THE Nanshan District People’s Procuratortate approved the arrest of 23 people engaged in selling counterfeit cosmetic products, including Botox, from May 2015 to May 2016, accounting for 50 percent of the cases involving counterfeit drug sales handled by the procuratortate, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

    A Shenzhen-based plastic surgery hospital’s doctor, surnamed Li, sold plastic surgery products that he smuggled from overseas to customers. Without a doctor’s license, Li gave injections of cosmetic products to customers at the hospital. He was detained by the Nanshan police in November last year.

    The police found many smuggled cosmetic products made in the United States or South Korea at the hospital, along with some counterfeit products labeled with foreign brand names.

    Among the cases handled by the procuratortate, many defendants sold counterfeit cosmetic products on WeChat or Weibo. They claimed to have cosmetic products that they bought overseas or from domestic manufacturers, and they received payments from customers via Alipay and WeChat, making the police investigation difficult.

    In another case, a defendant surnamed Peng sold Botox made in South Korea for 1,500 yuan (US$224) while the purchase price was 500 yuan. Botox made in China and the United State was priced at 3,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan in Peng’s beauty salon, respectively, while the purchase prices were 680 yuan and 1,980 yuan, respectively.

    Some so-called imported cosmetic products on the market were actually counterfeit products made in China with low purchase prices, according to the report.

    Currently, the national food and drug administration only approved Botox produced by two manufacturers — the Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd. and Allergan Pharmaceuticals Ierland — to be sold in China. Any other Botox being traded on the market is deemed counterfeit.

    According to prosecutors, the market supervision department should cooperate with the telecom and Internet supervision departments to crack down on illegal drug sales online.

    (Zhang Yang)