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Woman submits guilty plea to selling counterfeit Viagra in Maryland
A woman from Waldorf, Maryland, faces a possible 10 years imprisonment and $2 million fine after pleading guilty to trafficking in counterfeit Viagra tablets.
Sarah Anne Balsey Knott, aged 28, is alleged to have used the website “Craiglist” to sell the fake pills, along with other means such as email and telephone. Her plea agreement states that she was selling the counterfeit pharmaceutical tablets from between December 2009 until January 2011.
Her scam was uncovered after an investigator for Pfizer Corporation contacted the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to report three undercover purchases of Viagra through a listing on Craigslist by a seller who identified herself as Knott. Between July 20 and November 16, 2010, an undercover postal inspector purchased 25 counterfeit Viagra tablets from Knott, after initially contacting Knott through email, then meeting her in person. Knott also gave the undercover inspector an extra 50 pills to sell, and wanted the undercover inspector to pay her $250 as her share of the sales she thought that the undercover inspector would make.
After a search warrant was issued on 6 January 2011, agents discovered a staggering 45,684 counterfeit tablets at Knott’s address. Checks were carried out via electronic records and it is estimated that through the sale of these fake tablets, Knott gained $8,425.
“People who buy pills from strangers over the internet have no idea what they may be ingesting,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Just because it looks like the actual drug doesn’t mean that it is the real thing.”