In a week-long international operation, marking a major crackdown against online dealers of counterfeit drug in Northern Ireland, illegal medicines worth £150,000 have been seized!

The worldwide crackdown, overall, resulted in the seizure of unlicensed drugs worth over a whopping €5 million from across the globe, as well as the shuttering of nearly 13,495 websites dealing in illegal drugs.

In the operation, which was code-named Operation Pangea IV, as many as 51,000 black market prescription drugs and medicines - including steroids, fake diazepam, the recently-banned mephedrone, and pain relief injections – were recovered.

Operation Pangea IV was the fourth crackdown to be coordinated by Interpol and the World Health Organisation against websites supplying illegitimate and unsafe medicines. Among the national medicines boards, law enforcement agencies, internet service providers and payment systems providers involved in targeting the online sale of counterfeit drugs were the Irish Medicines Board (JMB), the Revenue’s Customs Service, and the Garda; along with authorities in over 80 countries.

Expressing the opinion that it is “vital that these organised criminals are targeted,” Nimo Ahmed, of the MHRA, lashed out against the bogus pharma industry saying that not only do the manufacturers make dangerous drug, they also rake “millions of pounds in the process”!