The Peptide Vendor Graveyard: Shutdowns, Buyer-Loss Reports and Enforcement Actions, 2020-2026

This archive records 18 dated events in the research-peptide market between October 2020 and July 2026: three federal criminal cases, four FDA and trade actions, two voluntary closures, one chronic-issue record, two batch-quality reports, two single-source reports and four policy milestones. The record shows federal prosecutors and FDA treating research-labelled peptides as drugs for human use, vendors closing without a public reason, and batch-level failures that a vendor’s wider lab record does not reveal. Every entry ends with its evidence tier and the sources behind it, so a reader can see whether a claim rests on a court record, a lab certificate or one author’s account.

On October 1, 2026 we removed 15 earlier entries that did not meet that bar, rewrote the Paradigm Peptides entry to match the Justice Department record, and corrected several citations. The revision log on this page lists each change. The archive is selective: a vendor that closes without leaving a public record will not appear here.

For currently operating vendors, the peptide vendor evidence leaderboard compares the canonical multi-signal record, and the vendor review hub indexes approved buyer reports by vendor, source and date. A strong observed record does not guarantee an untested or future batch.

Timeline at a glance

1. Oct
   2020

   DOJTailor Made Compounding pleas

   The Kentucky pharmacy pleaded guilty to distributing unapproved new drugs, including BPC 157 and CJC 1295. At sentencing on February 24, 2021 it forfeited $1,788,906.82, its 2019 sales of those products.

2. Mar 21-22
   2022

   DOJAll American Peptide pleas

   Keith and Sylvia Kovaleski pleaded guilty in the District of New Jersey to conspiring to distribute misbranded and unapproved new drugs, and agreed to forfeit over $3 million.

3. Sep 29
   2023

   FDACategory 2 additions

   FDA's September 2024 table dates 18 Category 2 entries to this day, including BPC-157, KPV, MOTs-C, Semax, Epitalon and GHK-Cu for injection. Five more 503A peptide listings placed then, including CJC-1295 and AOD-9604, were removed in September 2024 after their nominations were withdrawn.

4. Sep 17
   2024

   EditorialBelcourt, Ly and White

   An Annals of Pharmacotherapy editorial describes semaglutide and tirzepatide sold without prescription "for research purposes".

5. Sep
   2024

   SettlementEvexias / Farmakeio

   FDA settled a lawsuit over the 2023 Category 2 placements and scheduled advisory committee meetings for October 29 and December 4, 2024.

6. Oct 29
   2024

   PolicyAdvisory committee rejects four

   The Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee voted against adding ipamorelin, ibutamoren mesylate, L-theanine and kisspeptin-10 to the 503A bulks list.

7. Nov 7
   2024

   PaperAshraf et al., J Med Internet Res

   Of six semaglutide test purchases, three vials arrived. Measured purity was 7.7% to 14.37%, and endotoxin was detected in all three.

8. Dec 10
   2024

   FDAWarning letters to four GLP-1 sellers

   Letters to Xcel Peptides, SwissChems, Summit Research and Prime Peptides said research-use-only labels did not stop the products being drugs for human use. FDA posted them on December 17.

9. Dec 2024 -
   Jan 2025

   Buyer lossQSC orders stall

   A buyer reports an unfilled $130 QSC order on December 26. On January 10, QSC's Telegram channel announces that its operation is paused "for security reasons". Full entry →

10. Feb 19
    2025

    Policy38 attorneys general write to FDA

    A bipartisan coalition asks FDA to act against counterfeit and illegally sold GLP-1 drugs.

11. Apr 9
    2025

    USITCTirzepatide exclusion order

    The US International Trade Commission issued a general exclusion order on tirzepatide products that infringe Eli Lilly's trademark or carry a false designation of origin. Published in the Federal Register April 15.

12. Aug
    2025

    ComebackQSC returns via Telegram

    QSC's "Official Comeback Announcement" cites arrests, seized machinery and confiscated funds. In September QSC says of its unfilled late-2024 orders: "we got busted. We lost everything." Full entry →

13. Sep 9
    2025

    FDAMore than 50 letters to GLP-1 compounders

    Most letters are dated September 9. They target claims that compounded products are "generic" versions with the "same active ingredient" as approved GLP-1 drugs.

14. Dec 10
    2025

    DOJParadigm Peptides pleas

    Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober plead guilty in the Northern District of Indiana.

15. Jan 27
    2026

    ShutdownScience.bio closes

    Its closing email, as quoted by a forum member, cites "regulatory compliance reasons" and says outstanding orders will be fulfilled or fully refunded.

16. Feb 27
    2026

    PolicyKennedy on JRE #2461

    The HHS Secretary says he expects an FDA announcement "within a couple of weeks"; a law-firm summary reports him as saying it could make about 14 peptides more accessible. It was a podcast remark, not an agency action.

17. Mar 6
    2026

    ShutdownPeptide Sciences closes

    A three-sentence notice announces a voluntary shutdown, 7 days after the podcast remark, and gives no reason. By March 21 the notice calls anyone claiming to sell its products fraudulent. Full entry →

18. Apr 8
    2026

    Batch qualityJEEP T30 endotoxin result

    Janoshik test 136052 reports 2,306 EU per vial on JEEP's January 2026 orange-cap tirzepatide 30 mg batch, about 3.3 times the USP <85>-derived per-dose ceiling at a 15 mg dose. Full entry →

19. Apr 13
    2026

    Vendor noticeQSC holds international orders

    QSC's channel tells buyers that many international orders are delayed or lack tracking, blames a logistics partner's contact with authorities, and rules out refunds until tracking arrives. Full entry →

20. Apr 15-16
    2026

    PolicyFDA lifts 12 peptides from Category 2

    FDA announces the removal, effective after seven days, and schedules a July advisory meeting on seven of them. Removal alone does not make a substance eligible for compounding.

21. Apr 19
    2026

    Batch qualityERP endotoxin questions

    An analyst's write-up reports an SS-31 group test and criticises how ERP handled buyers who raised it; an 89-post forum thread follows. Finnrick's 38 public-submitted endotoxin results on ERP in our corpus include no failure; a separate August 2026 report on ERP-labelled hCG reads above 1,000 EU per vial. Full entry →

22. Jun 8
    2026

    Source banMESO-Rx permanently bans QSC

    Forum administrators ban QSC as a source for posting material that let a complaining customer's home be identified, and for disclosing his payment address. Full entry →

23. Jun-Jul
    2026

    Group-buy lossPeptide University collapse

    Our July 17 investigation documents members out roughly $150,000 after a June group buy that had failed by mid-July, with about $178,000 leaving the organiser's wallet, about $164,000 of it traced on-chain to Binance and OKX deposit addresses. Full investigation →

24. Jul 23-24
    2026

    PolicyAdvisory committee backs six of seven

    BPC-157, KPV and TB-500 (8-6, 1 abstention), MOTs-C (7-5, 2 abstentions), Semax (8-5, 1) and Epitalon (7-4, 1) were recommended; emideltide was not (6-7, 1). The vote is advisory. Full entry →

25. Jul 27
    2026

    Batch qualityXTP re-test finds tirzepatide

    On a Janoshik test XTP itself ordered and paid for, three vials of batch XTP-R30-003 sold as 30 mg retatrutide held about 2 mg of tirzepatide. Full investigation →

26. Jul 28
    2026

    Review pricingQSC ties promo prices to public reviews

    QSC tells its Telegram channel that promo prices "will look different depending on who you are. Call it a loyalty discount. Call it a tax for the ungrateful." Full entry →

27. Jul 30
    2026

    DOJKawa sentenced to 70 months

    Judge Cristal C. Brisco sentences Matthew Kawa to 70 months and Jennifer Stechkober to 16 months, orders $78,317.52 in restitution and enters a $5 million money judgment against Kawa.

