International Counterfeit Ozempic Investigation Should Look at As

Indian authorities are investigating Vicky Ramancha, who is alleged to have been the key player in a sophisticated counterfeit Ozempic distribution operation that apparently originated in China, transited to a Middle East distributor before reaching the United States to capitalize on a near “insatiable appetite” for the weight-loss drug. The complaint states that Ramancha falsified documents and bilked a U.S. company out of $18.8 million.

The purported American distributor of the counterfeit Ozempic identified in the criminal complaint, operating as WeShield (Assure Global LLC), is a mysterious New York City-headquartered distributor with a public-facing website indicating they are principally distributing PPE protection and COVID tests. While there appears to be indications that Ramancha and WeShield worked closely together, only Ramancha has been charged by Indian authorities thus far.

Ramancha’s defense thus far revolves around claims that he was in fact “accidentally” roped into a fraudulent operation, not a knowledgeable or willing participant.

In recent months, several Indian outlets have reported that Swapnadip Roy, another Indian businessman, may be under investigation as well, although it appears that Ramancha is the only source for this allegation. Information that has not been reported suggests that it was a general manager at a distribution entity based in the UAE— not Roy—who apparently introduced Assure Global to Ramancha. This is an important fact missing in the press coverage thus far. 

Assure Global filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Police in Delhi, India in May 2025. The Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police registered a first information report (FIR 75/2025) with the Delhi High Court in June 2025. The investigation is pending, but as presently framed, it has yet to ask the harder question: Was Assure Global really a victim?

Background

The popularity of Ozempic as a weight-loss drug surged in 2022, with celebrities and influencers driving demand globally. Even as high costs limited access for many, manufacturers struggled to meet demand—creating conditions ripe for counterfeiters, particularly those in the U.S.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first alerted the public in December 2023 that counterfeit Ozempic had infiltrated the supply chain, warning about adverse events that had led to hospitalizations. More than a year later and halfway around the world, Indian authorities began investigating an individual allegedly responsible for shipping counterfeit Ozempic to the United States.

Previous investigative reporting determined that Assure Global was one of the first distributors to introduce counterfeit Ozempic into the U.S. supply chain, importing a shipment directly from China. The ongoing criminal proceedings in India reveal another pathway in which Assure Global imported counterfeit Ozempic into the U.S. via the Middle East.

The Indian Criminal Case

As is the case in many criminal matters, the Indian press began following this story after the high-profile arrest of Vicky Ramancha, and headlines followed. The stakes are high, and this story is likely to continue generating headlines. Judge Saurabh Pratap Singh Laler of Patiala House Court noted in his order in the case, “Swift legal action against pharmaceutical crimes is essential for maintaining India’s position as the ‘Pharmacy of the World’ and protecting legitimate manufacturers from regulatory backlash.”

What is unusual here is that the Indian press seems to have neglected to conduct independent investigative research, so the media coverage thus far appears to lack balance. The local press has taken many of the statements from the accused at face value, which led them to focus attention on Swapnadip Roy. Yet, Roy is not named in the FIR and is not a central figure in the case based on any evidence uncovered thus far. While parroting the accused’s messaging, the media have completely neglected a more logical focus for their attention—the general manager for the above-mentioned UAE distribution entity.

Mr. Ramancha does not appear to have merely stumbled into a counterfeit pharmaceutical operation. He is the man who allegedly built one. When his counsel challenged the Indian authorities’ jurisdiction, as the alleged conspiracy took place entirely outside of India, the judge noted that Ramancha used the Indian legal system to notarize documents to give the impression that the government backed his operation.

According to the allegations, the business plan was conceived, assembled, and operated by Ramancha. It has been claimed that the manufacturing-end relationships in China were established and maintained over a period of years by Ramancha personally, with no intermediary to deflect responsibility. The freight pathway through the Gulf hubs was no improvised workaround; it was structured, repeatable, and deliberate. The American counterparty — Assure Global LLC, operating commercially as WeShield — was allegedly identified by Mr. Ramancha, directly contracted with him, and supplied by him. The allegations suggest he played a formative role in the illicit supply chain.

