The cost is less than 1 cent, and the profit rate is surprisingly close to 9000%; Known as "imported from abroad", it is actually produced in an underground warehouse that is difficult for outsiders to find in the depths of the mountains. ...

On August 29th, Loudi City, Hunan Province disclosed a case of fake diet pills worth hundreds of millions of yuan. After more than half a year's investigation, the local police, with the help of Alibaba Big Data, smashed gangs that manufacture and sell toxic and harmful fake diet pills in more than 20 provinces in Henan, Anhui and Hunan provinces. The police are trying their best to recover nearly 100 kinds of "brands" and hundreds of thousands of boxes of fake diet pills that have flowed to the whole country.

According to the reporter's investigation, there are hundreds of millions of consumers of diet pills in China. It is by taking advantage of this huge market that the illegal sale of diet pills online has developed into a black and gray industry in recent years, and it is getting worse.

"slimming capsule"

Illegal addition of toxic and harmful drugs

20 kilometers away from Anhua County, Yiyang City, Hunan Province, backed by a cliff, a capsule filling machine, various powders and capsule shell are piled up in the underground warehouse of a four-story building. With these "equipments", you can produce 10000 counterfeit slimming capsules every hour.

Recently, police in Loudi, Hunan Province investigated and dealt with the production den of fake diet pills and seized nearly 600,000 capsules on the spot. After sampling inspection by the food and drug supervision department, it was confirmed that most of them contained sibutramine, a toxic and harmful illegal additive explicitly prohibited by the state.

According to the information provided by the Food and Drug Administration, sibutramine is an appetite suppressant in the central nervous system, which may cause serious side effects such as hypertension, increased heart rate, anorexia and abnormal liver function. After taking sibutramine-containing diet pills, it can cause nervous disorder, even death, which has been banned in China.

Wu Rong (pseudonym), a white-faced, gentle "post-90s" man from Anhua County, is the producer of these toxic and harmful fake slimming capsules.

According to him, he started selling fake diet pills two years ago. At first, I only went offline in the WeChat business circle and took the goods for retail. Although I know that the diet pills I am exposed to are from the wrong source, they sell well, with a gross profit of 200,000 to 300,000 a year.

At the beginning of 20 17, Wu Rong, who was not satisfied with being a "shrimp", decided to make harmful fake diet pills himself. In the underground warehouse of relatives deep in the mountains, he used wooden boards to partition 10 square meters as a production workshop.

Wu Rong bought semi-automatic capsule filling machine, sealing machine, coding machine and other tools from Guangdong and Zhejiang. He randomly combined rice flour, flour, hawthorn powder, bitter melon powder and mint powder, added sibutramine powder, and finally filled it into capsule shell by a filling machine to make a "slimming capsule".

Wu Rong said that when buying machines and raw materials, he and businessmen never asked each other about their qualifications. In fact, he has neither obtained the relevant administrative license nor engaged in the pharmaceutical industry.

"The raw materials are mixed and can be eaten. (Production) technology is not brilliant. " Wu Rong also admitted that the capsules he made by himself had symptoms such as anorexia, dry mouth, dizziness and insomnia.

Wu Rong knew that sibutramine was toxic, but he still used it to illegally produce fake diet pills. From the beginning, he came up with a plan to get rid of the golden cicada. He registered a fake company in Guangzhou and Shenzhen respectively, leaving fake phone numbers and micro signals. , and contact and trade through social networks. There are nearly 10 mobile phone numbers before and after, which are frequently changed and never used for calls, but the buyer is diverted to two micro-signals.

Rough production

The profit margin is close to 9000%

Alina Zhang (pseudonym), born in Weishi County, Henan Province 1992, is the youngest but the most profitable person in this toxic and harmful weight loss product production gang. He established the WeChat business system of diet pills, set up "rules of the game" to control the overall situation, and was responsible for the distribution of more than 20 provinces across the country.

