THE INVESTIGATION

Introduction To Five Part Series

The series identifying and documenting the shadow market for prescription
drugs resulted from a yearlong investigation by two Washington Post
reporters that included more than 500 interviews and the analysis of
100,000 pages of court filings, regulatory cases, investigative reports and
computer records.

Using databases at state pharmacy and medical boards, The Post tracked
50,000 prescriptions for narcotics from Internet sites. A breakdown by Zip
codes revealed that the preponderance of those drugs flowed to small towns
in states with known prescription-abuse problems. Through medical board
records, the reporters documented the troubled histories of some of the
doctors writing for the online pharmacies, including drug and alcohol
abuse, criminal convictions, medical incompetence and financial problems.

The Post reviewed more than 250 lawsuits and criminal cases involving
illicit wholesalers, pharmacies, counterfeiters and online drugstores from
New York to Los Angeles. To show how tainted medication is introduced into
the legitimate distribution chain, reporters also obtained wholesalers'
invoices and purchase orders and matched those against records provided by
a dozen patients.

Interviews were held with security investigators for drugmakers, state and
federal regulators, law enforcement officers, hospital pharmacy buyers,
victims of bad medicine, Internet pharmacy operators and felons convicted
of drug diversion and Internet fraud. In all, reporters traveled to 12
states, Canada and Mexico. More than 50 Freedom of Information Act requests
were also filed.