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How to spot an illegal online seller of weight loss injections

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How to spot an illegal online seller of weight loss injections

  • Explainers
  • The Dose Club team
  • Updated

Wegovy and Mounjaro are prescription only. The MHRA and the GPhC both publish what a legitimate online supplier has to show and what the warning signs are. The checks, in the order to make them.

The Dose Club lists GPhC registered pharmacies only, and the community filters block posts that point to other sellers. The reason is the regulators' own warnings. This article collects what the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) say about buying GLP-1 medicines online, and turns it into a set of checks you can make from your own browser.

Prescription only

The MHRA's page on GLP-1 medicines states: "All GLP-1 medicines are prescription only medicines, which means they can only be prescribed by a healthcare professional." It continues: "The only way to guarantee you receive a genuine GLP-1 medicine is to obtain it from a legitimate pharmacy, including those trading online, with a prescription issued by a healthcare professional." A website that offers to send a pen with no consultation and no prescription fails this test on its own.

The warning signs the MHRA lists

The MHRA's warning of 29 December 2025 about illegal online weight loss medicines tells people to avoid products promoted on social media, especially those promising "quick fixes", "miracle results" or unusually low prices. Its GLP-1 page warns against buying "from unregulated sellers such as beauty salons or via social media, or from anywhere without a prior consultation with a healthcare professional".

On what an illegal product can be, the MHRA says such products "may be fake, contaminated, incorrectly dosed, or contain powerful ingredients not listed on the packaging". It singles out two forms. First: "products supplied as a powder in vials which must be mixed with a liquid prior to injection are not authorised and pose significant health risks". Second: "counterfeit pre-filled pens that closely mimic the appearance of the licensed products", which it says "can also be dangerous". The retatrutide tracker on this site carries a warning about research peptide sellers for the same reason.

What a legitimate pharmacy website has to show

The GPhC's guidance for pharmacies providing services at a distance, including on the internet, revised in February 2025, says a pharmacy's digital platform must prominently display:

  • the pharmacy's GPhC registration number
  • the name of the owner of the registered pharmacy
  • the name of the Superintendent Pharmacist, if there is one
  • the name and physical address of the registered pharmacy or pharmacies that supply the medicines, with phone numbers and email addresses

Where medicines are prescribed after an online consultation, the platform must also show the prescriber's name, the address and contact details of the prescribing service, the prescriber's registration number and the country they are registered in, whether the prescriber is a doctor or a non-medical independent prescriber such as a pharmacist or nurse, and how to check the registration of the prescriber and the service.

The GPhC's public advice puts the same point in one line: "Pharmacy registration information should appear on the homepage of their website or in the 'About us' section, which should detail the pharmacy's registration number." It adds: "All legitimate pharmacies operating in Great Britain have to be on the General Pharmaceutical Council's register."

One thing you will no longer see is a logo. Until the end of 2020 online pharmacies in Great Britain displayed the EU common logo, known in the UK as the Distance Selling Logo. The GPhC guidance records that from 1 January 2021 sellers based in Great Britain could no longer display it, and that its last day in Northern Ireland was 31 December 2024. A site with no logo is not suspect for that reason; the register is the check that counts.

The checks

  1. Find the GPhC registration number on the site and look it up on the GPhC pharmacy register. The name and address on the register should match the business on the site. For a pharmacy in Northern Ireland, the MHRA points to the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland instead.
  2. Find the prescriber. The GPhC's page on online health services lists the regulators: doctors appear on the General Medical Council register, pharmacist prescribers on the GPhC register and nurses on the Nursing and Midwifery Council register.
  3. Expect a consultation before any prescription. The MHRA says GLP-1 medicines "should only be supplied after a clinical assessment".
  4. Look at the form of the product. The MHRA says powder in vials to be mixed before injection is not an authorised product.
  5. If something looks wrong, the MHRA asks you to "Report suspicious websites or products to the MHRA's Yellow Card scheme so action can be taken to protect others."

Every provider page on this site shows the GPhC registration number so that the first check can be made against the register directly. The article on checking the register explains how.

Sources

This article is information, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber about your treatment.

  • MHRA
  • GPhC
  • online pharmacies
  • safety