Uncovering the Ozempic and Mounjaro black market | Four Corners

OIC OIC OIC a game changer injectable weight loss drugs are hot the hype around drugs like AIC is sweeping the globe the market for weight loss drugs could reach $100 billion in the next 8 years they could become the highest grossing drugs of all time these new drugs were clearly going to be popular it probably got a little bit too exciting more I don't care about my face just a little tiny put that shot in me skinny WI a lot of people this is their last option they have tried healthy eating they have tried exercising

and it just doesn't work because it's not that simple skin there's no way drug companies can satisfy exploding demand we've got zero stocks of zic in the 1.5 mil not available at all the supply crisis has created an opportunity for unscrupulous operators to move in when there's a lucrative Market in anywhere you're going to get Cowboys and they're flooding doctors around the world with ads for replica drugs these are the faxes that we get in advertising there zic oh yeah that's dodgy ass that's just totally unacceptable so they're trying to pass off as if they're

the real deal they just know patients are Des desate and patients are at risk we can't tell you if they work we can't tell you if they're safe and here's our file looks like one of the ice packs has exploded leades for the love of God do not inject anything we don't know what that is the team of forensic experts has descended on the house in Western Sydney looking for evidence Four Corners uncovers the Homegrown scam sending suspect drugs over [Music] sa she was on our waiting list and she sent through the script hello this

is Alex this is the front line of an unprecedented drug shortage patients are looking everywhere to find a zenic they just ringing Pharmacy after Pharmacy after Pharmacy so they're just hoping and and if you do have the stock it's like no one's ordered the asmic yet from Sigma not today no hey it's Alex from harer Pharmacy I'm going to place our regular Asic on back order place pharmacists are chasing stock of the Blockbuster medic trying to meet customer demand is there any word on when that'll come back thank you very much okay bye not back

uh we good okay if you could order as much as you wanted how much do you reckon you would order that you know you could sell I would completely fill all of our fridges um cuz that's the limit obviously it's a fridge line too but um oh look at it's thousands and how quickly could you sell that a few days we had the Stu down it's not just a zic customers are after another drug promising even more weight loss munaro was released in Australia last year costing up to $700 a month it started selling out

within weeks i showing nothing stock in 2 days and yeah the others have nothing coming we'll use what we have yep Y in Australia both AIC and munaro are only approved to treat diabetes but doctors can use their own discretion to prescribe the drugs to patients wanting to lose weight all right so we've I think we've got about 20 units left and we've just got to get through everyone on the waiting list um that until we out which won't be manying yes right I've been in Pharmacy for more than 30 years I've never seen anything

like this it's well over a year now that this has been um a problem and it it's it's not like there's been no stock it's just that the the usage and the demand has been growing over time um and yes I I I can't see that abating anytime soon these days it's the talk of Tik Tock have you heard about it are you on it I have questions today is injection day you better work where the medication is we already put the needle on for me it's sort of just not making me want to eat

success stories on social media have fueled demand all around the world Lord if you let me get skinny one more time I promise I won't mess it up amen OIC OIC OIC OIC now there's OIC what is AIC okay so AIC is a diabetes drug so it's called semaglutide and it's um known as a glp1 Agonist so what that is it's one of our gut hormones that naturally gets released when we eat and um when we inject it at much higher doses than our body would usually have it slows down gastric emptying which is why

you feel full but one of the main ways it works is by talking to our brain and regulating that the appetite control and um the drive the food the gp1s are acting in in a physiological way in the gut and they're signaling the brain to say eat less uh you you're satisfied with less you don't need as much uh people will tell me that now I understand how people can just push the plate away the weight loss potential of a zenic was reported in a landmark study led by John Wilding and funded by Drug Company

