Pakistanis indicted in US for running illicit Internet sites
Two men arrested in international police operation
A federal American grand jury has indicted two Pakistanis on charges alleging they operated Internet sites that illegally shipped pharmaceuticals from Britain and Pakistan to customers worldwide, including the US.
The charges allege that since 2005 Sheikh Waseem Ul Haq and Tahir Saeed illegally shipped US$2m of pharmaceuticals, selling drugs to the value of nearly US$780,000 in the US.
The men were arrested in an international police operation. They were tracked through Germany to Britain, and arrested near London’s Heathrow Airport. They were subsequently extradited to the US, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had secured arrest warrants.
The indictment said that the defendants and others owned, operated, and conducted businesses called Waseem Enterprises and Harry’s Enterprises, which were officially wholesale pharmaceutical companies based in Pakistan, but they also illicitly sold medicines worldwide, attracting customers via the Internet.
The FBI said drugs shipped into the US included methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin); various anabolic steroids; alprazolam (sold as Xanax); diazepam (sold as Valium); lorazepam (sold as Ativan); clonazepam (sold as Klonapin); and others. American customers were directed to pay their bills via the Western Union wire service to numerous individuals in Karachi, Pakistan, to conceal that Ul Haq and Saeed actually collected the cash.