Legal chat: Are we co-conspirators?

I have so many questions, all of which would probably show that all of my legal knowledge comes from television and James Patterson novels.

My thought would be, could EL or NN try to argue, with the prices being upwards of 1k/mo, that people selling are stealing money people would have spent with them?

Big companies can be petty. Like with the whole Disney arguing that a case has to go through arbitration because someone used Disney plus thing.
EL or NN could attempt to get federal authorities to pursue criminal charges against people for a variety of things, but I have a hard time believing that many prosecutors would be moved by their arguments or pleas. Their remedies are purely civil, and I am quite certain that they will continue to pursue them, probably with increased vigor if they believe that it's in their financial interest to do that.
 
I’m not a criminal lawyer. I’m not familiar with US criminal law (or Canadian, for that matter). If anyone wants to talk about how to expropriate a property or how to appeal a land use decision made by city council, I’m your girl. But I don’t participate in discussions about the law unless I can add something to it.

I also just feel like I talk about the law 40-70 hours a week and like to spend my free time/time off thinking about anything else lmao.
I'd probably be annoyed if someone started asking me a million questions about my area of expertise in my time off, too.
 
EL or NN could attempt to get federal authorities to pursue criminal charges against people for a variety of things, but I have a hard time believing that many prosecutors would be moved by their arguments or pleas. Their remedies are purely civil, and I am quite certain that they will continue to pursue them, probably with increased vigor if they believe that it's in their financial interest to do that.
I guess that's more what I worry about. Not that they'd be successful with criminal charges, but that they'd financially ruin a lot of people via frivolous litigation.
 
I have so many questions, all of which would probably show that all of my legal knowledge comes from television and James Patterson novels.

My thought would be, could EL or NN try to argue, with the prices being upwards of 1k/mo, that people selling are stealing money people would have spent with them?

Big companies can be petty. Like with the whole Disney arguing that a case has to go through arbitration because someone used Disney plus thing.
As with the case of that Disney mayhem, that would end up as a civil case, not a criminal case. Could EL or NN come after the sellers for loss of profit and duping their research? Maybe, but they haven't really yet, so I would say they don't have a case or don't care enough.

My legal knowledge is ALSO lacking, so I don't say this as an absolute, but I am pretty sure only the government can prosecute a criminal case. So as @YoYoFat says, the government does not seem to give a shit about non violent buyers of grey market supplements.
 
I guess that's more what I worry about. Not that they'd be successful with criminal charges, but that they'd financially ruin a lot of people via frivolous litigation.
They certainly have the financial resources to ruin plenty of people and businesses, but that comes at a cost to them, as well. The real goal is to frighten everyone and discourage people from doing things that will hurt them financially.
 
They certainly have the financial resources to ruin plenty of people and businesses, but that comes at a cost to them, as well. The real goal is to frighten everyone and discourage people from doing things that will hurt them financially.
I guess that's more what I worry about. Not that they'd be successful with criminal charges, but that they'd financially ruin a lot of people via frivolous litigation.
I mean despite the whole "we will bankrupt you in court costs" mantra shtick, you do actually need to have a legitimate case against someone to even start a civil suit.

Judges WILL throw out frivolous lawsuits.


*EDIT*
I mean even if you buy peptides over your whole life, NN and EL have only a claim to a few of them, and even then, the mixture we buy on grey market is NOT the same as what EL and NN produce. I really don't personally think there is much of a case for them. And I just dont see how a court is going to let a company go after a buyer of a product, thats not where the liability lies in the transcation, the only target they could go after would be the sellers I would think.

I mean we have no contract with EL or NN, no agreements, hell most of us probably dont even have prescriptions for NN or EL products.
 
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Actually this brings up an interesting question for me. Does the US have private prosecutions?

We have them here but they are notoriously difficult to advance. Basically a private citizen can swear an information against a legal entity and attempt to prosecute them themselves. I’ve attempted a few (I worked for a crazy guy at one point) and I’m pretty sure none of them ever got past the first couple of steps and there was zero chance of success. I believe the Crown would get involved at some point to determine if they wanted to take over the prosecution but that NEVER happened. I never got past the discovery stage I don’t think.
 
Actually this brings up an interesting question for me. Does the US have private prosecutions?

