A global frenzy, and a parallel market

Medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro have surged in popularity, driven by their effectiveness for weight loss and amplified by social media. As demand for GLP-1 drugs has grown, so has the market for cheaper, unapproved versions.

Pharmaceutical companies are fighting back. One secured a dynamic court order targeting websites selling illegitimate versions of its medicines. Others have removed thousands of social media accounts promoting counterfeits and launched global public-awareness campaigns.

Nearly 90,000 illegal injections seized

Since 2023, the UK’s medicines regulator has seized nearly 90,000 illegal weight-loss injections. In May alone, authorities recovered around 12,000 doses from a suspected illicit manufacturing and distribution operation, the MHRA’s largest seizure of its kind.

The World Health Organization estimates that at least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified. A falsified medicine can contain the wrong ingredient, the wrong dose, no active ingredient at all, or dangerous contaminants. The consequences can include treatment failure, serious illness, and death.

It costs them their health

This year in Australia, a 32-year-old woman went into acute liver failure after injecting a black-market counterfeit weight-loss drug labelled as retatrutide. Australian health authorities reported six cases of acute liver toxicity linked to black-market weight-loss drugs. The real drug is still in clinical trials. It has not been approved by any regulator anywhere in the world.

For high-trust brands, enforcement is not optional

The greater the potential harm, the greater the need to detect it, investigate it, remove it, and keep watching for what comes next.

  • 2,857 distinct medicines were counterfeited, diverted, or stolen in 2025, up 18% from 2024.
  • 756 different medicines across 16 therapeutic areas were targeted, including innovative, high-value, and life-saving treatments.
  • 7,152 confirmed pharmaceutical crime incidents were recorded across 142 countries in 2025.

Weight-loss drugs are not the only medicines sold on the black market. For pharmaceutical companies, misplaced consumer trust can put someone’s health directly at risk. That is why brand protection in this category is not optional.

Sources: Aanu Adeoye and Laura Hughes, “Big Pharma steps up fight against counterfeit weight-loss drugs,” Financial Times, 28 August 2026; World Health Organization, “Substandard and falsified medical products”; ABC News, Andi Yu, June 2026; Pharmaceutical Security Institute, 2025.