ST. LOUIS (AP) - A Turkish citizen has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $150,000 for smuggling misbranded and adulterated cancer treatment drugs into the United States.
Sabahaddin Akman was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
Akman is the owner and manager of a drug wholesale company in Turkey. He and a Turkish co-defendant smuggled three shipments of misbranded and tainted cancer drugs from Turkey to the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Missouri.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says some of the medications were shipped without the insulation required to maintain their effectiveness. Other vials contained mold and water but lacked any active ingredient.
The co-defendant, Ozkan Semizoglu, was sentenced in October to more than two years in federal prison.