How to read this

Each entry is filed under one category and ends with one of three evidence tiers:

• Official or peer-reviewed record. A court, Justice Department, FDA, Federal Register or USITC document, or a peer-reviewed research paper. The entry reports what that record says.
• Documented record. A laboratory certificate, the vendor’s own published statement, a forum administrator’s notice, a journal editorial, TitrateLab’s own measurements, or several independent published reports. Each source is linked.
• Single published account. One author’s report. It qualifies only when it is dated, linkable, carries a consistent byline and gives specifics a reader can check, such as amounts, products or lab results. We attribute it to that author and do not present it as our finding. An anonymous forum warning, or a report that other participants dispute in the record we hold, does not qualify on its own; that is why several single-thread warnings were withdrawn on October 1, 2026.

Named businesses and people appear only when a linked source supports the specific statement made about them. Where the evidence is a buyer’s or analyst’s report, the entry says so. A tier describes the evidence, not the seriousness of the event.

The categories:

• Chronic / ongoing issues. A vendor still trading after documented buyer losses.
• Batch-quality reports. Independent lab results on a specific product or batch.
• DOJ criminal convictions. Federal guilty pleas and sentences.
• FDA and trade actions. FDA warning letters and safety listings, and the USITC tirzepatide order.
• Voluntary shutdowns. Vendors that announced their own closure.
• Reported fee-ladder schemes. A pay-to-release scheme described in one published account.
• Single-source community reports. A community group test reported by one author.
• Regulatory milestones. Policy events and research papers that shaped the market.

Each entry also has its own page. They are listed here by category, in the order they appear on this page.

Chronic / ongoing issues

This vendor kept trading. It is here because buyers, a forum administrator and the vendor’s own posts document unresolved orders that a prospective buyer should know about.

QSC / “Tracy” stalled orders 2024-2026; still trading

Buyers reported paid QSC orders that were not filled from December 2024. On January 10, 2025 QSC announced a pause in its operation, and it did not return for nearly seven months. In September 2025 QSC said it had “got busted” and tied fixing those late-2024 orders to a future restart of international shipping. In April and May 2026 QSC told customers that many international orders were delayed or lacked tracking and that there were no refund or credit options. The vendor kept trading throughout. On June 8, 2026 MESO-Rx banned QSC as a source for posts that let a complaining customer’s home be identified.

Full investigation: QSC Tracy review and investigation measures QSC’s lab record against size- and product-matched peers, controls for who paid for each test, and reaches a split verdict. This entry is the dated timeline; the investigation is the analysis.

QSC (Qingdao Sigma Chemical) is a China-based research-peptide vendor. Orders were handled through a sales contact using the name “Tracy”, whose messaging profile used a photo of the Chinese actress Zhang Xinyu. In a February 2026 interview, Tracy said the avatar was not about fandom.¹

Timeline:

• December 26, 2024. A GLP-1 Forum thread reports non-delivery of a $130 wire for a tirzepatide 10 mg kit. The poster says QSC contacts first said payment had not arrived, then blamed their bank, then stopped replying.² Two days later the forum’s QSC vendor account, “Qingdao Sigma”, replied that its bank accounts were not frozen, and that when they are temporarily blocked at a bank’s request, transfers it has not confirmed are refunded through the original route, which it said can take from a few days to “4-6 weeks”. The buyer did not post again in the thread, and we hold no record of whether the $130 was refunded or the order filled.
• January 9-10, 2025. A “Tracy gone MIA?” thread collects reports of stalled orders.³ On January 10, QSC’s Telegram channel announced: “For security reasons our operation will be paused few days, then will resume once everything is sorted and under control, no more details will be provided, all communication channels are shut down temporary.” The next post in our capture of that channel is dated August 4, 2025.⁶
• Early August 2025. QSC returns on Telegram with an “Official Comeback Announcement”. A February 2026 interview write-up summarises it as citing arrests, seized machinery and confiscated funds, saying QSC was restarting from scratch, and promising to make people whole over time; a GLP-1 Forum thread dated August 1, 2025 reproduces it.⁴ We hold no capture of the announcement itself.
• September 20, 2025. Answering “What about my pending order from late 2024?” on its channel, QSC writes: “we got busted. We lost everything.” It says its ability to fix orders from that period “is directly tied to our ability to resume full international operations”.⁶
• November 2025. A MESO-Rx member reports a $7,500 order placed that month (thread started March 24, 2026). He says customs stopped the package and sent it back. He says its tracking had shown no movement in China since February 25, 2026. He says Tracy agreed to a reship or refund, then stopped opening his messages, and that he thinks she may have blocked him.⁵
• April 13, 2026. QSC’s channel tells customers that “many international orders have been delayed, and some are missing tracking numbers”, attributes this to official attention at its logistics hub, and says there will be “No refunds, no order changes, no credits” until a tracking number arrives. The full message is quoted below.⁶
• May 15, 2026. QSC tells its channel that an international order “from late March or April” may take two months to ship, and that “there are no refund/credit options”.⁶
• June 8, 2026. MESO-Rx permanently bans QSC as a source. The notice is a signed administrator post in QSC’s own vendor thread. Its stated ground is not the shipping dispute. The administrator writes that the source “publicly posted screenshots and supporting information relating to a customer who was complaining about a missing order” with redactions that were “grossly inadequate”, so that third parties could “reconstruct and identify the customer’s exact residence within minutes”, and that the source also disclosed the customer’s cryptocurrency payment address. The notice concludes: “Effective immediately, the source is permanently banned … because the source engaged in severe and dangerous doxxing of a customer.”⁷
• July 27, 2026. QSC posts a four-image album on its Telegram channel naming a customer it accuses of spreading false seizure claims, with his order history, tracking dashboard, private messages and forum posts. We do not reproduce or link the images and do not name him.⁶
• July 28, 2026. QSC tells its channel that promotional pricing will depend on whether a customer posts public reviews: “From now on, promo prices will look different depending on who you are. Call it a loyalty discount. Call it a tax for the ungrateful.” The post asks for “something public that help us grow”, listing “Forums, reddit, TG groups, discords”.⁸ A channel post the next day claims MESO-Rx banned at least 40 accounts in response. That figure appears in no forum record we have seen and rests on QSC’s statement alone.

