Paul Eftang and Centera Bioscience (d/b/a Nootropics Depot)

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Hampshire, Centera Bioscience, an Arizona company doing business as Nootropics Depot, and its CEO, Paul Eftang, 38, were sentenced on February 5, 2024, in federal court in Concord for distributing drugs into interstate commerce that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). U.S. Magistrate Judge Talesha Saint-Marc sentenced the company to three years of probation and Eftang to one year of probation. The office says the defendants also paid a $2.4 million forfeiture and surrendered all drugs seized by the FDA and Customs and Border Protection; the court docket records the $2.4 million forfeiture order against Centera Bioscience. The sentences followed guilty pleas entered on October 30, 2023, to the introduction of misbranded drugs into interstate commerce. The court docket records the case as a misdemeanor information with one count against each defendant. According to the plea-stage release, between April 2017 and December 2021 the company and Eftang marketed pharmaceutical drugs, including tianeptine, adrafinil, phenibut and racetams, on Nootropicsdepot.com and on online platforms such as Facebook and Google, and the FDA has not approved drugs containing those substances for use in the United States. The sentencing release adds that the defendants earned approximately $35 million from selling the drugs between April 2017 and September 2021, that they imported approximately $7.4 million worth of raw material for the drugs from China in that period, and that they sold the drugs across the United States and at one point used Mexican intermediaries to ship the products. The Reddit connection is documented in both releases. The sentencing release says the defendants maintained an active online presence to advertise tianeptine, phenibut and racetams, including a sub-forum on Reddit, and that Eftang himself posted regularly on Reddit under the username "MisterYouAreSoDumb." The plea release says company employees and Eftang regularly made representations about the company's drugs through a Reddit forum dedicated to Centera Bioscience products. U.S. Attorney Jane E. Young said in the sentencing release that the defendants sold tianeptine and other drugs that were not approved by the FDA. The FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service led the investigation. The Partnership for Safe Medicines also reported the sentences and noted that the company advertised online, including on Reddit. The records reviewed do not name the sub-forum or describe any action taken by Reddit.