A 45-year-old Indian national, Sanjay Kumar, was sentenced Thursday to 43 months in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to flood the United States with counterfeit oncology drugs. Following his prison term, Kumar will face one year of supervised release.
The sentencing comes after Kumar pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, ending a multi-year investigation into a scheme that traded life-saving hope for tens of thousands of dollars.
Between August 2018 and June 2024, Kumar and a network of co-conspirators arranged multiple sales of what they claimed was Keytruda—a high-stakes immunotherapy drug used to treat various forms of melanoma, lung, and breast cancers.
The buyers, however, were undercover law enforcement agents. Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC holds the exclusive rights to manufacture Keytruda in the U.S., but the vials Kumar provided were chemically inconsistent with the real product.
Laboratory analysis confirmed the “medication” lacked any active ingredients, rendering it completely ineffective for medical use.
Court documents reveal a chilling level of awareness regarding the scam. During an in-person meeting with undercover agents in Houston prior to his arrest, Kumar discussed the risks of the trade. He explicitly acknowledged that the counterfeit Keytruda would do nothing to fight cancer, describing the substance as being “just like water.”
Despite this admission, Kumar continued to coordinate shipments and sales, ultimately collecting approximately $89,268 from the undercover operations.
The announcement of the sentence was made by a coalition of high-ranking officials, including Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei for the Southern District of Texas.
The investigation was a joint effort between Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Houston and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Criminal Investigations.
This conviction adds to the more than 180 intellectual property and cybercrime convictions secured by CCIPS since 2020.
READ: Busted While Boarding: Russian National Charged In Texas For $400 Million Medicare Plot
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