The April 13, 2026 broadcast, verbatim:

I think it's time I give you some context. Believe it or not, that's up to you — but here's the situation.

You may have noticed that many international orders have been delayed, and some are missing tracking numbers. That's because the logistics hub where we keep our stock and handle shipments became part of a temporary unwanted official attention. It turns out that some other clients of theirs were involved in something serious — let's just say it's the kind of thing that draws unwanted attention. As a result, the person who manages our shipments was taken for a chat. He's expected to be done with formalities in the coming days, as he's clearly not involved, but the whole thing has brought our operations to a crawl.

Before this happened, he shipped many international orders but didn't log the tracking into the system we share. So some of you might receive your package before ever seeing a tracking number. Others may not have been shipped yet — and honestly, I won't be able to tell which is which until he's back.

For the ones we know haven't shipped, we're already arranging to move some fresh stock to another logistics partner — though we can't move everything out of the affected warehouse just yet.

That said, let's be real: you're in this space, and you know what comes with it. You take a risk, we take a bigger one. A little patience isn't too much to ask. If you're worried about missing your next dose or dealing with an unhappy customer somewhere down your own chain — honestly, that's not my priority right now.

No refunds, no order changes, no credits — not until you have a tracking number in hand. That's going to take a few more days. Every message asking for updates will go unanswered, because I can't reply to everyone individually. You already know the answer: either your order shows up without tracking, or you'll get the number when it's ready.

Domestic operations (USA, UK, EU, AU, Canada) are running normally — no delays, no issues. Don't make this harder than it already is. Shit happens in this business. Wait patiently.

How QSC explained the disruptions. QSC’s own posts attribute both to action by authorities: “we got busted” (September 2025, about the late-2024 orders) and a logistics contact who “was taken for a chat” (April 2026). Neither post documents it. Both periods came with a refusal of individual updates (“no more details will be provided” in January 2025; “Every message asking for updates will go unanswered” in April 2026), and neither offered refunds for unfilled orders: in September 2025 QSC tied the late-2024 orders to a future restart, and in April and May 2026 it ruled out refunds or credits. The April message states that domestic warehouses were unaffected.

Impersonators: accounts and storefronts claiming to be QSC or “Tracy” need independent checks. See The impersonator layer below.

Correction — September 22, 2026: We previously described qsc-usa.com as an official QSC website and attributed that claim to an August 2023 forum alert. We have not verified the cited source’s supporting wording or date, and we are withdrawing the website attribution. Calling the supposed rule merely outdated did not address that evidence gap.⁹

The QSC announcement channel tracked by TitrateLab stated on September 15, 2026 that it has no website for orders. That statement conflicts with storefronts claiming to accept website orders as QSC. A familiar brand name, copied branding or a site’s own claim to be official does not establish its authorization. The announcement is evidence of the channel’s stated ordering policy; it does not independently establish the ownership or conduct of every similarly named domain.⁹

Related TitrateLab research: How ChatGPT Promoted a Fake Chinese Peptide Website documents a ChatGPT answer that presented a storefront as QSC, and the September 22 correction to this entry.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: GLP-1 Forum threads (December 26, 2024, January 9, 2025, August 1, 2025); MESO-Rx $7,500 thread; MESO-Rx administrator ban notice, June 8, 2026; QSC Telegram channel posts captured by TitrateLab (messages 73, 132, 541, 567, 668-671, 673 and 677); QSC ordering-channel statement, September 15, 2026; Tracy interview, February 18, 2026.

Batch-quality reports

A batch-quality report concerns a specific product or batch, not a vendor’s whole record. A vendor with good results on average can still sell a bad lot. The same per-batch view underlies our list of the worst vendor results independent labs recorded in 2026.

JEEP — orange-cap Tirzepatide T30, January 2026 batch April 2026

A Janoshik certificate reports 2,306 EU of endotoxin per vial on JEEP’s January 2026 orange-cap tirzepatide 30 mg batch. At a 15 mg dose that is about 3.3 times the per-dose ceiling derived from USP <85> for a 70 kg adult; at the 2.5 mg starting dose it is under the ceiling.

On who ran the test. The assays were run by Janoshik. “LS Group Testing” is the community group-buy cohort that organised, funded and submitted the samples, not a laboratory; the submission is logged at Janoshik under the client name “EPU x LS Group Testing GB x juGGakNot Empire”. An earlier version of this entry named LS as the testing lab in one place and LiquiLabs in another. Both were wrong, and we have corrected them.

JEEP (also written “JEEPJEEP”) is a China-based research-peptide vendor with an active vendor account in the GLP-1 Forum marketplace.

Timeline:

• January 2026. JEEP ships orange-cap tirzepatide 30 mg (“T30”) from the batch later tested. The source thread says this batch kept the batch number printed on earlier stock and differed only by a slightly lighter cap.¹¹
• March 13, 2026. Janoshik’s first endotoxin result on the batch (#113887) estimates 1,350 EU per vial. The report states that values above 100 EU/vial are outside the assay’s validated range at that dilution.
• April 8, 2026. Two more vials from the same batch, donated by buyers in different countries, return 1,360 EU per vial (#136051, again an estimate above the validated range) and 2,306 EU per vial (#136052, reported as a value with no range note). The cohort posts a safety warning on GLP-1 Forum the same day.¹¹ EU means endotoxin units. USP <85> does not require an undetectable result; for parenteral drugs other than intrathecal it uses a threshold of 5 EU per kg, which for a 70 kg adult is 350 EU per dose. The relevant question is what a single injection delivers, not what a vial contains.

What the numbers do and do not say. Endotoxin per vial is fixed; endotoxin per injection scales with how much of the vial is drawn. On these three vials a 2.5 mg dose delivers 113 to 192 EU, under the 350 EU ceiling. The 1,350 and 1,360 EU vials reach the ceiling at about 7.8 mg per dose, and the 2,306 EU vial at about 4.6 mg. These are per-dose comparisons against a 70 kg reference weight; they do not describe any individual’s response.

Our corpus holds all three Janoshik certificates. Only the 2,306 EU/vial result is reported as a value; the 1,350 and 1,360 EU/vial readings are estimates above the assay’s validated range, so they show the vials were high without fixing the exact load. A separate Janoshik assay of the same batch (#124223, analysed March 24, 2026) measured 32.72 to 35.10 mg of tirzepatide at 99.89% average purity: the cohort’s finding concerns endotoxin, not content or purity.

Later results. As of October 1, 2026 our corpus holds seven JEEP tirzepatide results with an endotoxin reading dated after April 8: April 22 to September 19, 2026, from Finnrick public submissions and Freedom Diagnostics. Three read low, one below the limit of quantitation, one negative and two pass. None failed. Two describe orange-cap vials with printed batch codes JP20250616 and JP20250617. Because the source thread says the January batch kept the batch number printed on earlier stock, a printed code cannot place a vial inside or outside that batch, and we cannot treat either result as a retest of it. The thread said the cohort’s vials were being retested, including the first kit at LiquiLabs; we have found no published result of those retests.

