Hizbullah selling fake viagra in US

From MSNBC/Newsweek:

It began, as the Feds tell the tale, with a run-of-the-mill tax-fraud scheme. Imad Hammoud and his ring of Lebanese Americans from the Detroit area would buy boxes of cigarettes in North Carolina, where the state tax on smokes is among the lowest in the country, allegedly truck the goods back to Michigan and sell them at a profit of more than $10 a carton. Hammoud, an immigrant with ties to Hizbullah, according to an indictment filed with a U.S. district court in Michigan earlier this year, would then wire a portion of the earnings to a member of the group in Lebanon. By 2002, Hammoud and some of his colleagues were believed to be running $500,000 worth of cigarettes a week across state lines and expanding into stolen contraband and counterfeit goods, including Viagra tablets. During a three-month period that year, authorities allege, more than 90,000 Viagra knockoffs were purchased, with a plan to sell them as the real thing. "They're small, they're high in demand and they're easily transportable," says Bob Clifford, a senior FBI agent. "They're the perfect medium."

(Hat Tip: Lucianne)

Tags: Israel, Hizbullah, Lebanon, US