We have them here but they are notoriously difficult to advance. Basically a private citizen can swear an information against a legal entity and attempt to prosecute them themselves. I’ve attempted a few (I worked for a crazy guy at one point) and I’m pretty sure none of them ever got past the first couple of steps and there was zero chance of success. I believe the Crown would get involved at some point to determine if they wanted to take over the prosecution but that NEVER happened. I never got past the discovery stage I don’t think.
I do not know, I could probably google, but I will just say I have literally never heard of anything like that ever. We have some stupid Citizen's Arrest bullshit, but that shit never actually holds up.
 
Actually this brings up an interesting question for me. Does the US have private prosecutions?

We have them here but they are notoriously difficult to advance. Basically a private citizen can swear an information against a legal entity and attempt to prosecute them themselves. I’ve attempted a few (I worked for a crazy guy at one point) and I’m pretty sure none of them ever got past the first couple of steps and there was zero chance of success. I believe the Crown would get involved at some point to determine if they wanted to take over the prosecution but that NEVER happened. I never got past the discovery stage I don’t think.
Private prosecutions under federal law are allowed under certain federal acts, but they are still rare. Many states have banned private prosecutions by law or through case law, but some states still allow some concept of private prosecution, which actually just means that a person can file a complaint, affidavit or other such document with a magistrate who can then decide whether it should proceed. Even then, a public prosecutor then takes over and can do whatever with the case, including tossing it. So, the simple answer is: Mostly no, not in a meaningful way and only in a few rare instances.
 
Private prosecutions under federal law are allowed under certain federal acts, but they are still rare. Many states have banned private prosecutions by law or through case law, but some states still allow some concept of private prosecution, which actually just means that a person can file a complaint, affidavit or other such document with a magistrate who can then decide whether it should proceed. Even then, a public prosecutor then takes over and can do whatever with the case, including tossing it. So, the simple answer is: Mostly no, not in a meaningful way and only in a few rare instances.
Good to know! Sort of similar here. They pretty much never went anywhere but I guess, at least here, someone could throw spaghetti at the wall and try a private prosecution related to glp1s (and likely fail lol).

The most painful civil cases I worked on in my career were against people representing themselves pro se. I think that's probably true for most lawyers who have done some litigation.
Literally the worst. And I went up against pro se individuals all the time and I just absolutely dreaded it. So painful.
 
I've actually won a case against a party represented by trained lawyer 'pro se' - case went to trial and I was representing myself. That was fun. I was the defendant.
That’s pretty embarrassing for the lawyer!

I don't do litigation anymore, but I was 25-0 versus pro se litigants. Admittedly, some of those litigants were prisoners or half-crazy, or both.
 
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I've actually won a case against a party represented by trained lawyer 'pro se' - case went to trial and I was representing myself. That was fun. I was the defendant.
Good job. A friend of mine, a nonlawyer, defended himself in a civil case. He "lost" in that the plaintiff, represented by the biggest and most expensive law firm in town, managed to secure a verdict for a small amount in damages but a large amount in attorney fees. My friend then represented himself on appeal and managed to have the attorneys fees award overturned. It's rather embarrassing when the biggest law firm in town loses on appeal. In defense of the law firm that lost, I'll acknowledge that my friend was an unusually bright person in a great number of areas including law.
 
That’s pretty embarrassing for the lawyer!

I don't do litigation anymore, but I was 25-0 versus pro se litigants. Admittedly, some of those litigants were prisoners or half-crazy, or both.
Pro se inmates are a PITA to litigate against, not because their claims have merit, but because they bring pure chaos by throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks -- and you still have to respond to it.

Ugh, don't miss that at all.
 
I've actually won a case against a party represented by trained lawyer 'pro se' - case went to trial and I was representing myself. That was fun. I was the defendant.
A lawyer representing themselves has a fool for a client, as they say.
 
Private prosecutions under federal law are allowed under certain federal acts, but they are still rare. Many states have banned private prosecutions by law or through case law, but some states still allow some concept of private prosecution, which actually just means that a person can file a complaint, affidavit or other such document with a magistrate who can then decide whether it should proceed. Even then, a public prosecutor then takes over and can do whatever with the case, including tossing it. So, the simple answer is: Mostly no, not in a meaningful way and only in a few rare instances.

Then there's also the qui tam provisions of the FCA, albeit a civil "prosecution."
 
