just to keep customers coming in. His family, meanwhile, was beset by health problems. A son suffered from a severe psychiatric disorder that required nearly full-time care. And Schultz himself had been struck by a series of small heart attacks, brought on in part by the stress of running a struggling business and the long hours spent shuttling between Oshkosh and Monroe, well past retirement age.

Then, in the summer of 2006, salvation appeared out of the blue. Schultz received an unsolicited letter, by fax, from a company he’d never heard of called Alphanet-Trading, with an address in Costa Mesa, California. The letter offered him an enticing oppor- tunity: Alphanet could augment Schultz’s in-store sales with online prescriptions, without any investment from him. His role couldn’t have been simpler: If he signed on as an Alphanet pharmacy, the company would supply him with fully outfitted computers and as many online orders as he could handle. All he would have to do was log in to the company’s system, fill valid prescriptions written by American doctors, and ship them using Alphanet’s FedEx ac- count. He’d then be reimbursed by bank transfer for the wholesale cost of the prescription, plus $3.50 for each one filled.

At first, Schultz ignored the offer, which sounded suspiciously like a get-rich scam. But when his cash flow tightened the next month, he reconsidered, and conducted some online research to de- termine if it was real. Alphanet’s website looked legitimate enough. Next to a photo of five friendly-looking businesspeople was a pitch similar to the one in his letter.

Alphanet-Trading is your mail order pharmacy partner! We con- tract with pharmacies in several states to handle order fulfill- ment for us.

Our mail order program is in essence a prescription refill pro- gram in which customers are required to have already received the initial prescription they are seeking beforehand. They must have their primary healthcare provider aware that they are tak- ing this medication.