A Manitoba man and pioneer in the Internet pharmacy industry was arrested in Miami on charges of selling counterfeit medicines, a report says.
The Wall Street Journal says 38-year-old Andrew Strempler appeared Thursday in a federal court in Miami.
It says he could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the three charges against him.
The Journal quotes a court clerk as saying that Strempler is expected to be arraigned next week.
The report said Strempler’s former company, RxNorth.com, sold and shipped fake and otherwise misbranded drugs to American customers under the false pretense that the products were safe and legal.
It said the sales occurred between early 2005 and the summer of 2006.
This isn’t Strempler’s first run-in with counterfeit drug allegations. In October 2009, Strempler lost his credentials to practice in Manitoba after a three-year probe into allegations he sold counterfeit drugs to the U.S. He was charged with professional misconduct earlier in 2009 by the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association.
The allegations were brought to light after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said they had suspicions about Strempler’s Manitoba-based company, saying in August 2006 that lab tests of intercepted shipments found counterfeits of widely prescribed drugs such as Lipitor and Celebrex.
-- Canadian Press, Free Press staff
Andrew Strempler is former President and Chief Executive Officer of Mediplan Health Consulting Inc. and RxNorth.com which he founded in 1999. [1] Strempler also helped establish the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) in November 2002. The company was sold in part in 2007 to the CanadaDrugs.com Group of Companies, the effective date of change for service provided to customers was January 31, 2008. [2]
He also helped form the Manitoba Internet Pharmacists Association (MIPA) in 2003 and sat as Vice-Chairman on the Board of Directors for the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce.
Mr. Strempler's company, RxNorth.com, was found by the US Food and Drug Administration to be selling counterfeit medicines to customers in the United States.[3] In 2010, Mr. Strempler was stripped of his license to practice as a pharmacist in Manitoba for dealing in unapproved medicines, and had left Canada to "an island off the coast of Venezuela," where the Winnipeg Free Press located him "distributing generic drugs from an online pharmaceutical business."[3]
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Manitoba. Andrew grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba
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