I was just on discord talking about the implosion of the CZGB. The organizer says she’s receiving threats, so she shut the whole thing down and refuses to talk to anyone “upon advice of counsel.” I feared this would happen when people started getting angry about how slow she was to communicate and ship. Then the “no peptide” vials hit and calls to “report her” became more frequent.

I am of the mind that we at the very bottom of the supply chain are complicit in the crime of smuggling illegal goods because we commissioned it with our cash and our orders. Others say we are blameless because it’s not illegal to use or possess peptides. I think it’s about intent, in a legal sense. I am of the view that we should support the organizer, no matter her personal failings, because she is only doing (however badly) what we asked her to do. We didn’t want the risk, so we paid her to take it for us, for a fee. Is that not conspiracy?
The laws prohibiting the sales, distribution, and importing of unapproved drugs are designed to protect the users. Even Eli Lilly will acknowledge that the law against use of unapproved drugs is for the purpose of protecting the users, not Eli Lilly. It is frequently the case that victims of crimes have done something to encourage it. Nonetheless, they generally cannot be prosecuted for the crime even under a conspiracy theory. A victim of statutory rape, even if the initiator, cannot be prosecuted based upon conspiracy law. See In re Meagan R. (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 17, 19; People v. Buffum (1953) 40 Cal.2d 709, 722-723. Nor may a person who pays a ransom to secure the return of a family member be prosecuted for conspiracy. The Mann Act punished the transportation of women for purposes of prostitution. Could a woman who was transported, with her consent and knowledge of what she was expected to do, be punished a conspirator to the crime? The United States Supreme Court said no. "[C]riminal transportation under the Mann Act may be effected without the woman's consent as in cases of intimidation or force (with which we are not now concerned). We assume, therefore, for present purposes . . . that the decisions last mentioned do not in all strictness apply.[Fn.] We do not rest our decision upon the theory of those cases, nor upon the related one that the attempt is to prosecute as conspiracy acts identical with the substantive offense. [Citation.] We place it rather upon the ground that we perceive in the failure of the Mann Act to condemn the woman's participation in those transportations which are effected with her mere consent, evidence of an affirmative legislative policy to leave her acquiescence unpunished. We think it a necessary implication of that policy that when the Mann Act and the conspiracy statute came to be construed together, as they necessarily would be, the same participation which the former contemplates an an inseparable incident of all cases in which the woman is a voluntary agent at all, but does not punish, was not automatically to be made punishable under the latter." Gebardi v. United States (1932) 287 U.S. 112, 122–123.

As to distributing or selling "research peptides," I'd recommend anyone who wants to avoid getting in trouble with the law to avoid doing those things. It may be possible to do things in the US without violating any criminal laws. However, it seems like a dangerous minefield.
 
I have so many questions, all of which would probably show that all of my legal knowledge comes from television and James Patterson novels.

My thought would be, could EL or NN try to argue, with the prices being upwards of 1k/mo, that people selling are stealing money people would have spent with them?

Big companies can be petty. Like with the whole Disney arguing that a case has to go through arbitration because someone used Disney plus thing.
I've seen many cases involving imported and adulterated foreign pharma products; those matters are not pursued by the "legit" pharma companies but by regulators in some other context.

For example... a med spa charging Medicare or Medicaid for bimatoprost (brand name Latisse) claiming it's for glaucoma treatment when it's really for cosmetic purposes of eyelash growth, and using the non-FDA version imported from India for a fraction of the cost of the FDA approved version with an NDC distributed by a licensed U.S. distributor. That's Medicare/Medicaid fraud. And that's a crime. And in theory, USAOs and OIG-HHS might be motivated to pursue a med spa if the exposure is great enough, as Mr. Tang explained. But usually not. Instead, they refer them to the state's licensing authority. They would never -- NEVER -- go after that med spa's customers/patients as so-called "co-conspirators." They'd consider them "victims," if anything.

But if that same med spa wants to sell a customer that same bimatoprost for cash and discloses to the customer that it's the foreign India version and not the American version, worst thing that's going to happen to that med spa is they lose their license. Because it isn't actually fraud because they're disclosing what the product actually is and its source. That's the closest analogy to the China vendors in this instance. And they've got no license to lose. And again, neither the Feds nor the state are going after those customers.

Most of the med spas getting in trouble for "counterfeit" meds are getting in trouble for fraud, because they've represented to their customer-patients that it's the real thing, whether name brand or actual compound (instead of reconned peps), and those patients ostensibly relied on those representations in handing over their money.
 
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