Meth ingredients move on eBay

PORTLAND – Federal and state authorities are investigating at least 10 eBay auctions, some Oregon-based, found last week that offered thousands of pills containing pseudoephedrine, the critical ingredient in methamphetamine.

Quantities offered far exceeded new state laws on sales of the chemical.

Three auctions continued to take bids Friday. Three others apparently were shut down either by their owners or by eBay.

Ken Magee, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Oregon, said the auctions “piqued our interest tremendously.”

With Oregon and other states passing laws restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine in recent months, buyers and sellers are finding new ways to obtain it.

“Crooks are becoming more savvy,” said Garrison Courtney, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, D.C. “They’re realizing, ‘Hey, here’s a way to go through a keyboard anonymously, make cash and disappear.’ “

For at least six months, the DEA has worked with eBay and other online retailers to stop illicit sales of pseudoephedrine, Courtney said. The retailers are trying to develop filters to root out illegal sales while allowing legal ones, he said.

But smoking out criminals in a marketplace featuring tens of millions of listings is difficult, eBay officials said. “It’s impossible for us to police that and be 100 percent effective,” said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman.

He said eBay may soon revamp its policy to forbid all sales of pseudoephedrine.

Until then, the company has yanked individual pseudoephedrine auctions if asked by authorities pursuing investigations, Durzy said. He said he did not know how many auctions the company had ended.

A Tennessee-based blogger tracking the topic called pseudoactivist.blogspot.com said eBay has removed at least 40 auctions involving 500 grams of pseudoephedrine after e-mails urging the company to do so.

Oregon rules approved in April restrict cold medicine purchasers to 9 grams of active pseudoephedrine a month, about the amount in three 24-pill boxes of Sudafed.

As of Friday afternoon, eBay listed at least three auctions for boxes of pseudoephedrine containing 1,000 30-milligram tablets located in Portland. The starting bids were $65.

On Thursday one listing advertised “Pseudoephedrine By the Box or by the Bottle.”

EBay officials would not provide any information Friday about the sellers or the buyers of the auctions.

Oregon last year became the second state to require that many pseudoephedrine products be kept behind the counter instead of on open shelves.

Last month, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed legislation to require prescriptions for decongestants containing pseudoephedrine.

The new requirement must be in place by July 1, but officials say they may be able to implement it earlier.

Under the law, doctors can prescribe the product over the phone and consumers can get up to five refills in a six-month period.