Bitcoin Forum

There was a post last month before thanksgiving on the So-Cal Craigslist with an elderly gentleman selling R type insulin for cash or btc. The last part caught me eye and from out talks, its sounded like he just had a recurring RX and was letting the stuff go for cheap aslong as you payed him the cost and a little bit for his time.
Well last night I went to refil my insulin pump, and woke up nearly dead today. It was just water, or saline, or who knows.
Point of this post is to see if anyone else saw that post and kept the info, and to warn off people in the LAX area buying insluin online.

Not meant as an offense, but this is a triple facepalm situation.
Never ever buy any meds from unknown sources.
If something is cheap, it's cheap for a reason. Learn from it and be happy you survived.

:(


Happy your alright Shak..

I am good. I just had a really bad morning and thats all. And while I know you should not buy drugs in this mannor but if you knew how much this would cost me for just 7 days, you would be looking for other options too.

what?

That's crazy man.  Out of curiosity, what does it cost?  Karmas gonna get that guy..

About $115  per 10ml vial, this will last me 2 weeks. Im going to goto the county run hosipital in the morning, it cost about $14 or so and they give a good amount too. The only problem there is that I have to wait nearly a full day there.

You need to report this to the police, to your local health authorities, and to So-Cal Craig's list.  This is a public health issue and media alerts about the scam need to be sent out. 

Keep whatever you have left so that it can be analysed by the authorities.  Because of the knowing and reckless disregard for human life involved, this guy's actions have probably crossed the line into criminal.  You should at least have some record of where you sent payment to, which might be a start - and Craig's list should have a copy of the original ad.

Thats the reason I asked here first while its still the holiday. If there wasnt others at risk, I wouldnt care but when it comes to ones health, thats a big issue.

^this
though I think the catch is that it is likely illegal to purchase RX only medications from individuals. I'm sorry for you I really am, Shakaru. I am very happy you did not get hurt from this.

BUT HOLY FUCKING SHIT MAN!!  What were you thinking!!! This dude could have put rat poison in there for all we know. :/  Your life is not worth risking to save some money. I'd rob a bank to get meds before I'd risk injecting something into my body from unknown source. :/

Derek

Yeah, agreed on the police thing.  They might even treat it as attempted murder (but then probably deal it down).

I'm not familiar with insulin packaging.  Did it look legit?  Are there normally any tamper seals or anti-counterfeiting measures?

I'm sure it is but I doubt that the OP would be risking prosecution (if he's worried about that, notify the health authorities instead).  At least a couple of times a year, police here issue warnings about batches of illicit drugs which are potentially more lethal than usual.  I suspect that it's kind of like 419 scams - the victim might have been acting illegally, but the public good is best served by not prosecuting them and publicising the scam so that others don't get caught.

And Shakaru, it sounds like your judgement has been "off" a bit lately.  Might be time to de-stress a bit.

I wouldn't wait to contact the police.  This nearly killed you and it could well kill somebody else if you put off notifying authorities because it's a holiday.  Your local health authorities will also have some kind of after hours contact number and it's exactly this kind of situation which warrants using it.  Local hospitals also need to know about this in case people come in with DKA and their pumps indicate that they've taken their insulin.

+10

Glad you're okay shakaru!

Pumps are usually filled from standard insulin vials - you draw it up into a syringe and fill the reservoir from that.  While you should technically always check the expiry date and check for evidence of tampering, I don't know any diabetics who actually do that.  Like everything else, people become conditioned to everything being OK and when you've done something thousands of times before without incident, you don't necessarily think to change what has become an automatic ritual if some factor is different.

Whether the tampering would have been apparent depends on how it was done.  The easiest way would have been to remove the insulin via a syringe and replace the contents the same way.  It wouldn't necessarily have been apparent if a fine enough needle was used unless the OP looked hard for puncture marks on the membrane.  If the entire rubber membrane and the cap around it were replaced (fiddly, but definitely not impossible), then there'd be no obvious evidence of tampering.  You might notice that the fake insulin moved differently in the vial than real insulin if you were looking for it, but syringing up insulin becomes a process which people do pretty much on autopilot.

I'm curious about how much of a discount this guy was offering and how he explained obtaining them at such a low cost.  I also want to know what was really in the vials. 

So, I just got out of the hosptal. I had to go down and get a replacement supply and get checked out from this, but it turns out it was a god send as they found something out during my blood work.