Why endotoxin is tested. Endotoxins are lipopolysaccharides from the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. Above threshold doses, injected endotoxin can cause fever and inflammatory reactions, which is why USP <85> sets a per-dose limit for injectable products.

Why this points at the batch, and what cuts against it. The source thread reports that the vials came from different buyers’ separate purchases of the same January batch. If so, a result that recurs across three of them points at the production lot rather than at one buyer’s handling. The same thread reports that one cohort member’s sample, sent to a different laboratory (Trustpointe), returned 110 EU. The post gives no unit basis and says the cohort was checking whether the figure was an estimate outside the assay’s range; we hold no certificate for it.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: Janoshik certificates #113887, #136051 and #136052, and assay #124223; GLP-1 Forum safety-warning thread, April 8, 2026; USP <85>; TitrateLab COA corpus, checked October 1, 2026.

Related TitrateLab research: Endotoxins in 2026: What Grey-Market Peptide Reports Show places this batch’s Janoshik report 136052 (2,306 EU/vial) in the wider grey-market endotoxin record.

ERP — community confrontation after the JEEP results April 2026

ERP (Shanghai ERP Peptide Biotechnology) drew community pressure in April 2026 over endotoxin testing. Our corpus does not show a general endotoxin problem at ERP: of 43 published endotoxin readings on ERP-labelled product, 42 were low, below quantitation, negative or passing. The exception is one August 2026 report on an ERP-labelled hCG vial, described below.

Timeline:

• March 25, 2026. Two public-submitted Finnrick retatrutide results on ERP dated this day show quantity deviations of −49.5% (finnrick certificate) and +9.3%. Our corpus holds 101 later Finnrick results on ERP.
• April 19, 2026. An analyst’s write-up, “The Trouble with ERP”, reports a community group test of ERP’s SS-31 and criticises how ERP handled buyers who raised the results.¹³ It is shared on GLP-1 Forum in the thread “JEEP isn’t only endo concern. ERP would like a word.....”, which ran to 89 posts between April 19 and 21 in our capture.¹² Participants debated what ERP had been asked, what it said, and whether independent endotoxin testing should be expected of high-volume international vendors.
• August 18, 2026. A Janoshik report (#219296, verification key 4PJ5AERCAHQT) on a sample labelled “HCG 5k”, manufacturer “ERP”, batch “Red Cap”, reads “>1000 EU/Vial (1424.920 EU/Vial estimate)”. The report states that values above 1,000 EU/vial are outside the assay’s validated range. We hold it as a screenshot of the verification page shared on Telegram. The client is listed as anonymous, we have not authenticated the report with Janoshik, and “Red Cap” is a cap colour, not a lot number.

What we hold. Our corpus has 38 Finnrick results on ERP product with an endotoxin reading: 21 below the limit of quantitation, 14 low and 3 negative, dated February 26 to September 24, 2026 (query run October 1, 2026). Finnrick records each as submitted by a member of the public rather than by the vendor. None failed. It also holds five published endotoxin readings from other sources: a Janoshik somatropin report at 2.026 EU/vial, Telegram-shared retatrutide and MOTS-c reports below 0.125 EU/mL, a member-submitted retatrutide result recorded as low, and the August hCG report above.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: GLP-1 Forum thread, April 19, 2026; “The Trouble with ERP”, April 19, 2026; Finnrick public test records and other published endotoxin reports, including Janoshik #219296 as shared on Telegram, in the TitrateLab COA corpus, checked October 1, 2026.

Related TitrateLab research: ERP, WBS and JKL: Three Names, One Chinese Peptide Supplier? examines the shared ads, product codes and pricing that connect ERP with WBS and JKL.

DOJ criminal convictions

Tailor Made Compounding pleas October 2020; sentenced February 24, 2021

Tailor Made Compounding, a Nicholasville, Kentucky pharmacy, pleaded guilty to distributing unapproved new drugs, and its owner Jeremy Delk pleaded guilty to unlicensed wholesale distribution of a prescription drug. The pharmacy forfeited $1,788,906.82.

According to the Justice Department, the pharmacy’s plea covered distribution of unapproved new drugs from October 25, 2018 through April 1, 2020: SARMs and, under the plea agreement, BPC 157, Cerebrolysin, CJC 1295, DSIP, Epitalon, GW 501516, Ipamorelin, LGD-4033, LL-37, Melanotan II, MK 677, PEG-MGF, Selank and Semax. The forfeiture of $1,788,906.82 represents its 2019 sales of those products. Delk’s plea concerned bulk shipments of methylcobalamin to a California clinic without patient-specific prescriptions. Both pleaded guilty in October 2020.

On February 24, 2021, Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove sentenced the pharmacy to three years’ probation. Delk received three years’ probation including four months’ home incarceration, 100 hours of community service, a $20,000 fine, and a prohibition from participating in a business involving the distribution of prescription drugs.

Why it matters: it is the earliest federal case in this archive, and it shows a licensed compounding pharmacy prosecuted over peptides that research-chemical sellers also offer.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: DOJ Eastern District of Kentucky sentencing release, February 24, 2021.

All American Peptide (Kovaleskis) pleas March 21-22, 2022

Keith and Sylvia Kovaleski, owners of All American Peptide, pleaded guilty in the District of New Jersey to conspiring to distribute misbranded drugs and unapproved new drugs, and agreed to forfeit over $3 million in criminal proceeds.

Keith Kovaleski pleaded guilty on March 21, 2022 and Sylvia Kovaleski on March 22, 2022, before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton. From 2014 to January 2019 the company’s website sold tadalafil, SARMs, peptides and other drugs not approved for human use, including clenbuterol. The couple made and labelled products, including high-dose tadalafil capsules, in their South Amboy basement. Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General, which took part in the investigation, reports that Keith Kovaleski was sentenced on July 12, 2023 to 10 months’ home confinement and Sylvia Kovaleski on July 11, 2023 to three years’ probation.

Why it matters: it shows peptides prosecuted alongside other unapproved drugs under federal misbranding and unapproved-drug charges.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: DOJ District of New Jersey plea release, March 23, 2022; Amtrak OIG plea release; Amtrak OIG sentencing summary.

Paradigm Peptides (Matthew Kawa and Jennifer Stechkober) pleas December 10, 2025; sentenced July 30, 2026

Matthew Kawa, owner of Paradigm Peptides, was sentenced on July 30, 2026 to 70 months in prison for introducing unapproved new drugs into interstate commerce with intent to defraud or mislead. His sister and co-defendant, Jennifer Stechkober, was sentenced to 16 months.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, Kawa owned an internet business known as “Paradigm Peptides” or “Paradigm R.E. LLC” that sold peptides, hCG and SARMs through paradigmpeptides.com and shipped from an address in Michigan City, Indiana. Both defendants pleaded guilty on December 10, 2025; Kawa also pleaded guilty to illegally importing merchandise. Judge Cristal C. Brisco sentenced both on July 30, 2026, each to one year of supervised release after prison, and ordered $78,317.52 in restitution, jointly and severally. The court entered a $5 million money judgment against Kawa.

