Hi-Tech CEO sentenced for fake drugs
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
Jared R. Wheat is ordered to serve 50 months in federal prison and must forfeit $3 million gained through the production and marketing of counterfeit drugs - including Xanax, Vioxx and Viagra - with other executives from Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals. Company founder and CEO Wheat, along with his co-conspirators, established a drug manufacturing facility in rural Belize that "complied with none of the sanitary, hygienic or quality-control regulations issued by the FDA," and subsequently sold unauthorized drugs online without a prescription, the Department of Justice says in a Feb. 3 release. Judge Jack T. Camp of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia also places the Norcross, Ga.-based supplement firm on five years' probation. A separate case in which Hi-Tech was charged with making false and misleading claims about its supplement products did not play into the criminal prosecution (1"The Tan Sheet" Aug. 25, 2008, p. 7)
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