Michigan man gets 21 months for selling Chinese semaglutide and tirzepatide as research chemicals

A 35-year-old Michigan man was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for his part in importing unapproved semaglutide and tirzepatide from China and selling them to American customers without prescriptions. The US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan announced the sentence on 23 July 2026.

Brandon Piper, of Gobles, Michigan, was sentenced for conspiracy to introduce misbranded drugs into the market with intent to defraud and mislead both the Food and Drug Administration and consumers. Prosecutors say the case was investigated by the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations.

Sold as research chemicals to people the sellers knew would inject them

According to the sentencing filings described by the Justice Department, the drugs were imported from China and sold first through a Canadian website and later through Piper's own site, MilestonePurity.com. Both sites carried the label "for research purposes only," which is the standard formula used to sell prescription drugs to the public without a prescription.

The government's position is that the label was a fiction. Prosecutors say Piper and his co-conspirators knew customers would be using the products personally. The Justice Department also says many of the products were marked "Product of the USA" when the conspirators had bought them from China.

Semaglutide and tirzepatide both require a prescription from a licensed practitioner. Prosecutors say the products were sold without obtaining prescriptions and shipped without adequate directions for use.

The warning the products left off, and who it exists to protect

The Justice Department says the FDA-approved versions of both drugs carry a boxed warning, the strongest warning the FDA requires, and that Piper's products omitted it.

It is worth reading what that warning actually says, because it is narrower and more specific than the phrase "boxed warning" suggests. The approved labels for Wegovy and Zepbound state that in rodents these drugs cause thyroid C-cell tumors at exposures comparable to human doses, and that it is unknown whether they cause such tumors in people, because the human relevance of the rodent finding has not been determined.

The practical part of the warning is the contraindication that follows it. Both labels say the drug must not be used by anyone with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma, or by anyone with multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. The labels also tell prescribers to counsel patients on symptoms of thyroid tumors, including a lump in the neck, trouble swallowing, shortness of breath and a hoarse voice that does not go away.

That is the concrete loss when a prescription is skipped. Nobody asks about the family history that would rule the drug out, and nobody explains the symptoms to watch for. The tumor risk itself remains undetermined in humans, and this case does not change that.

What prosecutors said about the products themselves

US Attorney Timothy VerHey said in the announcement that the business bypassed drug safeguards, that going around the prescription requirement made the drugs available to people for whom they were dangerous, and that the foreign drugs lacked quality control and could have contained anything. The FDA's Chicago Office of Criminal Investigations special agent in charge said the agency is committed to disrupting illegal online drug sales.

Those statements are the government's characterization. No testing results for these particular products were described in the announcement, so what the products actually contained is not established in the public record of this case.

At sentencing, the district judge said the sentence was designed to send a message to Piper and to the public about the consequences of ignoring the FDA and the law.

A co-defendant is due to be sentenced on 15 September

The Justice Department announcement says one of Piper's co-defendants was scheduled to be sentenced on related charges on 15 September 2026. As of 14 September the office had not announced that sentencing.

This is a criminal case, which sets it apart from the civil enforcement this desk covered on 3 September, when the FDA sent warning letters to four sellers marketing semaglutide, tirzepatide and retatrutide as research chemicals. Warning letters ask a company to stop. This one ended in a federal prison sentence.