An ordinary looking house. When the customs officers opened the door and entered, there were vials and boxes of medicine everywhere.
In every corner of the room, various nutritional supplements, as well as repellents for animals that are falsely known to be effective in treating cancer, and illegal diet foods are pouring out.
In this house, Mr. A, who runs an online open market on Naver, Coupang, and Auction, lived.
Mr. A uses this house as an office and uses one room as a warehouse.
Mr. A exploited the fact that importing drugs from overseas for less than US$ 150 for personal use would be exempt from tax, and he did not need to obtain permission from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
Mr. A and the employee borrowed the names of about 40 acquaintances to pretend that they repeatedly purchase small quantities.
Health functional foods imported in this way for two years from 2020 amount to about 40,000 items, worth about 800 million won.
The products they brought in were not just nutritional supplements.
‘Allipotech’, a diet food that can cause cardiovascular disease, and ‘Ivermectin’ and ‘Panacur’, which are falsely known to have anticancer effects, are also included.
As online open market operators strengthened their crackdown on illegal sales advertisements, Mr. A continued to post advertisements targeting late-night and weekend times when crackdowns were relatively loose.
They also continued to sell imported goods using social media chat, which is difficult to detect.
Incheon Customs arrested Mr. A and an employee on charges of violating the Customs Act and Food Sanitation Act.
A customs official urged, “If you use your name, such as a personal customs code, illegally by lending it to someone else, please keep in mind that the person who borrowed the name may also be punished according to the Customs Act.”