The Justice Department’s release states that many products sold as SARMs were actually testosterone, that the business falsely claimed FDA registration, US manufacturing and product testing while importing from China and India without testing, and that Kawa kept selling after FDA warning letters in 2020 and 2022. It puts sales from 2019 to 2024 at more than 54,000 customers in all 50 states and more than 80 countries. The DOJ case page asks buyers from April 2019 to March 2024 to contact its victim-witness specialist. CBS News reported the judge telling Kawa he had left “an incredible trail of harm”, and that Paradigm shut down in March 2024.

Why it matters: it is the longest custodial sentence in this archive.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: DOJ Northern District of Indiana sentencing release, July 30, 2026; DOJ case page, United States v. Matthew Kawa; CBS News, July 30, 2026.

FDA and trade actions

FDA Category 2 additions September 29, 2023

FDA’s list of bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks under its interim compounding policies (“Category 2”) dates 18 entries to September 29, 2023, 16 of them peptides or peptide derivatives. Five more peptide listings for 503A compounding, placed in Category 2 in September 2023, were removed a year later after their nominators withdrew the nominations; FDA still lists them as substances that may present significant safety risks.

As archived on September 28, 2024, FDA’s Category 2 table dates these entries to September 29, 2023: BPC-157, cathelicidin LL-37, dihexa acetate, emideltide (DSIP), Epitalon, GHK-Cu for injectable routes, ibutamoren mesylate (503A), kisspeptin-10, KPV, Melanotan II, pegylated mechano growth factor (PEG-MGF), MOTs-C, Semax and thymosin beta-4 fragment (LKKTETQ) for 503A, and GHRP-2, GHRP-6, ipamorelin acetate and tranilast for 503B. Ibutamoren and tranilast are not peptides.

The five removed peptides are AOD-9604, CJC-1295, ipamorelin acetate (for 503A; it stays in Category 2 for 503B), thymosin alpha-1 and Selank acetate. FDA announced the removal on September 20, 2024, effective seven days later. The same archived FDA page lists all five under “Other bulk drug substances that may present significant safety risks”, and explains that such a substance “might not appear in category 2 because, for example, its nomination was withdrawn.”

For BPC-157 FDA lists possible immunogenicity, “complexities with regard to peptide-related impurities and active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) characterization”, and little safety information for the proposed routes. For KPV it reports no human exposure data identified.

Why it matters: these listings are the starting point for the 2024 lawsuit and settlement, the April 2026 removals and the July 2026 advisory votes recorded under Regulatory milestones.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: FDA, “Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding that may present significant safety risks”, as archived September 28, 2024; Reed Smith, via Mondaq, October 4, 2024, on the September 20, 2024 removals.

Warning letter wave December 10, 2024

FDA warning letters dated December 10, 2024 told four online sellers of GLP-1 products labelled for research that their products were unapproved new drugs intended for human use.

The recipients were Xcel Peptides (Xcel Research LLC), SwissChems, Summit Research Peptides and Prime Peptides (Prime Vitality Inc.). The products named across the letters include semaglutide, tirzepatide and retatrutide. The SwissChems letter states: “Despite statements on your product labeling marketing your products as ‘research chemicals only,’ evidence obtained from your website establishes that your products are intended to be drugs for human use.” FDA posted the four letters on December 17, 2024, alongside a letter to Veronvy over oral GLP-1 products. A law-firm review called them the first FDA warning letters it had seen for GLP-1s labelled “for research use only and not for human consumption or clinical use”.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: FDA warning letters to SwissChems (archived copy), Summit Research Peptides, Prime Peptides and Xcel Research; FDA Roundup, December 17, 2024 (archived copy); Foley & Lardner, December 18, 2024.

USITC General Exclusion Order on tirzepatide April 9, 2025

The US International Trade Commission, not FDA, issued a general exclusion order on April 9, 2025 barring imports of tirzepatide products that infringe Eli Lilly’s U.S. Trademark No. 6,809,369 or include a false designation of origin.

The order ended investigation 337-TA-1377, which the Commission opened on November 27, 2023 on Lilly’s complaint. Alongside the general order, the Commission issued a limited exclusion order against falsely advertised products from certain defaulting respondents and cease-and-desist orders against others, with a bond of 100% of entered value during the presidential review period. The notice was published in the Federal Register on April 15, 2025 (90 FR 15720).

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: Federal Register 2025-06352, April 15, 2025.

The September 9, 2025 warning-letter wave September 9, 2025

FDA sent more than 50 warning letters to US and international companies that compound or manufacture semaglutide and tirzepatide, most of them dated September 9, 2025.

The letters targeted marketing claims that compounded products were “generic” versions of FDA-approved GLP-1 drugs or contained the “same active ingredient”, and claims of proven safety and effectiveness for weight loss. Recipients had 15 working days to respond with a corrective action plan. Unlike the December 2024 letters, these were aimed at compounders and manufacturers rather than research-labelled sellers.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: FDA warning letter to GLP-1 Solution, September 9, 2025 (archived copy); Wilson Sonsini, October 1, 2025.

Voluntary shutdowns

Science.bio January 27, 2026

Science.bio closed on January 27, 2026. Its closing email, as quoted by a forum member that day, said it was “closing for regulatory compliance reasons” and that “All outstanding orders will be either fulfilled or fully refunded.”

We have no record of an enforcement action naming Science.bio. A shutdown tracker published in March 2026 describes it as closing without a detailed public explanation.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: Rapamycin Longevity News forum, January 27, 2026; edparker92 shutdown tracker, March 17, 2026; The Peptide Catalog shutdown list.

Peptide Sciences March 6, 2026

Peptide Sciences shut down on March 6, 2026, calling the decision voluntary, and has not said why. It replaced its storefront at peptidesciences.com with a three-sentence notice that gave no reason and said nothing about open orders or refunds. Web searches of FDA and Justice Department pages on October 11, 2026 found no warning letter, enforcement action or charge naming the company. Nothing we found shows the company selling since. Every Internet Archive capture of its homepage that we read, from March 8 to September 8, 2026, shows the notice and no store, and since at least March 21 the notice has called anyone claiming to sell its products fraudulent. A store using the Peptide Sciences name since the closure is not shown to be the company, and a review of such a store may describe someone else.