Novo Nordisk what we found was that the people treated with sagid lost about 15% of their body weight about 15 kilos whereas those people who'd just been given the dummy injections and still the dietary advice only lost about 2 and a half kilos in weight what if all I do isn't enough monjaro created even more excitement plus people taking mjo lost up to 25 lb so it does seem to be from the trials that we've seen so far uh to be more effective uh than stide for weight loss we're starting to get into the range

of weight loss that you see after some forms of bariatric surgery uh and that's something that we've never really seen before with weight loss medications so that I think was was very exciting I feel like a regular person instead of a fat person that gets ignored or shamed any of that I actually feel like I'm like you know when you lose the weight I experienced being I felt seen which was a really nice change I wasn't ignored cuz I was just that fat person walking down the street I was 115.5 kilos I tried the gym

I had tried eating healthy I had tried absolutely everything I went to my doctor he said that you should try a zenic and so I did and I was on a zenic for for just over 12 months and I lost 30 kilos then the shortage hit and then it was game over yeah then I GED it all back what happened um so well this because there was no asmp I didn't I couldn't keep losing weight and then I was on steroids for my issues and then that is like the weight game so yeah pry sad

yeah studies show most people regain the weight they've lost when they stop taking the drugs I went from like being really big to a size 14 and I was like yes this is how people are meant to feel it was amazing and then I went back up again and I that was nice for a little bit Yeah Lauren Ash got her hopes up again when monjaro arrived in Australia and so as soon as I heard about that I wanted to try it because I heard it's better than a zenic and I was assured that there

wasn't going to be a shortage things were going to be amazing and it was going to be longterm so that was really really exciting so this is my Monaro my weekly dose so it comes in with a very big list have you ever opened it up to R the first time I did cuz I think you should if you're going to take a medication you should read all that stuff and things you should not do like it's huge okay so this has got like the list of side effects and everything mhm check with your doctor

if yeah children they shouldn't take it pregnancy and breastfeeding you shouldn't take it these medications can have serious side effects dehydration pancreatitis IC reactions G bladder yeah mhm so your doctor went through absolutely y all of this yes yeah it's quite a long list [Music] yep some people do vomit some people feel a bit funny in their tummy some people might have diarrhea some people might not have any bad side effects my side effect was I had a two-day migraine the first time I took a zic and I don't suffer from migraines and that was

awful but after that it was fine it just depended on the [Music] person there's no reliable data on how many Australians like Lauren are taking these drugs for weight loss she started a Facebook support group to find others like her it quickly grew to 50,000 members and it's not the only one I see many people that don't tell a soul that they're on a zek or Monaro um because of shame because of judgment people just don't get it they're like why why why are you on that you don't need to be on that or why

don't you just put down that burger and go for a walk it's exhausting people just don't want to have to talk about it they just want to be able to get on with it so you know group they can talk about it because we get it we first met Lauren in November last year just before the latest shortage took hold she was tired of the shame and stigma many in her group experienced so she decided to share her journey in video diaries week seven on monjaro I just thought I'd check in um so I have

currently lost 6 kilos which is amazing um so I'm feeling really positive and it's really really good to be able to now have more energy to play with my kids week eight on manaro I put my script in with the chemist and they said there's a shortterm shortage so I'm hoping that means that um I won't miss out for too long trying not dist stress because this happened with the Zen peek and I ended up putting all the weight back on that lost so that wasn't great uh people in the group are starting to panic

as well just taking it a day at time and hope to God the shortage ends soon week 11 on Monaro I'm just trying to get through best I can really and really not thinking about what I'm going to do once U I've gone through all my vials Lauren grew increasingly worried as munaro became almost impossible to find manufacturer Eli Lily blamed larger than expected [Music] demand update on my monjaro journey so things have just been bit bit crappy honestly there's been none available I have had to completely stretch out my dosage keeping it really low

