Costa Rican national faces charges over fake Viagra, Adderall

A Costa Rican man has been extradited to the US to face fraud charges related to the import of falsified medicines, including Pfizer's erectile dysfunction therapy Viagra and Shire's Adderall for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

42-year-old Navarro Quesada is accused of two counts of mail fraud, conspiracy to misbrand and smuggle drugs into the US from India and money laundering, according to a Department of Justice notice. Quesada was indicted on the charges in 2015 whilst still at large, and was arrested in Spain earlier this year.

If found guilty he faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the fraud changes, five years for the money laundering and fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Quesada used a Costa Rican website to advertise the illicit drugs and falsified ED medicines for sale, and imported them to the US with the help of co-defendants Sylvia and Miguel Cruz, who mailed them on to US purchasers without a prescription, according to the DoJ.

"The consumers were falsely led to believe that the drugs were 'FDA approved', that the counterfeit drugs were genuine Adderall and Viagra, and that it was legitimate to distribute such drugs without prescriptions,", it said.