Our certificate archive holds 125 results on Peptide Sciences vials dated before the closure, from December 17, 2024 to March 3, 2026. In 14 the laboratory did not find the labelled peptide. All 14 were vials that Finnrick, a testing service, bought itself, and they carry three printed batch codes, two for retatrutide and one for CJC-1295. Where the labelled peptide was present, purity was 98.6% or higher in all 111 results, but 56 of those 111 vials held more than 10% less than the label stated. We measured these figures on October 11, 2026; the method and exclusions are at the end of this entry.

What the notice said, and how it changed. The March 8 capture shows the whole notice: “After careful consideration, Peptide Sciences has made the decision to voluntarily shut down operations and discontinue the sale of our research products. We are deeply grateful for your trust and support. Thank you for being part of the Peptide Sciences community.” The Peptide List, writing on March 6, quoted the first sentence and said the three-sentence notice appeared at about 2:00 PM Eastern that day.

The captures show two later versions. A March 18 capture still shows the three sentences alone. By March 21 the company had added: “Any website, entity, or individuals claiming to be Peptide Sciences, a successor to Peptide Sciences, or falsely claiming to sell our products are fraudulent, unauthorized, and have absolutely no affiliation with our company. Do not interact with them and report them to us immediately.”

By April 15 the notice carried the wording it still showed on September 8, the latest capture that shows the page rather than an access block when we checked on October 11. The company now says it “retains all rights, title, and interest in and to its name, brand, trademarks, intellectual property, and associated goodwill”. It adds: “Any website, platform, entity, or individual claiming affiliation with Peptide Sciences, representing themselves as a successor to Peptide Sciences, or claiming to sell our products is unauthorized, fraudulent, and has no affiliation with our company.” Both later versions give an email address for reports on a separate domain, registered in May 2024, before the closure. No version gives a reason, mentions orders or refunds, or names a site the company considers unauthorized.

Why it closed: what is and is not known. The date and the company’s description of the closure as voluntary are documented. The reason is not. A law-firm analysis a week later found “no confirmed public explanation” and noted that “no official enforcement action has been announced”. It reports that some observers read the closure as a sign of regulatory pressure and others as a change in business strategy. The closure came 7 days after Kennedy’s February 27 podcast remark about peptide access, and about five weeks after Science.bio closed on January 27 citing “regulatory compliance reasons”. No version of the Peptide Sciences notice mentions regulation, and no source we hold ties the closure to either event. The Peptide List’s March 6 article says the FDA sent the company a warning letter in 2023 over claims about BPC-157 and TB-500, but it links no FDA record, and a web search of fda.gov on October 11, 2026 found no warning letter addressed to Peptide Sciences. We treat that letter as unconfirmed. We also hold no buyer report showing whether orders open on March 6 were shipped or refunded.

What our certificate archive showed before the closure. These are the 125 results with test dates from December 17, 2024 to March 3, 2026. Finnrick bought 96 of the vials itself; members of the public mailed in 28; one is a Janoshik certificate, test 67573, printed for an anonymous client with the manufacturer name Peptide Sciences.

All 10 retatrutide failures sit on two printed batch codes, RET7920231109-6 and RET7920231124-6, which also produced 3 passing results. Six of the 10 failing records name tirzepatide as the peptide the laboratory found instead; the other four say only that the vial did not contain retatrutide or held an unknown compound. Janoshik vs Chromate: Why Peptide Lab Results Disagree reproduces those records, including all eight results on RET7920231109-6, which came from two orders Finnrick placed itself. The other 25 retatrutide results, on other codes or none, all found retatrutide. The 4 CJC-1295 failures share one code, CJC320241122-5, and the 4 results on another code, CJC320250118-5, all found CJC-1295. The other compounds tested were tirzepatide, semaglutide, BPC-157, Melanotan II, ipamorelin, PT-141, GHK-Cu and tesamorelin, and none of their 77 results failed identity.

Results dated after the closure. Ten more Finnrick results filed under Peptide Sciences carry test dates from April 2 to July 20, 2026. Members of the public mailed in all ten, and six did not contain the labelled peptide: three retatrutide, two tesamorelin and one CJC-1295. Three of the ten carry batch codes beginning PS6: PS6HRP22 on a retatrutide vial and on a tesamorelin vial, and PS6HRI22 on a CJC-1295 vial. No code in that format appears among the 125 earlier results, and all three of those vials failed identity. The records do not show where or when each vial was bought, and Finnrick describes four of the ten vials as having no label. The one below was registered as a public shipment on March 16, 2026, ten days after the closure. Ten results are too few to compare with the earlier record. A vial filed under the name could be stock bought before the closure or could come from someone else using it, and the records do not tell us which.

A site that used the name after the closure. The domain peptidescienceslabs.com was registered on April 16, 2026, 41 days after the closure, according to its .com registry record, which we queried on October 11, 2026. The only Internet Archive capture of it, from May 16, 2026, shows a storefront titled “Home - Peptide sciences” that calls itself Peptide Sciences, lists research products at prices from $65 to $345 and offers a 15% discount on cryptocurrency orders. On October 11 the registry listed the domain under “client hold” with no name servers, a status a registrar sets to keep a domain from resolving; the record does not say why, and it was last updated on August 13, 2026. We have not established who ran the site. Nothing we hold connects it to the closed company. No version of the company’s notice names it, and the notice’s warning about sites claiming to sell its products was already in place by March 21, before the domain was registered. A Trustpilot page for peptidescienceslabs.com was among Google’s top 10 US results for “peptide sciences review” in Semrush data we pulled on October 5, 2026, so a review found under the name may concern this site rather than the company. Our guide to checking whether a peptide vendor is legit starts with confirming a seller’s exact domain and when it was registered.

A certificate shown by any seller using the name says nothing about that seller unless it verifies on the laboratory’s own server and matches the vial in hand. Our guide to verifying a peptide COA lists the checks.

How we measured. We read TitrateLab’s certificate database on October 11, 2026 without writing to it. The count covers results filed on Finnrick’s Peptide Sciences vendor page, which lists peptidesciences.com as the vendor’s website, plus Janoshik test 67573. A result counts as “not found” when the laboratory reported that the vial did not contain the labelled peptide. Finnrick’s results come from laboratories it codes A to G, and laboratories do not measure amount identically, so some of the spread in amounts may come from the laboratory rather than the vial. Public submitters chose what to send. The figures describe the vials tested, not every batch the company sold. Our Peptide Sciences seller page counted 321 certificates on October 11, 2026. That total also includes 134 Finnrick results filed under Peptide-S, a separate Finnrick vendor that lists a different website, 12 filed under a Finnrick vendor called Science, and 40 Freedom Diagnostics reports printed for a client named “Peptides”. None of those records names Peptide Sciences, so we left them out here. We read nine Internet Archive captures of the homepage, dated March 8 to September 8, 2026. The FDA and Justice Department checks were web searches limited to fda.gov and justice.gov; FDA’s own warning-letter search refused our requests, so those searches cannot rule out a letter entirely. The image sources, capture times, registry records and counts are listed in the evidence manifest.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: Peptide Sciences closing notice, Internet Archive capture of March 8, 2026; notice with added warning, capture of March 22, 2026; current notice, capture of September 8, 2026; The Peptide List, March 6, 2026; LumaLex Law, March 13, 2026; Finnrick Peptide Sciences vendor page; Janoshik test 67573; .com registry record for peptidescienceslabs.com; Internet Archive capture of peptidescienceslabs.com, May 16, 2026; TitrateLab certificate database, read October 11, 2026.

