PETALING JAYA: What was first a mere question from a friend about discounted products quickly turned into a worrying discovery for pharmacist Rachel Gan May Shiang.
Someone was using her pharmacy’s identity to sell doubtful products.
“I was sent a screenshot and that was when I knew our pharmacy was being impersonated online.
“The store looked almost identical. The only difference was that one of the letters bore a small alphabet as opposed to mine.
“Unregistered products in the Malaysian market were also sold on that site,” said Gan, who founded a pharmacy in Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam.
This led to complaints being made to the said e-commerce platform. Several of the product postings were then removed.
Days later, however, more fake accounts emerged.
“What’s even more worrying is that these products are being purchased.
“Besides the impersonation, there are wider public health concerns,” she said.
Gan, who is honorary secretary of the Malaysian Community Pharmacy Guild, questioned how the said platform vets its sellers, especially for those related to sectors such as pharmaceuticals.
Her case is not an isolated one, as even chain pharmacies are being targeted by fraudulent operators.
“Over the past year, we noticed this becoming increasingly rampant.
“At first, we received customer enquiries, with many also checking the authenticity of the products at our physical stores.
“So we checked the sites daily and lodged reports with the relevant authorities every time our brand name is misused to sell health and supplement products,” said Alpro Pharmacy professional care and development manager Ng Yi Ling.
These stores impersonate the Alpro brand, logo and images, she said.
The only difference was in the capitalisation of the letters in the brand name.
“Our biggest concern is how consuming these products will impact the health of consumers. We do not know the contents of these products,” she said.
Du Kiat Seng and Ng Seng Wei, who are the brand owners and sole distributor of a supplement product in Malaysia, said they have received complaints about counterfeit products as recently as March.
“We tried ordering the product ourselves and found that it was clearly a counterfeit.”
The giveaway was the absence of mandatory hologram tags.
The registration number was also a duplicated one, they said.
Both of them found that posts of doubtful products would be taken down following complaints but they would reappear the next day on the same online store.
“There should be some sense of responsibility from platforms to do their due diligence before allowing anyone to list health products for sale online.”
Brego Life Sciences marketing manager Claris Wong said they discovered such issues happening since 2024.
“We received complaints online. The prices were between 30% and 40% cheaper.
“We purchased the products and saw that they were almost identical with our products, although there were subtle differences in the printing.
“There was even a hologram printed on it. But when we scanned it, we found the product was not registered,” she said.
She said there was an instance where a customer was hospitalised after consuming a counterfeit product.
“Counterfeit products are dangerous.
“Our tests revealed that they do not have any of the active ingredients as claimed and may also contain unknown or harmful substances,” she said.