A man capable of stitching together a network of that complexity is not a man whose lawyers can credibly describe as a mere passenger in events of his own design. If the FIR is correct in identifying Mr. Ramancha as the originator of the counterfeit operation, his claims of coercion are not credible. He cannot claim to have stood at its edges; the allegedly fraudulent operation existed because he assembled it. Each relationship and each decision were seemingly traceable to him.

The U.S. Link

The focus on Mr. Ramancha has largely obscured the other end of that chain. The conventional framing of this case, on which the public media coverage has so far relied, is that Assure Global was a victim: a United States distributor that purchased from Mr. Ramancha what it believed to be genuine Ozempic, and which only later turned out to be counterfeit. That framing fails to consider Assure Global’s responsibility to fully vet suppliers as required by federal law. The FDA published new guidelines in March 2023 to assist trading partners in meeting their verification obligations spelled out in the Drug Supply Chain Security Act. The guidelines note that any shipment diverted from the U.S. pharmaceutical distribution supply chain should be considered suspect, even illegitimate.

Logic would dictate that Assure Global, apparently, knew, early in its dealings with Mr. Ramancha, that the product moving through this channel was not genuine. A competent United States pharmaceutical distributor sourcing prescription medical products across multiple jurisdictions does not stumble blindly into the question of provenance. It demands documented chain-of-custody for the product, batch by batch. It conducts supplier due diligence as a matter of routine. It verifies, against the manufacturer’s published authorized channels, that the supplier is in fact entitled to move the product at all.

Genuine Ozempic does not reach a US distributor from Chinese manufacturers via a Middle Eastern intermediary; the manufacturer’s distribution model makes that route a commercial impossibility, if the product was legitimate. Any competent pharmaceutical purchaser would have questioned it at first sight. Assure Global, as a presumably bona fide commercial actor, should have recognized a problem from the structure of the trade itself, but it accepted the product anyway.

The counterfeit product was allegedly received, warehoused, and inserted into the U.S. supply chain by Assure Global. This raises the obvious questions of whether Assure Global was a deceived purchaser, or whether they knew—or should have known—that the products were illegitimate.

That is the central and, so far, under-examined question of this case. It is not whether Assure Global was deceived — the structure of the chain has already answered that. It is whether Assure Global’s importation of counterfeit Ozempic into the U.S. was the product of a deliberate, strategic collaboration with Mr. Ramancha. The strategies behind such a collaboration, and the commercial reasons for it, are yet to be examined. But it is the question on which the actual public interest in this matter turns, and it cannot be answered by anyone while the press is occupied with manufacturing a co-defendant who has no place in the case at all—Mr. Roy.

An operation of this complexity does not run on a single architect at one end and a credulous purchaser at the other. It runs on understanding at both ends. The arrangement on Ramancha’s end is documented in the FIR. But no one has really looked at the U.S. end of the operation to question if Assure Global was really a victim.

The introduction

Mr. Ramancha, apparently, did not locate Assure Global on his own. Based on information from confidential sources, the person who allegedly introduced Assure Global to Ramancha was most likely Mr. Yaniv Shemesh, a general manager at Leveragia LLC FZ. Without that introduction, there is no American end of the chain.

A confidential source has disclosed a contract between Ramancha’s R&R Global Procurement Corp. and Leveragia—signed by Sehemsh and Ramancha—for referral services. The document outlines that Leveragia would be paid a referral fee for every box of Ozempic sold to Assure Global.

And yet Shemesh’s name has not surfaced anywhere: not in the FIR commentary, not in the press treatment of Assure Global, not in the four months of pursuit directed at Roy. The person who seemingly connected the two ends of an international counterfeit-pharmaceutical channel has received little attention in public reporting.

The narrative appears skewed to protect the U.S. end of the operation—to protect Assure Global.

What Investigators Should Ask

The very structure of this counterfeit operation seems to point to the two parties who actually participated in it: the man who purportedly built it on the supply side, Mr. Ramancha, and the corporate counterparty who allegedly received and distributed the counterfeit Ozempic, Assure Global LLC. The first is named in the FIR. The second has so far been treated as a victim of the first.

Whether the perception of Assure Global as an innocent victim survives scrutiny is, properly, a matter for the investigating authorities. It should also be a matter for any journalist who takes the case seriously.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The National Law Review (NLR). The NLR expresses no opinion regarding the involvement of any person or entity mentioned in the criminal complaint and investigation discussed above.