On May 25, 2007, Kevin Xu logged into his Gmail account and found a startling message from a man who could have been his biggest client.
rom an office suite on the 28th floor of the Plaza Royale in Beijing, the baby-faced businessman had gone from selling shark cartilage and penicillin to Chinese hospitals and clinics to cashing in on the high-profit margins of the European and—he hoped—US pharmaceutical markets. Xu kept a list of 29 brand-name drugs he could deliver at cut-rate prices, from the baldness remedy Propecia to lifesavers like the antileukemia drug Gleevec. If it wasn’t on the list, Xu boasted that he could find a way to get it.
Now, he thought he finally had an entrée to the US market. His contact, going under the name “Mr. Ed,” was a bald, middle-aged man with a sketchy background in the clothing business. Ed ran a company ...
