Fake Pills, Real Money: Cali Man Sentenced

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BOSTON – Jimmy Fu, 64, of West Hills, California, is headed to federal prison after admitting he laundered money for shady online pharmacies shipping fake and illegal drugs across the country. Judge Julia Kobick handed down a one-year-and-one-day sentence today, followed by a year of supervised release.

The feds started digging back in late 2022, tracking two online pharmacies believed to be based in India. These weren’t your legitimate online pharmacies; they were slinging controlled substances and pushing misbranded, counterfeit pills – some laced with dangerous ingredients. Undercover buys revealed a grim reality: one batch of 60 Adderall pills turned out to be straight meth and caffeine. Another 90-pill purchase contained nothing resembling an active pharmaceutical ingredient.

Fu ran Axson Engineering, Inc., a Canoga Park, California operation styling itself as “Axson Data.” This was the money pipeline. He processed payments from customers buying these illegal drugs and wired the cash – nearly $689,697.09 which he’ll forfeit – to overseas accounts masked as IT consulting businesses. The investigation showed the drugs were coming from overseas and being pressed here in the US, with multiple illicit pill press locations identified as part of the supply chain. Over 18 undercover drug purchases were made during the probe.