BAO AN police have recently detained five men for selling counterfeit medicine.
They were suspected of making more than 136,000 yuan (US$20,607) from the sale of a cheap sea product for high prices by claiming it was a rare medicine to cure diabetes, Shenzhen Evening News reported Wednesday.
More than 5 kilograms of the goods and two cars were confiscated by police.
A victim, identified as Huang, was lured into taking an unlicensed taxi at Shenzhen International Airport on March 16. There was another passenger in the taxi who claimed to be a professor of medicine at an unnamed domestic university, according to the News.
On our way to the city, we saw two men selling medicine on the street and the professor seemed surprised, saying what they were selling was dried salangane and it was good for curing diabetes. He bought two bags containing 20 salaganes for 2,000 yuan and left the taxi, Huang said.
Huang was interested in the medicine because his father had diabetes. When he was about to buy some, another man who claimed to be a doctor suggested he buy more because it was rare.
I took their car to their place. After I paid 60,000 yuan for the medicine, I found they had disappeared along with my luggage, so I knew it was a fraud, he said.
According to investigators, the fraudsters bought the cheap sea product pegasus laternarius cuvier, widely known as sea sparrows, and sold it as salangane targeting visitors arriving at the airport who were not familiar with the city.
Sea sparrow sells for about 80 yuan per 500 grams while the fraudsters were selling one sparrow which costs less than 1 yuan for more than 100 yuan.
According to experts, salangane is a rare wild swift, which is helpful for scientific research, but has no medicinal properties. (Wang Yuanyuan)