I've not lost any weight I've gained probably a kilo which is really frustrating cuz I was all so excited about you know losing weight being better version of myself all of that stuff so it's been really hard people are desperate and they will do what they can because most of them have been on OIC or Monaro or whatever they've been on before and know that it works and they just want to continue on being able to do that pharmacists are allowed to make their own versions of drugs in times of shortage it's called compounding and

more and more people are relying on it for weight loss medications there's around half a dozen established compounding pharmacies making their own versions of AIC and munaro in Australia the problem that we became aware of was essentially the scale of the compounding so compounding of semaglutide products at a very large scale so they start now to look like a pharmaceutical company but they're doing so without any of the checks and regulations that a large pharmaceutical company need I mean smartide is quite a complicated molecule it has to be um mixed in the right way to

make it uh safe to inject and my concern is if people are trying to do this even if it is in a reputable laboratory that is actually used to making medicines that is not the same as the approved process which is what gets the drug the license Juniper's weight Reset Program takes a medical approach to weight loss large Telly Health Providers like Juniper saw a market opportunity in weight loss drugs when the name brand drugs ran out they started offering compounded versions instead leaves patients feeling Fuller for longer soon after the therapeutic Goods Administration issued

a safety alert about compounded weight loss drugs the most important message is that the TGA has not evaluated these drugs that we can't tell you exactly what they are we can't tell you if they work we can't tell you if they're safe and we have no oversight of the quality of these medications at all I think it's been a bit confusing um there's lots of things that keep coming out with TGA which we Post in our group so people can look at it and they can make their own informed choices about it many in Lauren's

Facebook Community rely on compounded versions of the drugs we definitely put that in the group as a viable option um to keep on going but only going to a reputable chemist don't go to these scammy things that come up in an ad on Facebook or you get an email yeah reputable hi hey how are you I'm good how you going I'm good Kate is one of the moderators helping Lauren manage the ever expanding Facebook group they're often on the lookout for dodgy suppliers I've seen quite a few um posts about being like the dodgy scams

I've seen a few with like um emails but also faxes and ads on Facebook as well unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who are try and to make money off of a really bad situation people yeah getting faxes from just random chemists people I know in group have paid money and they're nothing ever arrives and then they can't get in contact with the chemist people just they don't care they just want to make a buck and they'll just do it to anyone really look I think there's always the door open for people

to uh to to scam people who want to lose weight they have been readily scammed for decades uh that'll [Music] continue we're about to take a deep dive into a pharmaceutical scam that's been operating in plain side it's a marketing campaign that's been targeting doctors and patients around the country we're heading to tasmania's Northeast Coast after a tip off that dodgy weight loss drugs have ended up here and they've made some people sick compounded as zic we've heard about the last few months I suppose but then a few people around town when we can't Supply

them with with the genuine product that we've had I've heard sort of comments that they've been able to get it elsewhere online that sort of thing the only Pharmacy in the town of St Helens has struggled to keep up with demand for the name brand drugs so what are the stocks like at the moment H we can come and have a look current stock levels haven't been great lately so just looking at one of our wholesalers here we've got zero stocks of zic in the 1.5 mil and the 3 mil they have limited supplies and

how long's that been going on for um it's been like that since about or like this since November previous to that there was wasn't even limited supplies at any it was none available at all nothing [Music] okay good morning o Medical Center last year the local GP Clinic started receiving faxes offering a solution to the asmic shortage so these are the faxes that we would get from the compounding pharmaceutical companies it's a much more aggressive advertising kind of approach than what we'd normally see from compounding pharmacies and so initially we ignored these until we had

patients really being much more interested in the use of compounding medications some doctors here began prescribing the compounded semaglutide promoted in the faxes I talk about the advantages and disadvantages of using semaglutide some patients lost 20 kilos and that was really good they seem to have the usual side effects you would expect from semaglutide and when did you start thinking something might not quite be right with it what was the first red flag um we had a patient who came in with a um an unusual problem who um had a sensory neuropathy problem with the

