Mark Kolowich

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Mark Kolowich (born 1960) is a convicted internet medicine salesman who gained notoriety in the United States on August 30, 2005, when he was featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal.

[edit] Biography

Mr. Kolowich, an American, was born into a rich family. He spent his childhood traveling around the Caribbean on his family's private boat, and he went to a boarding school in England.

During early adulthood, Mr. Kolowich worked as an airline ticket sales agent, among other jobs. He did mostly odd and ends jobs most of his life.

Mr. Kolowich opened a picture-frame business based out of his home in San Diego. On October 31, 1998, Mr. Kolowich came across a website that indicated that the well-known medication, Viagra, was hard to get by men in England, as the drug was not licensed for sale in the European country.

Mr. Kolowich went to Tijuana, Mexico, a few weeks later, and bought an amount of Viagra pills, which he then began to sell through the internet, on a website named WorldExpressRX.com. His business became a major success, and he found ways to evade being caught by law enforcement. Among the things that he did to evade arrest was using British jargon words that he had learned while in England, such as "chemist" (as opposed to pharmacist). Mr. Kolowich had also become involved in smuggling other medicines such as Xenical, Propecia and Celebrex.

By 2001, Mr. Kolowich had enough money to open a bank account at the First Bank of Beverly Hills. By then, he was admittedly sustaining a cocaine habit, drinking Bordeaux wine bottles, and driving a Porsche.

Early that year, Mr. Kolowich, who used British telephone company j2 Global as a way to communicate between him and his British customers (who thought they were talking with a British person, but were actually talking to Californians), went on a trip to India with a business partner, after he had read about generic Viagra being made there. He and his partner made a trip to a local medicine factory while in India; the company manufactured Caverta, which is supposed to have the same effects as Viagra. He tried to buy the pills from the company directly; denied access to the medicine by the company, he nevertheless met a company worker who knew a local smuggler who sold them to foreigners.

Mr. Kolowich made three more trips to India; he used Mexico as a point of entrance to the United States because of his residing in San Diego. After the third trip, he began using cargo ships to bring in the medicines from India to Mexico, where he would pick them up. This was later found out during the course of an investigation.

By 2002, Mr. Kolowich's clientele was expanding to include American college students. Mr. Kolowich promised his girlfriend that, by New Year's Eve, 2003, he would be out of the illegal business of selling medicine without being a certified pharmacist.

One of his former employees pawned a computer, however, and a pawn shop computer cleaner discovered WorldExpressRX.com's records, triggering an investigation by the FBI. On March 22, 2004, Mr. Kolowich and his girlfriend were arrested at San Diego International Airport.

His girlfriend was given 18 months in jail after pleading guilty of conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Mr. Kolowich also pleaded guilty, in April of 2004, of importing and selling counterfeit drugs. Being given a 52 month jail sentence, he told The Wall Street Journal that "(getting arrested) Was a big relief".