A Dutch Investigation Found 203 Fake Peptide Pharmacies

More than 200 websites were selling injectable weight-loss drugs to Dutch consumers with no prescription, no pharmacy license and, in most cases, no finished drug approved for human use anywhere in the world to sell in the first place.

That is the finding of an RTL Nieuws investigation, reported by NL Times on November 5, 2026: 203 online pharmacies selling weight-loss products, none of them listed on the Netherlands’ official register of authorized online pharmacies, and none carrying the mandatory certification mark. More than half of the sites were less than six months old. Most of the supply traces back to China, which the report describes as one of the world’s largest peptide producers.

What the investigation found

The sites sold tirzepatide and semaglutide, both approved drugs elsewhere but available on these sites without any prescription or pharmacist involvement. Most of the same sites also sold retatrutide, an experimental obesity compound developed by Eli Lilly that has not been approved for human use by any regulator anywhere. Reporters at the Dutch outlet BNR placed a test order for a single dose of retatrutide from a Chinese supplier and were shown close to 50 products across a range of dosages. The seller offered a 20% discount and free shipping on orders over $5,000, plus a free replacement if a shipment was seized by customs or arrived at the wrong dose.

Dutch Customs told BNR it is enforcing the rules on the growing peptide trade as strictly as it can: through September 2026, it intercepted and stopped hundreds of shipments containing various peptides, most arriving by courier. Marloes Dankers of the Institute for Responsible Use of Medicines called the volume of sites "alarming" and "a major societal problem." Corine Ethlehem, a toxicologist and hospital pharmacist at Erasmus MC, was blunter, describing the trade as "cold-blooded business" and pointing to documented deaths among people who had injected products that turned out not to contain what the label promised.

Why "for research use only" doesn't hold up

The Dutch health inspectorate, the IGJ, addressed the research-chemical framing directly in a response published October 26, 2026. Sellers of unlicensed peptides, including retatrutide, semaglutide, tirzepatide and cagrilintide, sometimes describe their products as intended for laboratory research. The IGJ said it rejects that argument outright: when a product is clearly meant to be injected into a person, a research-use label is not a legal shield, and selling it to the public remains strictly prohibited regardless of the disclaimer on the listing.

That distinction matters because it is not about the word "research" on a label. It's about what the product is, how it's documented, and who it's sold to. A compound genuinely intended for laboratory use is sold to institutions and researchers, accompanied by a certificate of analysis identifying what lot it came from and what a lab measured in it, not marketed on social media with volume discounts for larger injectable orders. The IGJ said it also polices advertising of unlicensed medicines by influencers on platforms like TikTok, and that it has received specific reports of minors obtaining these products. It can take down websites, force removal of ads, shut social media groups, and issue fines, but it works alongside the food and goods authority, the public prosecutor, police and customs because no single agency can police the volume on its own.

What's established and what isn't

The hard numbers in this story come from one investigation: 203 sites, a single test purchase, and customs' own description of "hundreds" of intercepted shipments through September, without an exact count. That's a snapshot of the Netherlands, not a global or even European total, and it says nothing about how many of the 203 sites are still operating by the time this runs, since the IGJ can and does take sites down. The claim about documented deaths is attributed to one toxicologist in the original reporting, without a case count, cause-of-death data or a citation to a coroner's or public health record; treat it as a clinician's firsthand account, not a verified tally. What is well established, separately, is that retatrutide itself remains investigational everywhere: Eli Lilly has not sought approval for it from any regulator, and no agency has cleared it for use outside a clinical trial.

What this means for researchers

None of this changes the regulatory status of the compounds involved. Tirzepatide and semaglutide remain approved prescription drugs in multiple countries; retatrutide remains an investigational molecule still working through clinical trials. What the Dutch findings describe is a distribution problem: products reaching individual consumers through channels with no license, no pharmacist, and in the case of the "research use" sellers, no credible claim to be supplying a lab at all.

For anyone actually sourcing peptide material for research, the useful takeaway isn't a verdict on any single vendor. It's a reminder of what separates a documented supply chain from an undocumented one: a certificate of analysis tied to a specific lot, a traceable manufacturer, and a buyer who is an institution or researcher rather than an anonymous retail customer. Regulators across multiple countries are now treating "for research use only" as a label to scrutinize, not a label to trust, which is exactly the posture a researcher checking a lab report should already have.

A related case from earlier this fall, where two men were indicted for smuggling counterfeit semaglutide down to fake pen labels, shows the same pattern on the US side: the documentation, not the disclaimer, is what's worth checking before anything else.