Scams against online pharmacy customers generally fall into two types:

1. Asking customers to pay by Western Union then failing to deliver the goods (this is not to say that all companies that only take Western Union are scammers). This is a particularly common scam used against people who buy controlled medicines by clicking on links in spam e-mails they have received; often the online pharmacy disappears shortly after the transaction, if they have a website at all. Buying from an individual with only an e-mail address, not a website, who will inevitably request payment by Western Union, is even more likely to lead to money being sent and nothing being received in return.
2. Playing on people's fear that by ordering from online pharmacies they are doing something illegal. Again, this is more commonly used against people who have bought controlled medicines. One increasingly common version of this type of scam has been practised a lot recently by “Golden Meds” – a definite scam operation long listed on our “blacklist” section of pharmacies to avoid (even before they started this particular scam we are proud to say.) In this scam, which I shall call the customs scare scam, the customer of the criminal online pharmacy receives a phone call instead of their order. The phone call is from someone who claims to be from that country's Customs Office (this has been used mainly against US residents so far). The fake Customs Officer then tells the online pharmacy customer that their medicines have been confiscated and they must pay a fine immediately by credit card over the phone. Another variant is that the customs officer will claim to be from the country from which the medicines were shipped (this serves to help explain the inevitably poor English of the customs officer and makes the request for money more plausible, particularly if the country he or she claims to be from is known to be a corrupt hellhole). The foreign customs officer demands money, claiming that they have confiscated the goods after searching packages destined for the United States (or whatever country the hapless online pharmacy customer lives in), and that he or she was going to contact United States Customs Service and inform them of the customer’s attempted import of controlled medicines unless the customer pays them a large amount of money immediately. In both cases the customs officers will inevitably be conmen working for the online pharmacy from where the customer ordered. Customs officers, nor anyone working for the government will ever ask for money on the spot. Furthermore, as explained in my post entitled, “Is it legal to buy controlled substances over the internet for delivery to the US?” online pharmacy customers currently have little reason to fear prosecution for importing medicines that they have a prescription for. Prosecutions of individuals for importing controlled medicines have long been extremely rare in the United States and other developed countries. However these scams play on people's fears that they have broken the law, and so unfortunately are likely to continue to be used.

- Jack A. Wilson, February 13th 2009

The content on this page does not constitute legal advice and is for informational purposes only. You should not act upon the information presented on this website without seeking the advice of qualified legal counsel.

If you wish to quote a few sentences from this page please give full attibution and a link back here from your page. Protected by copyalert.com.