Counterfeit Ozempic with fake pen labels and needles reached US pharmacies, and two men now face charges

Two Indian nationals, Swapnadip Roy, 33, and Vicky Ramancha, 37, face federal charges in Florida for allegedly bringing counterfeit Ozempic into the United States from unauthorized suppliers in China and selling it to American distributors at deep discounts. The Food and Drug Administration said on September 29 that the pens carried fake packaging, package inserts, pen labels and needles built to convince pharmacies and patients that they were genuine.

Prosecutors allege the sales ran from July 2023 to April 2024 and did not stop when the agency seized counterfeit stock and issued a public warning in December 2023. An indictment is an allegation, and both men are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Every part of the pen was faked, including the needle

The FDA’s announcement of the charges lists the counterfeit Ozempic as including fake packaging, package inserts, pen labels and needles “designed to deceive pharmacies and patients into believing they were authentic.” That list matters because most people judge a pen by its carton and its label. Here the carton, the leaflet, the label and the injection needle were all reported as forgeries, which leaves very little of the product a patient could use to spot the problem.

Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas framed the case as a public health matter rather than a customs one. “Infiltrating the American drug supply with counterfeit products isn’t just a crime – it’s also a direct threat to public health and patient safety,” he said in the agency’s statement.

The counts and the 71-year exposure

The Justice Department’s release on the case spells out six counts against each man: one count of conspiracy to commit smuggling and to defraud the United States, three counts of smuggling, and two counts of selling and possessing counterfeit drugs. The maximum penalty is 71 years in prison per defendant. The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations ran the investigation, and the prosecutors named in the release are Trial Attorney Peter Leininger and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ross Roberts.

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said that “counterfeit prescription drugs – especially common ones – threaten the health and safety of every American.” The choice of Ozempic is the point of that sentence: semaglutide is among the most heavily prescribed and most heavily demanded injectable drugs in the country, which gives counterfeiters both a large customer base and a product that buyers will pay a premium to find.

The Justice Department’s victim notification page for the case shows it pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, in Tampa, and gives an indictment date of June 9, 2026. The page invites anyone who believes they were harmed to call the Victim Assistance Line at 888-549-3945.

An FDA finding from 2023, inside the legitimate supply chain

The December 2023 warning that prosecutors say the defendants ignored is still on the agency’s site. In it, the FDA said it had found counterfeit Ozempic 1 milligram injection “in the legitimate U.S. drug supply chain,” and it told wholesalers, retail pharmacies, health care practitioners and patients to check the product they had received. The lot it flagged was NAR0074. Laboratory analysis found the needles in the samples were counterfeit, so their sterility could not be confirmed, which is a distinct risk from a weak or absent dose: an unsterile needle carries infection risk even if the drug is real.

The agency said at the time that it knew of five adverse events tied to that lot, none of them serious and all consistent with known common reactions to the genuine drug.

Whether a particular pen in a particular home came from this supply is not something the charging announcements answer, and no pharmacy is named in them. The practical guidance is the same one the agency gives for every drug. Its counterfeit medicine page tells patients to buy only from state-licensed pharmacies, to be wary of unusual packaging or unexpected side effects, and to treat online sellers with caution. Anyone who suspects a fake can use the FDA’s problem reporting form or call 888-463-6332.

The later alerts show what a physical tell can look like. The FDA’s entry for lot PAR1229, posted December 5, 2025, says the counterfeit pens print their EXP and LOT text to the left of the expiration date, where authentic pens show it above the date. The agency reported dozens of units seized, six adverse events that it did not link to the counterfeits, and an investigation that remained open. Novo Nordisk, which makes the real Ozempic, takes suspected-fake reports at 1-800-727-6500, according to the same page. A detail that small is exactly what a pharmacist or a patient can check in seconds and exactly what a bad actor can fix in the next print run, which is why the agency keeps pointing back to the licensed pharmacy rather than to any single feature of the pen.

The open question is how far the problem extends beyond these two defendants. The indictment covers July 2023 to April 2024, yet the FDA’s alert page goes on to list further counterfeit Ozempic lots identified in April and December 2025. Nothing in the September 29 announcements ties those later lots to Roy or Ramancha, and the trial in Tampa will not settle where they came from.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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