Chinese Viagra counterfeiters reimbursed for prostitutes, forced to test effectiveness of pills made with cornflour on themselves

Viagra counterfeiters in China have been making staff test the fake pills - produced by mixing cornflour with genuine medication - on themselves before offering it for sale, mainland media reports.

Counterfeit gangs, based in Hunan province, have initially been importing genuine Sildenafil – a Western medication for treating men’s erectile disfunction – from Henan province, then mixing it with cornflour to produce fake tablets, which they have then sold in bottles printed with fake labels and packaging, Sanxiang Metropolis newspaper reported on Wednesday.

To ensure the fake medication’s effectiveness and quality, some counterfeiters were told to force staff mixing in the corn flour who lived locally to test it on themselves when they were at home with their wives or girlfriends.

Migrant workers mixing the fake medication, living far from home, were reimbursed for hiring prostitutes in massage parlours to help them test out its effectiveness, the report said.

“The staff were very happy to test the fake medication in the beginning, but later on they get annoyed because the pill-testing took up too much time, so they quit,” one member of a counterfeit pill-making gang, who has been caught by police, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

“Therefore we changed three batches of mixers to adjust the proportion of the mixture of corn flour and Sildenafil from 1:1 to 1:1.5.