Two men who ran an online pharmacy from Swords, Co Dublin, have been arrested in New York as part of a crackdown on an $20 million illegal internet drug ring.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says the pair moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from Allied Irish Bank accounts in Dublin to the internet pharmacy ringleaders.
The Irish Medicines Board had previously warned the men, Rohn Wallace (37) and Mark Caron (38), both from Rochester, New York, to immediately stop trading prescription-only drugs from their Dublin base.
Both men specialised in selling low-cost Viagra as well as a range of questionable cosmetic products including breast enlargement and stomach flattening creams through their Irish website, usamedicine.com.
DEA spokesman Bill Grant said US authorities are now moving to seize the money in two AIB bank accounts.
The pair are charged with five counts of moving more than $180,000 dollars from AIB accounts in Dublin to the Philadelphia bank accounts of student Akhil Bansal (26), the son of a pharmacist named Brij Bhushan Bansal, from Agra, India.
US authorities say the Bansals were the overall ringleaders of the group.
Five members of the Bansal family have been arrested in the US and India.
One of the AIB accounts was held by Mr Wallace and the other was a joint account held by Mr Wallace and a trading company called WCW.com.
The money was transferred to the US between October 2004 and January of this year, according to the indictment.
Codenamed "Operation Cyberchase", the agency says this is the largest illegal internet pharmacy business yet uncovered and it has lead to 20 arrests in the US, India and other countries.
The Irish Times has obtained documents showing Mr Wallace and Mr Caron had been warned by the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) in November 2001 to stop trading in prescription drugs.
In a letter addressed to Mr Caron, IMB enforcement officer HK Bonar wrote to usamedincine.com headquarters at Sandford Wood, Swords, requesting a confirmation within two weeks that the company had "immediately ceased to advertise, distribute, promote for sale or supply by mail order prescription-only medicines in Ireland".
