“The point is to make them realize that there’s no sense from a business perspective in counterfeiting our products, because if we find you, we’re taking your money away,” says John P. Clark, a 55-year-old U.S. law enforcement veteran who now serves as New York-based Pfizer’s chief security officer.
Pfizer estimates it has prevented about 58 million counterfeit pills from reaching patients since 2004, worth more than $860 million, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Tougher Stance
Clark spent 28 years in law enforcement, starting with border patrols where he “learned Spanish and rode a horse,” and ending as the top civil servant for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for stemming the flow of narcotics into the U.S. and the flow of drug money out.
He joined Pfizer in 2008 to deploy the same tactic against counterfeiters he used to fight cocaine traffickers, gun runners and money launderers: pursuing civil lawsuits and asset seizures.
Martin Hickman was one of the first test cases of Pfizer’s tougher stance. Between 2003 and 2007 he sold more than 6 million pounds ($8.9 million) of bogus Viagra and another impotence drug on about 150 websites, according to Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA.
Hickman used the money to buy a four-bedroom farmhouse near Manchester, a 2.5 million-pound flat in Chelsea, a villa near Marbella, Spain, a Bentley Arnage and two Range Rovers. He also had an insurance valuation for jewelry totaling 267,000 pounds, including a diamond-studded gold Rolex watch and a Piaget watch worth about 100,000 pounds each, and a Louis Vuitton bracelet valued at 25,000 pounds, according to Pfizer.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Pfizer Spies Find Spanish Villa, Gold Rolex in Fake Viagra Bust - BusinessWeek
via businessweek.com
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