Alina Zhang imported harmful slimming capsules from Wu Rong and others, and provided design drawings for manufacturers to produce packaging boxes, and then bought their own medicine bottles for packaging. In order to get higher profits, he carefully designed more than a dozen "brands". "Imported from abroad" and "Chinese herbal medicine essence" are the most commonly used words in his new products.

Alina Zhang confessed that when a consumer questioned "why Chinese medicine doesn't taste like Chinese medicine", Alina Zhang asked Wu Rong to buy angelica powder and mix it with raw materials to make it taste like Chinese medicine.

There are many brands and many loopholes. The packaging boxes, medicine bottles and anti-counterfeiting labels of fake diet pills in Alina Zhang are all fake-the QR code is the insole. For the same product, the font size of packaging is different, some packaging has typos, and the shelf life of packaging and medicine bottles is also different.

Alina Zhang is well aware of the dangers of selling fake diet pills. In order to test the effect of fake diet pills, he will try them offline. Once, after an off-line trial, he was hospitalized directly because of his strong medicine, but this did not stop Alina Zhang from selling harmful diet pills.

The police told reporters that the cost of fake diet pills produced by Wu Rong is less than 1 cent/pill, and it is sold for 3 to 5 cents. Alina Zhang buys goods from Wu Rong and other channels and resells them through layer-by-layer distribution. The highest rate can be 10 yuan, and the profit rate is as high as 900% to 1.900%. If the profit is calculated from Wu Rong's "private factory", the profit rate is close to 9000%.

According to preliminary statistics, from March 2065438 to July 2007, Wu Rong was arrested, and the amount involved in the production of fake diet pills was nearly 10 million yuan. Alina Zhang sold 30,000 to 40,000 boxes of fake diet pills, involving more than RMB10,000, and the total amount involved was more than RMB 30 million. Counting the same link, the total amount involved in this case is over 100 million yuan.

Polish his eyes.

Beware of counterfeit weight loss products

20 16 12, Alibaba's platform management department discovered that there was a diet drug called "Little Green" on Taobao in Hunan Province through the big data food and drug model, and the random inspection found that it contained illegal ingredients, so it pushed the clue to the police in Loudi, Hunan Province. With the help of Alibaba Big Data, Loudi police finally caught Wu Rong and Alina Zhang's gang engaged in manufacturing and selling fake diet pills.

Most people who sell fake diet pills "complain" that there are too many deliveries on social platforms, and others like screenshots of transaction records, small videos of a bunch of red bills and various scenes of eating, drinking and having fun. Some people are madly in love with their peers who work hard 1 month and earn thousands of dollars. Some people are paying attention to luxury cars and mansions, shouting that "an annual salary of one million is not a dream".

Wang, deputy mayor of Loudi City and director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, believes that criminals engaged in the fake diet pills industry often know consumers' psychology and business operation mode very well, conceal their identities through strict organizations like pyramid schemes, and distribute them through national general agents and provincial agents, which has strong anti-reconnaissance ability and is very difficult to crack down on offline supervision.

Legal experts said that the weight-loss capsule products involved in this case were considered by consumers as drugs and were called weight-loss drugs, but they were not drugs in terms of professional division, some belonged to health care products, and some were recognized as food. The state has strict regulations on the online sale of drugs, including the Interim Provisions on the Examination and Approval of Internet Drug Trading Services and the Measures for the Administration of Internet Drug Information Services. However, the laws and regulations specifically for online sales of health care products, health care drugs and food need to be further improved.

When consumers buy slimming products, they should clearly distinguish whether they are buying health food or medicine. If it is a drug, there must be a "National Medicine Zhunzi approval number"; If it is a health food, the approval number of "Shi Guojian Zi (Wei Shijian Zi)" should be printed on the outer packaging, and the approval number of regular drugs and health food can be found on the website of China Food and Drug Administration. If you feel suspicious about the weight loss products you bought, you can call the food and drug supervision complaint hotline for consultation and reflection.