An Indian shipper for the Bansals stored pills in a basement on this Delhi Street.
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DrugNet, Chapter 6: Family Feuds
Father and son squabble over streamlining drug sales, while federal agents fight over turf.
His family's pharmacy clients called at all hours from Australia and Europe. He was falling behind at Temple, and doubted his professors would understand. It might even jeopardize his summer job at Mercy Hospital.
Each week brought new hassles.
The list of deadbeat clients continued to grow, and his father refused to cut them off.
A favored offshore bank now demanded to know the source of Akhil's large deposits.
Governments, under pressure from global drug companies, were cracking down on Internet pharmacies. Recent Canadian raids had cost the Bansals $200,000.
Then there was David Armstrong's betrayal.
Armstrong ran the Bansals' depot in Queens, N.Y., the place where shipments arrived from India. Armstrong supervised the immigrant women there who fulfilled customer orders.
Acting on a tip, Akhil had hacked into Armstrong's computer and discovered that he had been stealing pills and customer data. Armstrong was using the data to spam customers, directing them to his own Web site, ontimeviagra.com.
Akhil planned to fire Armstrong as soon as he could find a new shipper and depot. He had his eye on rental homes in Bucks County.
Though discouraged, Akhil took time to devise a business innovation he hoped would increase efficiency. He introduced it to clients in an e-mail:
We would like to invite you to our Web site www.orderspanel.com. In our pursuit for continuous improvement of our services... you can now directly upload orders... . You can also see and download tracking sheets online... .
We also request you to zip your file with password protection (8 alphanumeric)...
With warm regards,
Dr. Akhil Bansal
This new system would be more professional and less haphazard than the current, cumbersome system, which relied on e-mail. It would give Akhil more control over the network.
If a client didn't pay, he could block access to orderspanel.com. If an employee couldn't be trusted, or became a problem, he wouldn't get a password.
Akhil's father did not get a password.
CENTER CITY
DEA agent Eric Russ, a no-nonsense former Marine, was not an excitable guy. But he rarely found evidence this good.
He rushed it across Market Street to the prosecutors' offices. Barb put the evidence - a PowerPoint presentation Russ had discovered in Akhil's e-mail - into her computer.
