Kris Thorkelson, internet pharmacy pioneer

As the legend goes, when Kris Thorkelson was studying pharmacy at the University of Manitoba, his dean loaned him $250 to pay the fee for his provincial exam.

Today, Thorkelson is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has named him in an investigation into an international wholesale drug distribution network that has allegedly sold counterfeit cancer drugs to American oncologists.

Thorkelson and several other graduates in the class of '91 have become the pioneers of Manitoba's lucrative internet pharmacy industry.

Thorkelson and fellow classmate Daren Jorgenson were partners right out of university, scraping together $7,500 each to buy a pharmacy in Winnipeg's North End.

"I would describe him as a nice person, quiet, not flashy what most people would think of a pharmacist in terms of personality," Jorgenson said.

"Family is important to him. I never got the impression money was important to Kris, but success in business was."

By 1994, though, they went their separate ways, creating new companies that sold prescription drugs to people mostly Americans online.

Jorgenson eventually left the online pharmacy business, but Thorkelson was quietly buying up smaller companies.

"Kris became the biggest. He is now and has been for the last four to five years by far the biggest internet pharmacy shipping into the U.S. As the smaller pharmacies closed Kris would buy them up. His growth strategy, a lot of it involved buying up their patient lists and refills," Jorgenson said.

Today, Thorkelson owns hundreds of internet domain names, and CanadaDrugs.com is believed to be the largest online pharmacy in Canada.

Read more from the original source:
Kris Thorkelson, internet pharmacy pioneer