Reported fee-ladder schemes

One published account, a February 2026 long-form by an independent analyst, describes a pay-to-release scheme: a buyer pays for an order, then faces escalating “refundable” fees to release a shipment that does not arrive.¹⁴ The entry below rests on that single account. We have not found a second independent record, such as a BBB report, a platform takedown notice or an independent victim thread. Everything below is that author’s report, not our finding.

“Mia Peptide” (TikTok @miapeptide1) reported February 2026, single-source

A February 14, 2026 long-form describes a TikTok account, @miapeptide1, steering buyers into a Telegram group whose regular members vouched for the seller, and then demanding a series of extra fees before shipment.

The sequence the author reports for one buyer:

1. A $740 order, paid by Zelle (the seller offered Cash App, Bitcoin, Chime, Zelle or Apple Pay)
2. A tracking link to a private site, ExpressRouteHub, then an “unpaid refundable insurance fee” of $305, which the buyer paid
3. A “Refundable Use Tax Fee” of $405, presented as a Florida consumer use tax
4. That fee negotiated down when the buyer said she could not pay it, to $205 and then $150
5. A refund offered only if the buyer first paid the $150

The author reports a second buyer who paid a $205 fee and then faced a $400 “refundable insurance” demand, also negotiated down. The account describes ExpressRouteHub as not tied to any recognised carrier system. It names the individual whose Zelle account received the payments; we do not repeat the name and have not established who controls that account.

The same post says, in one sentence, that another TikTok and Telegram persona used “a very similar model” with a different courier name. It gives no further detail, so we do not list that persona as an entry.

Evidence tier: Single published account.

Sources: “The Refund That Requires Another Payment; The MIA Peptide Scam”, February 14, 2026.

Single-source community reports

ERP community group-test findings, reported April 2026

An April 19, 2026 write-up reports a community group test, organised by roughly 80 to 85 buyers, of about 12 ERP products. Most came back acceptable on purity. ERP-branded SS-31 measured 44.10 mg against a 50 mg label, with an endotoxin reading above the assay’s validated range.

According to the write-up, the group submitted ERP product to Janoshik under a neutral label, “Strong Like Bull” (SLB), so that the vendor could not reuse the certificates in its marketing. Our corpus holds the assay certificate that matches the reported SS-31 figure: Janoshik #134235, sample “SS-31 50mg”, manufacturer printed as “STRONG LIKE BULL (SLB)”, 44.10 mg at 99.743% purity, ordered March 16 and analysed April 16, 2026. The certificate does not name ERP. The link to ERP rests on the write-up, which also reports that ERP disputed the attribution, pointing to the neutral label and to cap colours. We do not hold the endotoxin certificate.

An 11.8% shortfall on the certificate we hold is outside normal measurement error for one vial; whether that vial was ERP product rests on the write-up. The same write-up criticises how ERP responded to buyers who presented the results. We have not seen the underlying messages and do not repeat the specific allegations; readers can weigh the source directly.

How this squares with the endotoxin data above. The batch-quality entry on ERP records 42 of 43 published endotoxin readings on ERP-labelled product as low, below quantitation, negative or passing. This report concerns one SS-31 submission whose endotoxin certificate we do not hold. The one high ERP reading we do hold is on a different product, hCG. Neither establishes a general endotoxin problem at ERP, and we hold no second SS-31 endotoxin reading to set against this one.

Evidence tier: Single published account.

Sources: “The Trouble with ERP”, April 19, 2026; Janoshik #134235; GLP-1 Forum discussion thread.

Related TitrateLab research: ERP, WBS and JKL: Three Names, One Chinese Peptide Supplier? examines the shared ads, product codes and pricing that connect ERP with WBS and JKL.

The impersonator layer

Several brands in this market report impersonators. A buyer who says they were “scammed by” a brand may have paid someone posing as it, so the brand and its impersonators need to be kept apart.

• QSC. Accounts and storefronts claiming to represent QSC need independent identity checks. QSC’s tracked September 15, 2026 announcement says it has no website for orders. We have withdrawn our earlier unsupported attribution of qsc-usa.com as official; the domain’s ownership and authorization have not been independently established.⁹
• Peptide Sciences. The company closed on March 6, 2026. Since at least March 21, 2026, its notice has said that anyone claiming to sell its products is fraudulent and unauthorized. The domain peptidescienceslabs.com, registered April 16, 2026, presented itself as Peptide Sciences in a May 16, 2026 capture; nothing we hold connects it to the company. The entry on why Peptide Sciences shut down has the notices, the registry record and the capture.
• GYC / GG Peptides. GYC’s official announcement on GLP-1 Forum, posted March 3, 2026, warns that scammers impersonate it on Discord, Telegram and fake websites, and names one official contact email and one official website for its ggpeps.com operation.¹⁵
• Wuhan Wansheng Bio and Laikang Biotechnology. A MESO-Rx thread titled “WARNING: Scammed Twice by Chinese Peptide Vendors – FAKE SOURCES PRETENDING TO BE Wuhan Wansheng Bio & Laikang Biotechnology” reports buyers paying accounts that claimed to represent those manufacturers. The thread presents the manufacturers as impersonated, not as the parties who took the money.¹⁶

Regulatory milestones

These are the policy events and research papers that shaped the market, not incidents in themselves.

Belcourt/Ly/White “Bypassing Prescribers” published online September 17, 2024

An editorial in Annals of Pharmacotherapy by Belcourt, Ly and White of the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy describes manufacturers selling vials of semaglutide and tirzepatide to consumers without a prescription “for research purposes only”.

The abstract says these sellers often omit the supplies and knowledge needed to dissolve and inject the drug, and that bypassing prescribers makes it harder to prevent drug interactions or monitor patients. The paper was published online on September 17, 2024 and in print in May 2025 (volume 59, issue 5, pages 485-490). Its abstract does not describe purchase tests or laboratory analysis, and PubMed classes it as an editorial rather than a research article, so we tier it as a documented record.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: PubMed 39285774; doi 10.1177/10600280241277551.

Ashraf et al. “Multifactor Quality and Safety Analysis of Semaglutide Products” J Med Internet Res, November 7, 2024

A peer-reviewed study made six test purchases of semaglutide from online sellers that required no prescription. Three vials arrived and were analysed; the three prefilled pens never arrived. Measured purity was 7.7% to 14.37%, semaglutide content exceeded the labelled amount by 28.56% to 38.69%, and endotoxin was detected in all three samples at 2.1645 to 8.9511 EU/mg.

