A Maryland woman has pleaded guilty to trafficking thousands of counterfeit pills of the erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra. Sarah A. Knott, 28, admitted in federal court in Greenbelt that she sold a high-grade version of the male-enhancement drug from December 2009 to January 2011.
When federal agents executed a search warrant at her Waldorf home in January, they found 45,684 counterfeit Viagra pills, according to Knott’s plea agreement. She admitted to selling the drugs through Craigslist postings, emails and other means.
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Knott pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit goods. She could face up to 10 years in prison and a $2 million fine when she is sentenced on Aug. 12.
Authorities learned of Knott’s sales from private investigators for Pfizer Corp., the maker of the drug, who bought pills from someone purporting to sell Viagra on Craigslist.
The investigators bought tablets, which looked similar to genuine blue Viagra pills, from Knott in a Bowie parking lot, court documents say. But pills tested at a Food and Drug Administration lab found that “the coating and core materials were not consistent with authentic Viagra.” The pills contained 8 more percent of the active ingredient in Viagra than the actual drug, according to court records.
“People who buy pills from strangers over the Internet have no idea what they may be ingesting,” Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, said in a statement. “Just because it looks like the actual drug doesn’t mean that it is the real thing.”
Knott told undercover agents that she had access to “humongous bags” that contained 3,000 or 6,000 pills and that she stored the drugs on the top shelf of a closet to keep them away from her young children, court records say.
After the Craigslist sales, authorities searched Knott’s home and she gave a sworn statement admitting that she knew the pills were fake, her plea agreement says. It’s not clear how Knott obtained the drugs.
She sold the counterfeit Viagra to numerous people and earned about $8,425 through the sales, according to the plea agreement.
Prosecutors estimated that the total infringement loss from Knott’s sales and the thousands of pills found at her home was nearly $120,000.
