You can get charged with far more than fraud in the US, depending on the state. In Illinois, selling "look alike" drugs is a class 3 felony. [0]

> A look-alike drug can be any substance that would lead a reasonable person to believe that the look-alike is the real thing, such as its color, consistency, dosage amount, shape or markings. Or a drug can be considered a look-alike if you imply or expressly represent that the look-alike is real. For example, a court can consider any statements you made in advertising or distributing the drug, whether you asked for money and how you packaged the look alike. [ibid]

---

[0]: https://www.skokiecriminallawyer.com/2013/01/look-alike-drug...

Like paintings indistinguishable from the original until a chemical analysis is performed on the pigment. At which point you really have to wonder at the monetary value placed on the original. To someone appreciating the piece visually, pretty much the whole point, what does it matter?

This topic has been explored since the advent of photography and cinema. When advances in technology allowed to produce indistinguishable copies.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin [1] is a good starting point on this topic. He was the first to ask what actually constitutes a work of art, if you can cheaply mass produce copies of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...