The study is by Ashraf, Mackey, Vida, Kulcsár, Schmidt, Balázs, Domián, Li, Csákó and Fittler, published November 7, 2024. Its sample is three vials, so it shows what those purchases contained, not how common such products are.

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: J Med Internet Res 2024;26:e65440; PMC11582493; doi 10.2196/65440.

2024 Evexias / Farmakeio settlement September 2024

Evexias Medical Group and Farmakeio sued FDA over its 2023 placement of more than a dozen peptides in Category 2. In the September 2024 settlement FDA agreed to publish a Federal Register notice for two advisory committee meetings, on October 29 and December 4, 2024.

FDA’s final summary minutes record what followed. On October 29, 2024 the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee voted against adding L-theanine (1-12), ibutamoren mesylate (1-13), ipamorelin free base and acetate (0-12 each) and kisspeptin-10 (0-11) to the 503A bulks list. On December 4, 2024 it voted against CJC-1295 free base (0-13), AOD-9604 (0-12) and thymosin alpha-1 free base (4-17), along with the related salt forms.

Evidence tier: Documented record.

Sources: Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, settlement release, September 2024; FDA final summary minutes of the October 29, 2024 and December 4, 2024 committee meetings (archived copies of fda.gov/media/185412 and 185642).

Kennedy’s peptide remark and the 2026 advisory review February 27 – July 24, 2026

On February 27, 2026, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on The Joe Rogan Experience (#2461) that he expected an FDA announcement “within a couple of weeks”. A law firm’s summary of the episode reports him as saying FDA was expected to act in a way that could make about 14 peptides more accessible. What followed was narrower: FDA lifted 12 peptides from Category 2, put 7 to its advisory committee, and the committee recommended 6.

• April 15, 2026. FDA announced that after seven days it would remove 12 peptides from Category 2: BPC-157, KPV, TB-500, MOTs-C, emideltide, Semax, Epitalon, cathelicidin LL-37, dihexa acetate, GHK-Cu, mechano growth factor and Melanotan II. Removal “does not, in itself, establish eligibility for compounding under Section 503A.”
• April 16, 2026. A Federal Register notice (FR Doc 2026-07361, 91 FR 20465) scheduled the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee for July 23-24, 2026 to consider seven of them for the 503A bulks list: BPC-157, KPV, TB-500 and MOTs-C on the first day, emideltide, Semax and Epitalon on the second.
• July 23-24, 2026. The committee recommended BPC-157, KPV and TB-500 (each 8-6, 1 abstention), MOTs-C (7-5, 2 abstentions), Semax (8-5, 1) and Epitalon (7-4, 1). It did not recommend emideltide (6-7, 1).
• Status on October 1, 2026. The vote is advisory. Adding a substance to the 503A bulks list requires FDA rulemaking. A Federal Register search on October 1, 2026 found no FDA proposed rule adding any of these substances.

Kennedy’s remark was not an agency action, and none of these steps “restored” Category 1 access. CJC-1295, AOD-9604 and thymosin alpha-1, often named in coverage of the remark, had already left Category 2 in September 2024 when their nominations were withdrawn, and were not among the 12 removed or the 7 reviewed in 2026; the committee had voted against all three on December 4, 2024 (see the Evexias / Farmakeio entry).

Evidence tier: Official or peer-reviewed record.

Sources: Federal Register 2026-07361, April 16, 2026; Goodwin, May 11, 2026; Orrick, April 16, 2026; McDermott Will & Schulte vote summary; Hyman, Phelps & McNamara FDA Law Blog, July 28, 2026; Frier Levitt, March 10, 2026.

What the records show

Three observations hold across the entries above. Each rests on the dated records cited in those entries.

Federal cases resolved months to years after the conduct ended. All American Peptide’s conduct ran to January 2019; the pleas came in March 2022 and the sentences in July 2023. Tailor Made’s charged conduct ended April 1, 2020; the pleas came in October 2020 and the sentences in February 2021. Paradigm Peptides closed in March 2024, according to CBS News; the pleas came in December 2025 and the sentences in July 2026. Outside this archive’s peptide cases, Premier Pharmacy Labs stopped manufacturing after a June 2019 FDA inspection and a consent decree followed on September 17, 2021.¹⁰

Research-use labels did not change how regulators read the products. FDA’s December 2024 letters said research-use-only labelling did not stop products being drugs intended for human use, and the Paradigm Peptides release describes products sold “for human consumption”.

The record does not show why vendors close. Science.bio’s email cited “regulatory compliance reasons”. Peptide Sciences gave no reason, a law firm found no enforcement action announced a week later, and web searches of FDA and Justice Department pages on October 11, 2026 found none either. We do not infer a cause from timing.

What’s not in this archive

The archive leaves out vendors that closed or vanished without a public record we can link, and claims we could not tie to a source that supports them.

Removed on October 1, 2026. We withdrew 15 of the 33 entries listed before that date. Their incident pages now return “gone”, except the impersonation report, whose page now points to The impersonator layer. They were:

• a three-storefront chain described as one operator’s serial exit scam, for which we held no linkable source of any kind;
• a fee-scheme entry naming a company and a courier, whose only citation was a consumer report about a different seller;
• an entry stating that a vendor was suspended by Health Canada, with no source;
• an entry about a vendor contact’s alleged quality incident, with no source;
• a catalog change and a rebrand described as pre-emptive moves under shared ownership, with no source;
• a reported June 2025 federal raid on a US storefront, sourced only to secondary sites, for which we found no FDA, DOJ or court record;
• four 2025 closures sourced to two community trackers, only one of which lists them, with no other record;
• a group-buy collapse sourced to one undated community post;
• three single-thread forum warnings about named storefronts or accounts, at least one of them disputed by other participants in the same thread;
• an impersonation report about two manufacturers, now summarised under The impersonator layer;
• an entry about a vendor’s absence from one forum, which recorded no buyer loss or allegation of wrongdoing, while our price-list capture showed the vendor still posting in August 2026;
• a second fee-scheme persona that its only source mentions in one sentence without detail.

Never included. Several Telegram-only losses and “same operator, new brand” claims that circulate in community retrospectives without documents, a reported subreddit ban and a reported moderator purge we could not confirm.

We welcome documentary evidence on any of these. The contact link is in the site footer.

How we update this

Last reviewed October 1, 2026. The archive holds 18 entries: 9 official or peer-reviewed records, 7 documented records and 2 single published accounts. These counts are computed from the evidence-tier line on each entry, and the same figures appear in the evidence brief and the page summary.

We add an entry when an event has a linkable source that supports what we say about it. We remove or restate an entry when a source fails that test, and we record the change in the revision log at the top of this page. The page shows its last-reviewed date; if that date is old, assume there are events we have not logged.

If you have primary-source documentation of an incident we have not logged, or think an entry misstates its source, use the contact link in the site footer.

Sources and further reading

Each entry lists its sources inline. The notes below add detail for the QSC and JEEP entries and the impersonator list.

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