Illegal black market weight loss drugs sold out of Mid-South home and clinics, drug task force says

As they become more popular, officials have a warning for anyone taking those medications: make sure they are reputable.

Investigators with the West Tennessee Drug Task Force say 41-year-old Emily Brooke Arnold of Medina is facing charges in Haywood and Gibson counties after she sold black market weight loss drugs to people from her home and at least two clinics. Her charges include impersonating a licensed professional, reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, criminal simulation, money laundering and selling a legend, or prescription, drug.

During their investigation, officers say they seized nearly 700 vials of black-market drugs. Investigators say what’s most concerning is they’re not sure what’s in them.

“I think that’s where the surprise is, knowing exactly what she was doing,” one neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said. “I guess it’s a little bit of a Walter White situation. I would just see people coming and going and picking up packages at the door.”

After a two-month undercover investigation, officers with the West Tennessee Drug Task Force said they executed a search warrant at Arnold’s home and found hundreds of vials of drugs, including tirzepatide, semaglutide and congrilitide.

“Evidence from the home show the drugs were purchased from the black market and included the warnings on some ‘not for human consumption’ and ‘for research purposes only,'” West TN Violent Crime and Drug Force director Johnie Carter said.

The investigation began after officers got complaints from people who ordered the drugs from Arnold, but weren’t sure if they were doing something wrong when directed to pick them up from her porch.

Officers later learned Arnold sold the drugs to at least two weight loss clinics: Haywood Weight Loss and Wellness and Medina Weight Loss and Wellness.

“We’ve had some complaints where some of them were taking them for quite a while and they did nothing, and then we’ve had complaints where they were actually working,” Carter said. “That’s our major concern. We don’t know what these people are putting in their bodies.”   

Investigators are now working with the pharmaceutical company Eli Lily to determine if they are really those drugs or something else. In the meantime, clinic staff are calling customers who bought the drugs to ask them to stop taking them immediately.

FOX13 spoke with a pharmacist who says the situation is a reminder always to purchase your medications from a reputable place and to be aware of pharmacies that do not require a doctor’s prescription.

“The worst-case scenario could be death,” Kent Stoneking, a clinical pharmacist with AM Diabetes & Endocrinology Center said. ” You could contract a bad enough infection to die. This is not something to mess around with.”

Investigators say Arnold has been selling the drugs through a website for a couple of years.