the nerves in the periphery of their body so in their hands and their feet it was so serious the patient ended up in hospital the liquid the patient injected had an unusual bright red color the label said it contained semaglutide vitamin B12 and alantin but testing revealed the patient had high levels of something else vitamin B6 they turned it out to have a really high vitamin in their blood level and that was odd and they weren't on anything that would increase the level of that vitamin except for semaglutide from the compounding pharmacy we contacted all

of our patients who are using the compounded semag tide and essentially said to them I can't be sure what's in this um medication and so my advice is to stop it and how concerning was that for you as a doctor it was a real shock our patients trust us and we trust that the people who Supply our medications are providing something that's of a quality and a standard that we can rely on so that threw a lot of doubts in our head about um where this is coming from and what else might be in there

or not in there and there was another local with an unusual side effect I've just met with a patient who was taking this compounded weight loss medication she's told very few people she was even on it so she doesn't want to go on camera or talk about it publicly initially she had severe diarrhea and vomiting then her mouth wouldn't stop bleeding she stopped taking the medication but the compounding pharmacy kept trying to sell her more she replied this [Music] way so the pharmacy was offering the patients more drugs without a script that's what it would

seem like when I looked at the text messages the patient showed me yep so what we can see doctors couldn't track down the pharmacist who made the drugs we tried to contact them after um noticing this problem with the the vitamin and we didn't get any reply back from them last December Dr Fox made a formal report to the TGA the next month they asked him to send a vile for testing but he never heard back it's interesting when I um have the conversation with the TGA they go well we're not really responsible for managing

compounded Pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical board says we're not actually monitoring each individual medication so it seems like there's a real hole in the way we look after these medications and how they're managed and make sure that they're produced safely we wanted to learn more about who was selling the red vials so we placed an order and I'm going to press send and we'll see how quickly they [Music] respond they replied asking how much we wanted they've sent through an invoice for the semaglutide there's a pay now button um $150 plus $4.95 shipping but at this

point we haven't even sent a script but they're happy to take our money for Corners has spoken to dozens of doctors GP clinics and specialists around the country who have been bombarded with compounding faxes and emails they appear to be from different compounding pharmacies but there are striking similarities breakr Medical Weight Loss Solutions gp1 MIM science the prices dosage guides are the same many falsely claim they're accredited by industry bodies even spelling mistakes are repeated compounding pharmacy Alliance there's never a phone number or a physical address differentes share fax numbers and there's only ever a

Gmail contact no Pharmacy uses a Gmail it's not really professional the fact you can't find their phone number I mean that's already red red flags there one Pharmacy name that keeps coming up in the faxes is total compounding Pharmaceuticals or TCP again TCP total compounding is dragging my name through the mud this Pharmacy on Sydney's Northshore has been mistaken for TCP so we're called the compounding pharmacy Australia so short tcpa and they all calling themselves TCP so when you Google that our Pharmacy came up first good afternoon compounding pharmacy show Adam speaking Happ you we

started getting these phone calls about 2 years ago um it was very odd at times we're getting 20 a day and it was just really affecting the operations of our regular Pharmacy they kept talking about the weight loss injections and I was like we don't even we don't even do that angry patients were accusing him of taking their money but not sending the drugs others who did receive their medication were worried about what they were sent then when a patient was saying no I've got something in my hand I was like oh wow that's now

this is going up another level this actually dangerous because they've got something that they are going to inject and I he was trying to explain and I said can you please send pictures the photos show red vials just like those sent to Tasmania my brain says that is not sterile at all um just even the way it's been presented to the patient I said do not inject that because that is not that is not sterile um and so we don't know what is actually in there let alone the U if it is the drug and

then how it was made uh my team and the team and so many compound pharmacies were highly trained highly skilled I said these Cowboys expect the worst Adam Reinhardt says he reported what he knew to the New South Wales Pharmacy Council the pharmacy board and the police but it made no difference total compounding Pharmaceuticals was able to keep selling the red vials the way they've set up the operation only some of the intricate detail in compounding would understand how to do all the information led to me that someone in the compounding world is part of

this we've discovered the faxes and red vials are at the center of an international pharmaceutical racket evidence from customers across the United States shows weight loss drugs are being illegally exported from Australia with American doctors and nurses being targeted with faxes just like the ones we saw in Tasmania the scheme has been operating under the fake Pharmacy name total compounding Pharmaceuticals or TCP over here in the United States it's extremely popular right now everybody's wanting to do um the weight loss injections how widely do you think these faxes and emails are going in the United

