Global Hunt Turns Pushers Into Prey

Philadelphia Inquirer, The, November, 2006 by John Shiffman

HENRY ON THE PARK APARTMENTS, ROXBOROUGH Fighting a fever with pepper cardamom tea, the graduate student raced through his homework and e-mailed a PowerPoint presentation to classmates. American business school seemed so easy. Group homework assignments. Exam review sessions. Online classes. Open-book tests! And now, on April 18, 2005, Akhil Bansal stood on the cusp of earning an MBA and a master's in health-care finance from Temple University, golden American degrees that would catapult his career back home in India.

He smirked at the irony of that evening's twin assignments, health-care marketing and generic-drug risk management, subjects in which he had more than a passing interest. If they only knew... Since his arrival in Philadelphia in 2003, this studious foreigner, with his rumpled flannel shirts and cocksure demeanor, had at age 26 blossomed into a global businessman. While classmates studied case histories and created mock businesses, Akhil made real money. ...