‘Store looked almost identical’: Malaysian pharmacies warn of impersonators selling fake products

PETALING JAYA – What started out as a mere question from a friend about discounted products quickly turned into a worrying discovery for Malaysian pharmacist Rachel Gan May Shiang.

Someone was using her pharmacy’s identity to sell doubtful products.

Ms Gan, who foun­ded a pharmacy in Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam, said: “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.”

This led to complaints being made to the e-commerce platform. Several of the product postings were then removed. But days later, more fake accounts emerged.

“What’s even more worrying is that these products are being purchased,” Ms Gan said. “Besides the impersonation, there are wider public health concerns.”

Ms Gan, who is honorary secretary of the Malaysian Community Pharmacy Guild, questioned how the e-commerce 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.

Ms Ng Yi Ling, professional care and development manager of Alpro Pharmacy, explained: “Over the past year, we noticed this becoming increasingly rampant.

“At first, we received custo­mer inquiries, 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.”

These stores impersonate the Alpro brand, logo and images, Ms Ng said. The only difference is 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.

Brand owners Du Kiat Seng and Ng Seng Wei, who are the sole distributor of a supplement product in Malaysia, said they received complaints about counterfeit products as recently as March.

“We tried ordering the product ourselves and found that it was clearly a counterfeit,” the owners said, adding that the give­away was the absence of mandatory hologram tags and that the registration number had also been duplicated.

Both of them found that posts on such 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,” they said.

Brego Life Sciences marketing manager Claris Wong said the pharmaceutical firm discovered such issues happening since 2024.

She said it has received complaints online, and the counterfeit products were priced 30 per cent to 40 per cent 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.

Ms Wong cited an instance where a customer was hospita­lised after consuming a counterfeit product.

“Counterfeit products are dangerous,” she said. “Our tests revealed that they do not have any of the active ingre­dients as claimed and may also contain unknown or harmful substances.” THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK