Lawmakers: Fake Pharmacies Price Gouging on Drugs Members of Congress investigating shortages of crucial drugs are targeting nearly two dozen fake pharmacies allegedly set up solely to buy and resell the drugs at huge markups. Two senators and one U.S. representative on Wednesday sent letters to three individuals believed to have obtained licenses to operate both a pharmacy and a prescription drug wholesale business in a "shell game" - to make money by taking advantage of the drug shortage crisis that's disrupting hospital and other patient care. The letters request detailed information by April 11 about the businesses and their purchases and resale of cancer and other lifesaving drugs. The letters were sent by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, along with Sen. John D. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Cummings sent letters to 19 other pharmacies that may be doing the same thing, but investigation of those companies is in an earlier stage. FILE - In this Feb. 16, 2012 file photo, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Cummings and two other members of Congress investigating shortages of crucial drugs are targeting nearly two dozen fake pharmacies allegedly set up solely to buy and resell the drugs at huge markups. The three lawmakers have been investigating the role of the wholesalers, known as "gray marketers," together with government agencies and hospital and pharmacy groups. Their letters state that they've found evidence of pharmacies speculating by buying prescription drugs in short supply from legitimate wholesalers, transferring those medicines to their own wholesale company and then selling them to other gray marketers at exorbitant markups. "If it's not illegal, we're going to have to find a way to make it illegal, because this threatens virtually every person in the country," Cummings told The Associated Press in an interview. Laws vary by state, but generally wholesalers may only buy drugs from manufacturers or other licensed wholesalers. Drug shortages have been wreaking havoc in hospital pharmacies, forcing doctors to postpone chemotherapy and surgeries and give patients treatments that may be less effective, have more-serious side effects or cost substantially more. Patients have had to endure unnecessary discomfort, preventable complications and longer hospital stays, which is costing hospitals millions of extra dollars. Most of the drugs that are unavailable or hard to find are generic injectable drugs that normally would be cheap, including sedatives for surgery and powerful antibiotics and painkillers. An Associated Press investigation last fall found at least 15 deaths since 2010 have been caused by the shortages, which have set a record high in each of the past five years. Future treatments also are endangered, as patient testing of new experimental medicines has been delayed or halted by lack of the standard medicines against which they must be compared. The lawmakers' investigation found evidence of one transaction where a licensed pharmacy called Priority Healthcare bought a chemotherapy drug called fluorouracil for $6.77 per vial. A distributor it owned called Tri-Med America allegedly soon sold the cancer medicine to another company for more than 10 times the initial price - $69 per vial. The other two pairs of companies under investigation are Columbia Med Services and Columbia Medical Distributors, and LTC Pharmacy and International Pharmaceuticals Inc.