A business executive who marketed men’s sex-enhancement pills as all-natural told a federal judge in Jacksonville he’d illegally sold products that contained generic forms of the erectile dysfunction medicines Viagra and Cialis.
Jae Hong Kim, 60, pleaded guilty June 24 to introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce by producing more than two million pills sold under brand names like “Rhino 69” and “MegaZen Power 5000.”
Although Viagra and Cialis both require prescriptions, Kim’s companies marketed capsules that were sold with no prescription at convenience stores and gas stations around the country, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Mesrobian said in summarizing facts behind the plea to U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura Lothman Lambert.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration records don’t show evidence that a series of companies Kim oversaw between 2020 and 2022 ever applied for FDA approval of their products, Mesrobian said.
The products were part of a “male enhancement” industry that court records said sparked a criminal investigation by the FDA as early as 2019.
Court records said federal agents bought enhancement products at eight Jacksonville-area stores and labs found all of them contained sildenafil or tadalafil, the generic names for Viagra and Cialis. Some pills had both.
Agents tracked down a Jacksonville wholesaler who was supplying the stores and made undercover buys, according to court records. Then in December 2020, agents served a search warrant at the wholesaler’s operation, seizing items including a shipment of one of Kim’s products, “Rhino 12 Titanium 250K.”
Investigators worked through records the wholesaler provided and an agent posing as another wholesaler ended up talking and emailing with Kim’s son, Alex Min Woo Kim.
The younger Kim pleaded guilty May 12 to mail fraud charges based on the investigation, but before being charged, he sent the investigator a company catalog and sold him a case of Titanium 250K.
That product’s labeling promoted “intense, explosive orgasms” and increased stamina, a plea agreement from Alex Kim’s case said.
The packaging also announced “no prescription necessary” but didn’t mention that it contained tadalafil, which an FDA lab found, the agreement said.
Alex Kim could face up to 20 years in prison, his plea agreement said, while his father faces at most one year behind bars, because his only charge was for a single misdemeanor count.
The elder Kim, a South Korean immigrant who lives in California, told Lambert in a hearing held over Zoom with an interpreter that he legally changed his name to Edward Kim when he became a U.S. citizen in 2022. But he was prosecuted as Jae Hong Kim because that was the name on his driver’s license and other identification when charges were filed in 2024, a prosecutor told Lambert.
A third family member is apparently still awaiting her day before in court. Jane Yoonji Yi, who was charged in 2024 alongside the elder Kim, was described by a company employee in Alex Kim’s plea as the elder Kim’s wife. The younger Kim was described by that employee as being the lead salesperson for the business, while Yi managed many business details and the elder Kim was mentioned in message threads as “Mr. President,” the son’s plea agreement said.
Yi had also been scheduled to enter a guilty plea June 24, but that was canceled a few hours before the afternoon hearing was supposed to start.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Boss of firms that sold 2 million ‘male enhancement’ pills admits illegally adding Viagra
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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