3 Arrested After Sales of Fake Viagra

Two men and a woman were arrested Friday on suspicion of conspiring to sell counterfeit Viagra pills that apparently were almost as good as the real thing, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services said.

“Tests showed the pills had the same active ingredient as Viagra, and on a scale of 1 to 10, they were about a 9,” said Don Ashton, a health services official. “This stuff should work.”

Ironically, Ashton said, the counterfeit pills were more expensive for consumers than the real ones.

He said the counterfeits were being sold wholesale by the suspects for about $5 apiece, but then were resold on the street for $10 to $20 apiece. He said prescription Viagra usually retails for about $9 a pill.

Ashton said a monthlong investigation was launched by a Los Angeles County Health Authority task force after Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of the drug, which is used to treat impotence, reported that counterfeits were being sold on the street.

He said that after undercover agents bought $7,000 worth of the small blue pills without a doctor’s prescription, the two men from Glendale and the woman from Irvine were arrested at their homes.

Ashton said that because the task force hopes to snare more, higher-level suspects, the identities of the three under arrest are not being made public.

“The people we got are not the top guys,” he said. “Those three are middle-level.”

The task force includes personnel from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the county Department of Health Services, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Medi-Cal Fraud Division of the state Department of Health Services.