Sellers of fake Ozempic to face charges in Austrian court

By Ludwig Burger and Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian prosecutors said they will bring criminal charges against two men accused of selling fake versions of Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug Ozempic, resulting in bodily harm in three women.

The defendants had acted as traders and sold 225 bogus injection pens falsely labelled as Ozempic for 205 euros ($222) apiece to a plastic surgeon in the city of Salzburg, the prosecutors' office in the city of Steyr told Reuters, declining to name the defendants.

Novo has seen overwhelming demand for Ozempic because its weight-loss effect has boosted off-label use. The Danish drugmaker, and its rival Eli Lilly - the maker of weight-loss drug Zepbound, also known as Mounjaro - have been scrambling to boost output.

Fake versions have emerged in several countries with criminals seeking to cash in on the hype. The World Health Organization (WHO) last month issued warnings on falsified weight-loss drugs.

Three women who received the fake shots in Austria suffered injury, the prosecutors' office added, resulting in indictments of grossly negligent bodily harm and trading in fake drugs against the defendants.

A judge at the Steyr regional court said a first hearing in the case was scheduled for Sept. 16.

She added the defendants were accused of selling insulin in the pens rather than semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, in September last year and that they faced potentially up to three years in prison.

She said the womens' symptoms had been temporary.

Austria's health safety body BASG said last October that several people were hospitalised after using fake versions of Ozempic, the first report of harm to users as a European hunt for counterfeiters widened.

The agency at the time said victim's symptoms, including low blood sugar, had been consistent with insulin poisoning.

The prosecutors' office and the court declined to say whether it was the same case but added that BASG had been involved in the investigation.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) had warned last year about the existence of pens falsely labelled as Ozempic.

Novo had flagged a surge in online offers of counterfeit Ozempic as well as its weight-loss drug Wegovy, both based on the same active ingredient.

The EMA and authorities in Germany and Britain, including prosecutors in southwestern Germany, have been investigating a case where bogus injection pens with German language labels in genuine Ozempic packaging were sold from a wholesaler in Austria to Germany, and from there, on to two British wholesalers.

($1 = 0.9243 euros)

(Reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Editing by Louise Heavens and David Evans)