L.A. Man Found Guilty of Selling Faux Magic Cure-All Drugs

When you think about effective treatments for pneumonia, chronic bronchitis, COPD, cystic fibrosis, tuberculosis and respiratory viral conditions, you might likely thing that a good place to start is a medical professional. A few years ago, however, you could have been one of Sami Arshak Yanikian's customers, who bought some of his “Sam’s Inhaler Spray For Viral Respiratory Infections” and “Sam’s Universal Oral Spray," or other bogus products claiming they could cure illnesses, including bird flu, tuberculosis and SARS.

Today, a federal jury took less than two hours to deliberate the case, and returned a guilty conviction for the 62-year-old Country Club Park man, who faces two counts of introducing unapproved new drugs into interstate commerce, according to the Department of Justice.

The FDA began looking at Yanikian's online medical mecca of magic in 2005, when they first warned him he was making unsubstantiated claims about the efficacy of the "drugs" he was selling. Yanikian wound up selling his goods to an undercover agent in the US, after telling the FDA he was only selling his magic potions abroad.

Each of the two misdemeanor counts carry a statutory maximum penalty of one year in federal prison.