drug-addicted, underage, or have another condition that their medications could make worse. And they don’t care.

Worse yet, the products they peddle are questionable, at best. The drugs may be way past their expiration date. They may be counterfeit, mislabeled, adulterated, or contaminated. And they may well be made from suspect raw materials in underground laboratories in the U.S. and abroad, far from the safety-conscious eyes of the Food and Drug Administration.

Part of the problem is that these illegal pharmacies are all over the Internet. More than 80,000 “portal” websites currently sell ad space for these medications and link to one of more than 1,400 “anchor” websites that allow customers to place orders through illegal pharmacies. You don’t even have to search for these offers—they often come straight to your inbox as e-mail spam, enticing you with a cornucopia of drugs on the cheap.

Are there ways to tell whether an online pharmacy is legal? Definitely, and here’s what to look for. Legitimate pharmacies:

• Require a prescription from a licensed doctor, usually by mail (if they accept a fax copy, they will always call your doctor to verify the prescription);
• Make you submit a detailed medical history;
• Clearly state their payment, privacy, and shipping fees on their sites; and
• Use secure or encrypted website connections for transactions.

Many legitimate online pharmacies are also certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy—check its website for a listing. Bear in mind, some of the larger Internet pharmacies may not be certified because of their already well-recognized names.

To help protect you, the FBI has made Internet pharmacy fraud one of its top health care fraud priorities. We work—and train—with federal investigators from our partner agencies. We also work closely with state and local law enforcement, and, because many illegal online pharmacies have global connections, we often coordinate with our overseas partners.

Just one example of a major crackdown: in August 2007, a San Diego grand jury handed down a 313-count indictment against 18 people, charging them with operating an illegal online pharmacy that netted more than $126 million over a two-year period. Incredibly, this network—which included everyone from doctors and druggists to credit card processors and affiliated websites that advertised the illegal wares—allegedly received over a million Internet orders from customers in all 50 states.

Our bottom-line advice: do your homework and steer clear of illegal Internet pharmacies, even if the prices are tempting. It’s your health, after all.

The one important caveat we would add is that while the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy is an excellent resource for verifying U.S. pharmacies, it does not certify Canadian pharmacies.

To identify legitimate, licensed Canadian pharmacies, the most respected verification sources are the Canadian International Pharmacy Association and PharmacyChecker.com. PharmacyChecker is the verification authority used by Google.

If you are receiving unwanted e-mails from no-prescription pharmacies, particularly from the same source again and again, you obviously want to stop those messages from appearing in your inbox.

So when the message you receive concludes with an offer to delete you from the mailing list, it’s tempting to click the “unsubscribe” link or reply to the e-mail with a “remove me” request, isn’t it?

Don’t do it!

Most pharmacy spammers send out well over a million spams every day to lists scraped and stolen from all over the Internet. These spammers have no idea which of the addresses on their lists are functional and currently in use, and which are not.

Until you click a link or send a reply, that is.

As Spamhaus explains:

By sending back a ‘remove me’ opt-out request you are confirming to the spammer that your address is live, you are confirming that your ISP doesn’t use spam filters, you are confirming that you actually open and read spams, and that you follow the spammer’s instructions such as “click this to be removed”. You are the perfect candidate for more spam.

A live address is a valuable address, spammers sell live addresses at a premium as “confirmed deliverable” addresses to yet more spammers. If you don’t want your address to end up on endless spammers’ lists, distributed on spam CDROMs to spammers worldwide, do not confirm to the spammer that your address is real and working.

Never Opt-out of lists you did not Opt-in to in the first place.

U.S. laws are strict against sending unsolicited bulk email. If someone is spamming you, chances are the perpetrator is based overseas and, in many cases, linked to criminal syndicates.

Believe us, you don’t want to deal with people like that — even in a seemingly innocuous e-mail reply.

It’s a hypothetical scenario that we’ve heard time and again since 9-11. A suspected terrorist has been captured who has information that authorities need to thwart an imminent attack — such as the detonation of a nuclear bomb in an American city.

How far should we go to get their information? Should authorities be able to ignore Miranda rights? Detain without a warrant? Even torture the suspect?

It’s a difficult question, one with no easy answers. And in the world of spam-fighting, we are facing similar questions.

As Network World reports, a private company may have recently found the key to disabling one of the world’s largest spam networks, dubbed the Kraken network. Among other things, the Kraken network disseminates millions of spam emails advertising illegal online pharmacies.