All the vials have the ramper proff lids on. Also, the cost wasnt bad. It was between 10-15 a vail. Thats about co-pay cost. The guy said he was a type 2 diabetic and no longer needed insluin and was trying to just get rid of them for what he payed. Tomorrow after my follow up I need to goto the Sherifs office and file a report.

Definitely do it. One resource that may be worth contacting is poison control. They should be able to get you in touch with the right people in the health department, and it is a little buffer from the police interaction. It's california, so you'll get bounced around a bunch, but stick with it and someone will know who to talk to.

Glad you're ok. I have done the LA County hospital thing, and it's not fun...15 hours for blood work and an ultrasound, and then a $2000 bill that I paid at the hospital getting sent to collections because those fuckwits applied it to someone else's account...

may i suggest you to take your fake insulin to a lab to have it analyzed? if there was something bad in the fake insulin, it would be best to know sooner than later.

He should get the health department, poison control or the police to do this.  Apart from anything else, those vials are evidence and him going off playing Nancy Drew could undermine a proper criminal investigation without especially benefiting him.

His blood-work and follow up should reveal anything he needs to know about immediate potential problems from the fake insulin.

No, its not related to the insulin. Maybe the high glucose caused some symptoms that I should have payed more attention to, but it looks like I have a form of blood type cancer. I have an apt with a oncologist later this week. This does explain why I my nose has been bleeding daily for a while now. Im not really scared about this, ive had bad health most of my life and it hasnt beat me yet.

Sorry to hear that.  Time to take a breather and focus your energy on your own health and well-being.

fuuuuuuck...when it rains, it pours. my thoughts are with you, man.

Thanks for all the support. I appreciate it. I will know more about what is going on with my health on the 11th when my appoitment is scheduled. The staff at the hopsital and I go back a very long time so I know I am in good hands. I also know that the person they called down to tell me wouldnt lie to me and told me not to worry, so I am not. Also it helps that I have a good family friend who is undergoing treatment for luekemiya and with how well he is doing, thats also a good sign.
I spoke with deslok when I got home about him handling checking my inbox on days that I am not able to as to not affect SDM. Besides that. Im sitting here at home, rum and coke, and some good tv an company. Life is still great.

Firstly, I'm obviously glad you are still alive (OP).

Seems to me that Bitcoin is attractive to the best and the worst of humanity, but that the latter is particularly well represented.  It makes a lot of sense as to why this would be, and I suspect that that will always be the case.  I would not allow anything I purchased on the street with Bitcoin enter the body of a pet rat, let alone my own, and would be as careful as possible even operations which had been in business for some time and have a good reputation.

To me, the only realistic system designs involving Bitcoin are ones which preclude fraud by making it more costly for either party to engage in it than not.  In a lot of instances this introduces the need for a fair amount of engineering and inconvenience which leads me to the conclusion that Bitcoin is most useful as a simple and solid foundation upon which to build more viable end-user solutions for a large percentage of economic transactions.

public service message: http://www.pharmacy.ca.gov/consumers/onlinedrugs.wmv

Let's get the summary. I don't want to actually listen to something.

Summary could spoil the suspense of the message at the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-Qyu9KbBo

LMFAO, that was a good one. And that wmv file was actually good to inform how to find a legit online pharmacy.

It might not have been "fake" per se, but rather, insulin that was left in the sun or otherwise improperly stored. Still quite serious, but how serious it is depends on whether he knew it was spoiled or not, which is hard to prove. (This sort of thing is why you need a license to sell prescription drugs, by the way.)

Thats one theroy I have. One thing was he told me to use them in order from the one that will expire the soonest to the last, so he could have made the first one real and the rest h20. Also, insulin really doesnt require that much refridgeration. Most people will use a full vial before it would go bad in the open air.

Sorry to hear this shakaru. That's sad. There was some good advice in this thread.

you normally have to pay for your insulin? you have no health insurance or its not covered? what about a possible cancer treatment?
that might sound like stupid questions but here in germany its still kind of all-inclusive and people not getting necessary medical treatment always feels a bit surprising/odd/outlandish/bizarre (cant find a good word here, maybe you get the meaning).
i dont know how much a cancer treatment costs, but i dont think most people here would be prepared for that kind of misfortune.

There are a few programs out here for the uninsured. One of them is ORSA which is where your bills for hospitalization, rx, and any other medical related cost charged to the state is covered for 365 days. This could me you rack up a year worht of bills, or you start 365 days of treatment. Ect

But as to things like live saving meds. While at the ER, I found out that they had changed prices by alot. If I didnt have the cash on hand, I would have to go without. US health system blows. Aussie one not to bad from my experiance.