The counterfeiter

On May 25, 2007, Kevin Xu logged into his Gmail account and found a startling message from a man who could have been his biggest client. From an office suite on the 28th floor of the Plaza Royale in Beijing, the baby-faced businessman had gone from selling shark cartilage and penicillin to Chinese hospitals and clinics to cashing in on the high-profit margins of the European and"he hoped"US pharmaceutical markets. Xu kept a list of 29 brand-name drugs he could deliver at cut-rate prices, from the baldness remedy Propecia to lifesavers like the antileukemia drug Gleevec. If it wasn't on the list, Xu boasted that he could find a way to get it.