TippingPoint, an IT security company, recently set a trap for the Kraken network — one that looks like it might have worked. But because of ethical and privacy considerations, they decided not to spring it.

According to Network World:

The Kraken … is a huge network of personal computers that have been infected with software that turns them into zombie systems under the control of a master program – a botnet. The Kraken botnet is used by criminals to generate spam.

TippingPoint researchers Pedram Amini and Cody Pierce “created a fake Kraken command-and-control server … honeypot that waited for connections from PCs infected with the bot.”
As a result, the scientists “monitored the incoming communications from Kraken bots for seven days.” They “listened and collected statistics for a week, and filtered out [for] the IP addresses and then the systems.”

Then “Pierce wrote code that would let him redirect infected PCs, or better yet, use the bot’s built-in update mechanism – something most malware includes – to remove Kraken.”

However, management at TippingPoint forbade the researchers from activating the cleaning code. They argued that although it might be nice to interfere with the botnet, the law in the U.S. forbids unauthorized access to anyone’s computers, including zombies.

That’s right — because it’s illegal to access a computer without authorization from the owner, TippingPoint decided not to fight fire with fire. It’s a classic example of bringing a knife to a gunfight — operating under a more restrictive set of rules than our enemy.

It’s difficult to win when the battle is not being fought on an even playing field. Which has been exactly the argument in favor of dismissing niceties like the Geneva Convention when dealing with terrorists.

Network World argues that TippingPoint’s decision was the right one, for two reasons:

1. Releasing programs that modify other people’s systems without permission, even with the best of intentions, is a prescription for disaster…

2. Accessing someone else’s computer without permission is illegal. Period.

What do you think?

Some so-called no prescription pharmacies aren't actually pharmacies at all.

Scam pharmacies don’t all sell bad or counterfeit drugs.  That’s right — some of them don’t sell any drugs at all!

And scam pharmacies — many of them billing themselves as “no prescription” pharmacies — don’t always use your credit card numbers to charge you for drugs, either.  That’s because some of them don’t even have a merchant account that allows them to process credit cards!

You see, getting a merchant account isn’t easy, and takes a little time.  And fly-by-night operators like things to be easy.

So what these so-called pharmacies will do is put up a quick-and-dirty Web site using a free template and begin sending out spam e-mails to attempt to draw you to the site.  Once you’re there, they will pretend to sell you medications with no prescription — and they will take your credit card number and other personal information to pretend to charge your credit card.

And of course, they would charge you if they could — but they can’t, since they don’t have a merchant account.

So instead, they just hang on to your credit card information for future use.  Say, to buy a new high-definition TV — or a dozen of them.  Or for some other scam they’re concocting.

Of course, we hope you’ve already learned enough to avoid this kind of no prescription pharmacy site, but in the event you’ve given out your card number and you’re having second thoughts or concerns, here’s what you should do:

After you place an order, give your bank a call two or three days later to see if it was charged. If it has not been charged, you should immediately call the pharmacy to ask why.  

If you don’t get a good explanation, you probably need to cut up that credit card and get a new one.

canadian pharmacy spam

Spam Trackers has an informative article exposing some of the tricks and lies used by online pharmacies that send out spam e-mails. As we’ve reported before, very few people open these e-mails — but those who do are at risk of purchasing counterfeit drugs or having their money (or even their identities) stolen.

Among the deceptions used by these pharmacy scammers, as revealed by Spam Trackers:

• The sites falsely claim to take your credit card over a secure connection, but the protocol is unsecure http.
• The sites show a picture of a Verisign certificate, but it is fraudulent.
• The sites claim to have approval from the American Drug Administration (ADA) — a non-existent entity. The ADA logo used is a knockoff of the FDA logo.
• The sites display the PharmacyChecker.com seal — but have not been approved by PharmacyChecker.com.
• The sites display a CIDA seal — claiming to be a member of the Canadian International Drug Association, a non-existent entity. The logo is a knockoff of the logo of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA)
• The sites claim to be based in Canada — but are actually based in Russia and other countries known for rogue pharmacies.

When you join No Prescription Needed, you don’t have to worry about being scammed by these rogue pharmacies. Every pharmacy in our network has been approved by the real PharmacyChecker.com, as well as organizations such as CIPA.

So, what are you waiting for? Join us today!