Last month, Jared Robert Wheat, an online pharma entrepreneur from Georgia, was sentenced to four years in jail for manufacturing counterfeit drugs such as Ambien, Xanax, Zoloft and Viagra in Belize and selling them over the Internet.

He also had to forfeit $3 million. Yet, Wheat's Web site, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, is still selling herbal supplements for “fat loss,” “sexual performance” and “muscle and strength” with a banner proclaiming the company’s tenth anniversary. One of Wheat’s most popular products, a “revolutionary sexual supplement” called Stamina-RX, is even available on Amazon and GNC, despite an FDA warning that the drug poses “possible health risks.”

Wheat was indicted by the feds in September 2006 for trafficking in counterfeit drugs online. (BusinessWeek did a great account of the case, including the moment when the government towed Wheat’s Maserati Quattroporte away ☹ .) At the time, Wheat’s lawyers claimed in his defense that, "It has not been Mr. Wheat's practice to hide from the United States government."

Nor, apparently, will he be shamed into submission. In fact, Wheat is heavily featured on the “About Hi-Tech” page of his company’s Web site:

"Although Jared Wheat’s original vision for Hi-Tech was for a highly successful body building and sports nutrition products company, Wheat      discovered  within a few years of starting the company that the margins, at the time, for the sports nutrition products were not that great.

But timing was on the new company’s side, and Jared Wheat, always one to play by the rules he’s given while at the same time taking advantage of every available opportunity, saw a void when the weight loss product Fen-Phen got taken off the market and Hi-Tech developed a weight loss product to fill the void."

And then some.

-- Emily Witt