Ozempic and Viagra at a discount? 95% of online pharmacies hide fraud and are controlled by mafias. Here's how to spot them.

“If it seems too good to be true, don’t doubt it, it’s a fraud,” says Manuel Martín, president of Anato, the National Association for Supporting Obesity Treatments, in response to the growing number of his members who report having been victims of fake online pharmacies: they bought expensive medications, such as Mounjaro or Ozempic , online, lured by a discount of more than 30% off the pharmacy price, but never received them.

Fraud in online drug sales is not the exception, but the norm. According to Luis Corrons, a cybersecurity expert at Gen Digital, 95% of online pharmacies operate illegally. The firm, which markets Avast, Norton, Avira, and AVG antivirus products, among other products, points out that Spain is the third country in the world to receive the most attempted scams of this type, behind France and Greece, and ahead of a country like the United States, with seven times more inhabitants and where medications are much more expensive.

"It's a business controlled by mafias that operate on a massive scale, like a large multinational company," warns Corrons. An investigation by the group revealed that just one of them manages 5,000 fraudulent pharmacy domains and 60 payment gateways through which transactions are made. "So, when we identify and block them, they switch to operating from another domain." This network, which Gen has dubbed MediPhanton, even has a customer service center with call centers staffed by operators.

Pharmaceutical scams are the sixth fastest-growing online fraud this year. Their driving force is "desperation and shame," Corrons notes. Thus, the most requested medications on these networks treat male erectile dysfunction (41% of purchases, with Viagra as the leading brand), antibiotics and antiparasitics, such as those used for sexually transmitted diseases, treatments for male pattern baldness, and weight-loss medications, with Mounjaro, Wegoby, and Ozempic as the leading brands.

Manuel Martín confirms that in the case of anti-obesity medications, the victims of fraud "are people who are already on treatment, and it's working for them. But they need to continue for several months and have already exhausted their savings to pay for them, because the drugs are very expensive." The fraud makes their situation even worse. "The bank ignores the problem because the user has actually authorized the transaction. And these fake pharmacies are companies located abroad, and even if you file a report, the police generally can't do anything."

“People are very used to buying creams or supplements online at deep discounts compared to pharmacy prices and don't realize that prescription drugs are a completely different product because they have regulated prices,” says Tomàs Moré, head of Security Strategy at the Catalan Cybersecurity Agency . Furthermore, “cybercriminals take advantage of the fact that pharmacies sometimes don't have stock of some drugs, such as those for obesity, which further encourages people to search for them online.”

According to a statement issued by the Civil Guard on Friday, the arrest took place on Tuesday at 6 p.m. when they found the suitcase full of this erectile dysfunction drug, which was valued at a total of 94,169.28 euros.

Gen Digital researchers point out that these networks promote their fake pharmacies with ads on adult content sites, and sometimes also on open platforms like Facebook or YouTube, and through massive spam campaigns.

They also use perfectly legitimate SEO techniques like any other business, Moré emphasizes, such as creating blogs on health topics, often using AI tools, in which they include links to their stores.

Other promotional methods are already illegal: they create fake pharmacy review websites, such as PharmReviews.net, and hack medical websites (of magazines, clinics, or educational centers, among others) to insert links to their stores. This allows them to simultaneously attract victims and gain an appearance of legitimacy in the eyes of search engines and cybersecurity companies that crawl the internet.

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The websites of MediPhantom's fake pharmacies have an impeccable appearance, and the customer shopping experience is similar to that of any online store. But there are warning signs, the first of which is the low prices. "We always tell our partners: Why, with regulated prices, would a laboratory sell its medicines more cheaply to a website than to a pharmacy?" says the president of Anato.

Moré emphasizes that "we should be alerted not to be asked for a prescription for a medication that requires one. No legitimate website would operate this way," Moré points out, "but rather they would ask for our doctor's registration number and the prescription number," because behind every online pharmacy there must be a registered pharmacist.

It's also common for these websites to promote cryptocurrency payments, even offering additional discounts, or through direct transfers and gift cards, to avoid bank card secure payment gateways blocking the transaction.

Be careful when giving personal information

Other signs of possible fraud include the inclusion of logos of authorities or associations (a common one is the PGEU, the European Pharmacy Association), health registries, or certification and antivirus entities, but with links that don't work.

Some fake websites are less professional than MediPhantom's, and may contain unnatural language and grammatical errors.

Another warning sign is the request for extensive personal information and extensive details about one's health status. "We're giving our data to criminals, and in many cases, they use it to extort the victim, threatening to spread the word about an illness they were trying to keep secret," Corrons points out.

Trusting a fake pharmacy can mean a financial loss far greater than the price of the medication we won't receive. Since this network has its own payment gateways (around 60 that attempt to mimic those of recognized financial institutions), when we pay, we provide them with our bank details, which they will use to drain our bank account.

Most fraudulent pharmacies don't ship the medication: the loss can be significant, but it's only financial. But some do ship a product, adding to the financial cost and increasing the health risk. "In the United States, in 2024, according to the DEA , one of these networks shipped medications containing fentanyl, causing at least nine deaths," warns the Gen executive.

When medications are received from online purchases, there are often signs that they could be counterfeit: criminals copy the logos and shape of the original pills, but the quality of the packaging and printing is poor, the batch number of the medications is not indicated, or the expiration dates appear unclear.

Sometimes the blisters appear slightly crumpled, and in the case of weight-loss injections, the liquid may be cloudy or slightly colored. These medications also require temperature control, Martín recalls, "so if we receive an ordinary package by courier, we already know it's fraudulent."

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Tomàs Moré points out that it is precisely the health risk that prompts the Catalan Public Health Agency and the Spanish Medicines Agency to monitor the internet to identify counterfeit pharmacies selling non-prescription drugs. The Spanish Agency has even created a website where you can check all the Spanish pharmacies that sell online… but only prescription drugs, because doing so with prescription drugs in Spain is illegal.