Doreen’s Deal

Get free health screenings at Sam’s Club Pharmacy this year. You don’t need a membership.

HELENA, Mont. — An online pharmacy that bills itself as Canada's largest was fined $34 million Friday for importing counterfeit cancer drugs and other unapproved pharmaceuticals into the United States, a sentence that one advocacy group called too light for such a heinous crime.

Canada Drugs has filled millions of prescriptions by offering itself as a safe alternative for patients to save money on expensive drugs, and its founder, Kris Thorkelson, has been hailed as an industry pioneer for starting the company in 2001.

But U.S. prosecutors say Canada Drugs' business model is based entirely on illegally importing unapproved and misbranded drugs not just from Canada, but from all over the world. The company has made at least $78 million through illegal imports, including two that were counterfeit versions of the cancer drugs Avastin and Altuzan that had no active ingredient, prosecutors said.

After more than two years of struggling to get the international company to appear in U.S. court to face the felony charges, Canada Drugs and Thorkelson struck a plea deal with prosecutors late last year.

On Friday, a judge in Missoula, Mont., approved federal prosecutors' recommended sentences that include $29 million forfeited, $5 million in fines and five years' probation for Canada Drugs.

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen also sentenced Thorkelson to six months' house arrest, five years' probation and a $250,000 fine.

Canada Drugs also will permanently cease the sale of all unapproved, misbranded and counterfeit drugs and will surrender all of the domain names for the myriad websites it used to sell the drugs, under the deal.