Armed Bandits in Brazil Pursue New Loot: Ozempic

Around 10:30 p.m. on a Friday in late January, David Fernando, a pharmacist, was working behind a counter at a drugstore in São Paulo when a man walked up to him and flashed a gun. “He asked for money from the register and medications from the refrigerator,” Mr. Fernando said.

These days, pharmacists in São Paulo — Brazil’s largest city — know exactly what thieves mean when they say “medications from the refrigerator.”

They’re after Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda, the injectable weight-loss drugs many Brazilians covet but that most can’t afford, in a country obsessed with body image but where obesity is on the rise.

The thief made off with five boxes, each of which typically holds a month’s supply and costs 700 to 1,100 Brazilian reais, or about $120 to $190, while the average monthly income is about $300.

Though the armed robbery unnerved Mr. Fernando, 36, it was not exactly a surprise. The same pharmacy was held up for the same drugs twice in late 2024, he said. Now a security guard is posted outside.

Four blocks north, another pharmacy has taken even greater precautions after a police officer interrupted an Ozempic robbery in August, resulting in a shootout that left an older woman injured.

On a recent afternoon two armed guards stood watch, one inside the front door and the other near a back room where the refrigerated weight-loss drugs are kept.

While a smattering of media reports show thieves are after Ozempic elsewhere in the world — including late-night break-ins at pharmacies in Michigan, and in Santiago de Compostela, Spain — Brazil has become a prime global hot spot for criminals coveting the hugely popular weight-loss drugs.

São Paulo, in particular, has become a nexus because it is by some measures Brazil’s richest city with many wealthy neighborhoods where plenty of pharmacies stock the drugs because enough people can afford them. And these days thieves have little problem finding buyers on WhatsApp and Facebook groups.

The targeting of pharmacies has left workers fearful and has led some stores to reduce their supply of weight-loss drugs. The robberies are “definitely a growing trend,” said Pedro Ivo Corrêa dos Santos, a police chief in São Paulo State’s Department of Criminal Investigation.

Pharmacies are often easy targets, the police chief added. “Many operate 24/7, storing the product in a fridge with no real security, only protected by the pharmacist,” he said.

A New York Times analysis of a São Paulo State database found that robberies of pharmacies in which Ozempic, Wegovy or Saxenda were stolen jumped notably in the last three years, from a sole recorded episode in 2022 — four boxes of Ozempic taken from a single drugstore — to 18 robberies in 2023, and 39 last year.

The numbers are almost certainly undercounts, since about half the reported robberies did not specify the medications taken.

RD Saúde and Grupo DPS, two companies that own pharmacy chains in São Paulo where many of the robberies have taken place, declined to comment. Many independent pharmacies say they no longer keep the drugs in the store.

“Anyone who stocks Ozempic can’t work in peace,” said Wilson Martins, the manager of Farma O Imperador, an independent pharmacy in western São Paulo. “People ask ‘Do you have Ozempic?’” he added. “No, we don’t. And that way, we don’t get robbed.”

Customers who want one of the weight-loss drugs now must order it in person and make an appointment to pick it up. But for good measure, Mr. Martins, 72, still keeps a leather-sheathed machete behind the counter.

Some criminal gangs have been robbing trucks making wholesale Ozempic deliveries, Mr. Corrêa dos Santos said. One gang that the police dismantled last year included employees of a transport company.

Drug producers and distributors must report losses of medications resulting from crimes or other reasons to Anvisa, the Brazilian agency that regulates food and drugs. Its figures show that 4,770 Ozempic injection pens were stolen or lost in 2023 and surged to 8,220 pens last in 2024.

The rash of robberies of weight-loss drugs comes amid soaring sales of the medication in a country where achieving a finely tuned body is revered and that, like many countries, is growing fatter.

The percentage of adults in its largest cities considered obese increased to about 24 percent in 2023 from nearly 12 percent in 2006, according to a Health Ministry study.

Several Brazilian celebrities have spoken publicly about using Ozempic or similar drugs, including singers Luiza Possi, Wesley Safadão and Jojo Todynho.

“The wave of thefts began when social media started openly discussing the drug, particularly as celebrities and influencers showcased dramatic weight loss,” said Renata Gonçalves, the head of a union of pharmacists for the state of São Paulo.

Even Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, said during his campaign in 2024 that he “took a lot of Ozempic” and lost about 65 pounds, and pledged to make the drug available for free.

“Rio will be a city without chubby people anymore,’’ he said.

In Brazil, Ozempic sales grew from $27.5 million in 2019, to $621.6 million in 2023, the last year for which complete figures were available, according to IQVIA, a global provider of health care data. (The Brazilian market still pales in comparison to the United States, where sales totaled $30.3 billion in 2023.)

Rodrigo Lima, who has worked for pharmacy chains for two decades and is now head of operations for Ultrafarma, a São Paulo-based chain, said other high-cost pharmacy products have been targeted in the past.

But the high cost of Ozempic, he said, has “sparked a huge demand for these items, leading to specialized gangs with an eye on that slice of the market.”

While it’s fairly easy to sell and buy stolen weight-loss drugs on the web, criminals may not be able to ensure buyers about the quality of the drugs once they are taken out of cold storage. Several pharmacists in São Paulo repeatedly stressed that just a few hours at room temperature renders the medications useless.

“They take the medications out to the car in a trash bag,” said Andrea Lima, the manager of a branch of the Drogaria São Paulo chain where a policeman foiled an attempted robbery last May. “How long do they leave it in the trunk?”

Ultrafarma’s strategy, said Mr. Lima, has been to install better security cameras and reduce stock in company-owned stores.

One Ultrafarma store that was robbed in 2023 has gone even further, said Leandro Rodrigo Santos, the store’s manager. It no longer keeps Ozempic in stock so customers have to order it and have it delivered to their home.

But even that has risks.

Wellington Vieira, chief of a Rio de Janeiro police division that investigates consumer-related crimes, said the agency had received reports of groups who order multiple boxes of Ozempic to a home and then pull a switcheroo.

When a delivery worker arrives, two people answer the door. One tries multiple times to pay with an invalid credit card, while the other accepts the package and switches out the real Ozempic for a counterfeit version. When the purchase is eventually canceled, the delivery worker unknowingly returns to the pharmacy with the fake medication.

Ozempic bandits may soon confront a force more powerful than the police: economics. Novo Nordisk’s Brazilian patent for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, expires in 2026, and pharmaceutical companies are racing to get approval to produce generic versions that will almost certainly cause prices to tumble.

For now, some pharmacists are turning to a higher power for protection. Elis Regina Peixoto manages a pharmacy in eastern São Paulo that has so far gone unscathed. “In the name of Jesus,” she said, “we will not be robbed.”