States oh I'm sure they're going out everywhere I just don't know how they're finding out where to send them this nurse practitioner in Alabama ordered from Total compounding Pharmaceuticals for one of her patients it took probably two weeks to get here so that was like the first red flag I knew the minute that it came in I was not going to give it to anybody it was going to go straight in the disposal um because number one it was not cooled um and then I realized where it was shipped from and it was from Australia

and I was shocked we found a Litany of complaints from American customers about total compounding Pharmaceuticals they list an address on their website making it look like their company is in Wyoming United States but it is not they're really located in Australia I received a product from Australia it was hot and unusable lost $800 just be advised total compounding Pharmaceuticals is not in the US and probably not regulated in any way total compounding Pharmaceuticals is a total scam I still get emails to this day from Total compounding pharmacy um wanting me to order more medicine

from them but of course I'm not crazy enough to do something like that our order still hadn't arrived but my bank statement revealed yet another name biopharmacy unlike TCP it was once registered as a real Pharmacy in Australia so this is an address linked to the company that we're interested in the tenants next door have told us that there was actually a compounding pharmacy here but they suddenly disappeared a few years ago and left a whole lot of equipment including a pill press um they also said there's lots of unopened male that's been here for

ages there's a whole lot of different company names linked to this address so looks like they definitely were here um the tenants next door also told us that they had people turning up to the tire shop with scripts saying they were trying to get them filled um and they sent them in here and this is where there actually was a large compounding pharmacy but they haven't been seen for years and then the order we placed finally arrived so this is the package we've been waiting for we're going to have to go and open it and

see what's actually inside there's lots and lots of layers of plastic it stinks it smells really strongly like chemicals or plastic or something [Applause] wet and here's our vial of red liquid this looks like one of the ipcs is exploded so there's weird stuff all through it there was syringes and instructions on how much to inject even though we'd never sent a script it says it was posted from dispatch compound Center Queen Street Mall Brisbane Queensland to WBA so we have really no idea where it's actually come from and then a critical lead came from

an unhappy Us customer she wanted a refund so PayPal told her to return the medicine to the seller at a residential address in Sydney so there's no answer at the door but I've spoken to all the neighbors surrounding the house they've all told me the same thing that there's a constant stream of deliveries turning up at the house trucks that back into the driveway and unload large boxes sometimes things on pallets into the garage and that they keep to themselves and that the blinds are often closed we discovered the owner of the house is New

South Wales registered pharmacist emad Azar his license States he's not allowed to compound drugs or have a financial interest in any compounding pharmacy his involvement in the weight loss drug operation is obscured through a complex web of fake Pharmacy names would you be surprised to hear that we've found an Australian registered pharmacist illegally compounding weight loss drugs and selling them without a script to Australians and to people overseas we are uh investigating a number of uh organizations that we have uh information on that are that are doing things that are outside of the the legal

exemptions in this area when will that be able to be stopped because it's still happening today we are moving as fast as we can in order to be able to bring about the relevant uh changes when there's a perceived lucrative Market in anywhere you're going to get Cowboys but the problem is at the moment with compounding there's really there's not enough checks and oversight that's happening um and so until we get that uh we're going to keep seeing these Cowboys and unfortunately what it does is it puts pressure on the guys that are actually doing

