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Bien King of Congers and Khalil King, 36, of New York City operate a pet supply company in the Bronx called “Little City Dogs,” which caters to customers who want to avoid the cost of local veterinary clinics and treat their dogs' and cats' common ailments themselves.
Both have been in a years-long battle with the government over their practice of formulating de-worming and flee-control medicines, among others, without proper screening by the FDA, and then posting them for sale online.
The practice known as “compounding” isn’t illegal in itself in veterinary medicine, as long as it’s done for individual patients and isn’t mass marketed.
The Kings “purchased unapproved animal drugs and pesticides, including ivermectin, nitenpyram, praziquantel, and fipronil, from various Chinese suppliers,” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero of the Eastern District of Philadelphia said in announcing an indictment returned against the pair this week by a federal grand jury.
“The defendants’ Chinese suppliers routinely mislabeled the shipments to avoid inspection by United States Customs and Border Protection inspectors,” the U.S. attorney added.
Once they received the shipments, she said, the Kings “used various locations, including a Manhattan office, to mix and repackage these drugs and pesticides for resale to customers throughout the United States."
Bien King launched a GoFundMe campaign that she said will help pay their legal fees. To date it has raised more than $18,000.
“We’re convinced that the FDA threw up roadblocks to stop us in order to protect the national brands from our renegade low-cost products,” she wrote. “It's just not right for our government to fight so hard for BIG PHARMA and force regular folks to pinch pennies in order to afford their overpriced pet products.”
King claims the company attorney had worked out a deal with the FDA. But the government wasn’t satisfied with the retooling of their website to contain “careful language” that avoids any claims about their products’ effectiveness – such as the ability to kill fleas, she said.
The FDA raided the Kings’ Bronx lab in May 2021 “and took EVERYTHING,” King wrote.
“[P]ackaged products, capsule makers, the machine that seals our pillboxes to its printed card... and our entire supply of those cards, our blender, computer, labels, empty syringes, blank timesheets, cornmeal, empty capsules, hand sanitizer, empty bottles with no labels on them, and bottle caps... in all... a three-paged single-spaced list of everything from soup to nuts.
“They even confiscated the artwork off the walls,” King claimed. “Clearly destroying us WAS the goal."
Bien King originally said the GoFundMe appeal would help pay legal bills while she and her son devise “an interim product line to keep us on our feet until we get a decision as to whether we can continue selling these products.”
This week, she said funds would go to treat what she says is cancer, along with osteoporosis that she said was caused by medication for it.
“I worry about whether I would be able to continue to get my BONE AND CANCER TREATMENT IN PRISON for selling wholesome effective pet products,” King wrote. “I told my [o]ncologist about this last week. She was visibly saddened, because it sounds like a death sentence for me.”
“How can people watch this happen before their eyes?” King added. “How can good people allow an honest woman who sold products that pet lovers still love go to prison to die... over pet products???!”
King claimed the government had virtually left a piano hanging over her and her son’s heads by not taking bringing charges.
That changed on Wednesday, when the grand jury indictment was announced.
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