From The Los Angeles Times:

“Cyber-crime pays. But selling counterfeit drugs apparently pays better.

“Some of the world’s most prolific spammers used to tout products for a few pennies per million e-mails or con consumers into forking over credit card information.

“But these groups have found that the most profit and growth potential lies in actually shipping the fake Viagra and other products they’re hawking, according to a study scheduled for release today by a top security researcher.”

American Enterprise Institute scholar Roger Bate has written extensively on counterfeit drugs. (Examples of his work can be found here, here, and here.) His new book, Making a Killing: The Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade, was published last month.