Canadian customs find Cypionax in jars of curry powder during Operation Pangea II.

"Canadians who buy prescription drugs and health supplements from online pharmacies may think they’re saving money, but they’re probably not getting what they paid for.

On Thursday, law-enforcement officials displayed bins overflowing with parcels intercepted at the International Mail Centre in Vancouver that were destined for addresses across the country.

The packages contained tens of thousands of pills, vials of steroids and various health remedies, most of them likely bogus and all illegally imported into the country.

“Internationally we’re seeing an increase in websites and e-mail advertisements claiming to offer cheap, legitimate and legal products. Frankly, these claims are almost entirely false,” said Sgt. Duncan Pound of the RCMP’s Border Integrity unit.

Some people may believe they are ordering prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies, but the websites are designed to look Canadian when they are actually set up overseas by international criminal organizations, Pound said.

For example, one box intercepted this week by Canada Border Services Agency officers contained more than 5,000 foil packages of blue pills labelled as Viagra.

The pills look like the drug prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction and they still have to be tested by Health Canada, but officers have little doubt they’re fakes.

One parcel that arrived at the mail centre from Thailand on Thursday caught the attention of border services officer Mark Yee. It was supposed to contain a jar of curry powder; Yee was suspicious. He slid the parcel into an X-ray machine to take a closer look. The jar of curry powder was visible, but there was something else inside. Yee sliced open the parcel, removed the sealed jar, poured out the pungent yellow powder and exposed a tightly wrapped package hidden in the curry. It was five ampoules labelled as anabolic steroids. “It’s a fairly regular bust,” he said. The parcel will not be delivered.

Pound said it’s tough to track down the criminals who set up bogus online pharmacies so the best way to stop them is to educate Canadians about the dangers of ordering drugs over the Internet, not to mention the waste of money."