uh things as they should in February the TGA made a move against the established compounding industry with a proposal to stop them from compounding replica weight loss drugs altogether the therapeutic Goods Administration will move to ban compounding pharmacists from making their own versions of injectable weight loss drugs like a zembic and mount jaro I'm joined by Health reporter Elise worington the TGA has concerns that this is happening on such a wide scale that it could be a public health and safety risk so it's kind of thrown people um into a bit of a spin because

people who are taking these medications are very reliant on them if they cease taking them the studies show that people immediately regain weight if that's the reason that they're taking them for if they're taking them for diabetes they need to continue that medication as well so of course people aren't choosing to take compounded medications they'd much rather have the name brand but that's just not available um regularly in a good Supply in Australia at the moment is this an admission that there's been a failure in regulation that's led to this point I think this is

how regulation Works recognizing that there is activity that is not in keeping with the safety of the community and uh taking action to address [Music] it total compounding Pharmaceuticals has been able to operate for years unchecked the TGA first received reports about The scam at least 5 months ago last week we shared the findings of our inv investigation with them 48 hours later they executed a search warrant at emad A's [Applause] [Music] home a team of forensics experts has descended on the house in Weston Sydney looking for evidence the owners of this house haven't been

seen for days and the letters that we've left requesting comment are still by the front door inside the property investigators found vials of red liquid which They seized for testing there was also packaging and documents the TGA says its investigations are ongoing it's a natural progression isn't it because people are desperate for a drug there's a market someone's going to try and f that market I think it's it's a it's a total system failure we really need to solve this [Music] problem Dr Katherine Williams despairs over the struggle to access weight loss drugs for her

patients I suppose that's what I would really like to get across that this is an emergency for some people good morning metabolic Health Service Wilmer speaking okay certainly so just your name please the nepan family metabolic Health Service in Sydney's West treats patients with complex obesity related health problems the crisis over the cost and availability of weight loss drugs is felt acutely here being an OBD specialist is um really challenged me as a doctor because I know what will work but I can't always get access to what will work and I see people suffering every

day and and people that are really sick and the Hoops that we have to go through to get the medications to those people that will have a massive effect and we can't provide [Music] that [Music] we know that when you lose weight a certain amount of muscle mass is also lost Dr Williams leads the multidisiplinary program at nepan hospital some patients have to wait for years to get a place here it's important to have protein food as you're losing weight but there's no guarantee they'll be able to access drugs like OIC and wjo to help

them lose weight so with the cost if obviously something like $400 a month that's not going to be in my my my budget to be able to afford but if it was if it was in my within my budget I'd definitely be trying it so across the day I think everyone in this group has medical indication for these medications and so if they choose that that is the right therapy for them uh then they have the right to access them and I wish that they would have the access to those medications and what have been

the challenges with these medications for you as a service uh the biggest one has been the fact that it's user pays so our patients don't have uh the economic ability to pay for these drugs as a rule we're creating Health inequity would you like to come through it's not just the cost even Those Who start on the medications can't be sure they'll be able to continue on them so understand you've been having a bit of trouble accessing the AIC therapy and and like expected when you come off these medications there is a little bit of

weight regain despite your best efforts and and you're eating well it's a bit um annoying like it comes and then it goes and then you get confused in between cuz being obese or overweight it's not it's not something it's not good I wish we will have it for people like me so that we will not run out like every time you go you get what the doctor want you to get and it will help us because without that it makes you also your mental health you start to worry and panic and all that [Music] until

drug companies can improve supply of the brand name medications There's an opportunity for unscrupulous players to fill the Gap I don't think anyone knew that this was going to happen um but I guess in retrospect it's pretty obvious so far Regulators are playing catchup leaving consumers exposed don't go to these scammy things that come up in an ad on Facebook or you get an email people are desperate because they just want to be able to be the best versions of themselves we just want to be able to access these medications and there's no reason for

the Judgment they are life-changing they're life-changing medications so [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah e