A Ukrainian took over the old website of the San Francisco Department of Health and sold potency pills there

The drug crisis in San Francisco, California, will claim more lives this year than in all previous years. And many people turn to the city Department of Health for answers, but what they find there is absolutely not what they were looking for. The publication reported on the unexpected on the department’s website The San Francisco Standard.

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Searching the department's website for keywords such as "drugs," "detox" and "HIV" directs people to a scam site that uses the official city seal to advertise fertility pills, potency enhancements and questionable drug test decisions. such as fake urine.

An internal search of the city's Department of Public Health website contains multiple links to a fake website, SFHIV.org, posing as the health department and authored by Dr. Phillip Coffin, director of the city's Substance Use Research Division, and other senior officials.

According to the Wayback Machine, which maintains an Internet archive, SFHIV.org was the official repository of information related to HIV prevention in San Francisco from late 2004 until 2021. The city-owned site offered everything from scientific studies and reports on HIV epidemiology to explanations of safe sex and documents from the HIV Prevention Planning Council (a regional organization made up of government representatives and community stakeholders).

However, apparently, the department did not re-register ownership of the site in 2021, and in February of this year, according to the GoDaddy site registry, someone from Kyiv (Ukraine) took possession of it.

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The unidentified individual restored the site to appear like an official health department resource, but waited until early 2022 to add tabs for selling various items, pages archived in the Wayback Machine show. The site now sells synthetic urine and detox kits to help you pass a drug test, as well as pills that increase sperm count and help men "ejaculate 500% more."

Thousands of sites, including the federally funded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NPR, continue to link to the fake site, according to Moz's backlink checker.

“It's dangerous because it's masquerading as a city-run, city-run site, but it's definitely not,” said Michael Scarce, an HIV-positive activist and writer in San Francisco who came across the fake resource during his research.

What's even more troubling for Scars and others is that the site, despite a legal disclaimer that its "contents are for general use only," continues to promote itself as an official resource for people with HIV and AIDS.

“HIV science has been accelerating lately, so if something is four years out of date, it can be very dangerous if people perceive it as an authoritative source of reliable information about their health,” Scarce said.

Dr. Bernie Garrett, a scientist at the University of British Columbia and author of a book on deceptive health care marketing, says online health care fraud has become widespread in recent years because it is profitable and relatively easy to carry out.

“This case is similar to an example of expired domain spoofing: businesses release their old domain, and someone else picks it up, spoofs it to the original owner, and then uses it for shady purposes,” Garrett explained. “This is a huge growth area for selling useless supplements or getting people’s credit card information.”

According to Garrett, these scams are difficult to stop because web hosts may claim they are not responsible for the content they post, even if it is deceptive. Sites can often ignore any takedown requests they receive.

Observer Matt Dorsey, who is HIV-positive, called the site "a cautionary tale" of what happens when city departments create new Web domains.

“If these domains go down, they can be taken over by unscrupulous operators, and that appears to be what happened,” Dorsey said. “It appears to be a city-sanctioned website providing information about HIV/AIDS programs and services, but instead it advertises commercial products.”

Dorsey is confident that the city attorney's office will view the activity "very unfavorably" and take action to shut down the site.

While the 7500-officer department has been praised for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has recently come under criticism for its handling of the drug crisis and other issues.

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Last December, The Standard reported that one of the department's top officials was earning another six-figure salary while working part-time for a nonprofit that, despite winning city contracts, was on the brink of collapse. In total, 300 health department employees were found to be violating city regulations while working outside without permission.

Agency Chief Aaron Peskin was surprised to learn that the former health department website was being used for fraud. He said that “this topic needs to be closed.”

“I’ve encountered a lot,” Peskin assured. “But this is something new.”

“Our goal is to provide accurate and timely information and resources,” the department said. “It’s a pity that the new owner of the domain is illegally impersonating the health department.” We are working on this together with the city prosecutor’s office.”

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