We'll see how far this goes...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-ceo-major-drug-distribution-company-first-face-criminal-charges-n997571

In a first in the fight against the opioid crisis, a major drug distribution company, its former CEO and another top executive were criminally charged.

Rochester Drug Co-operative, one of the top-ten largest drug distributors in the U.S., was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to violate narcotics laws, conspiracy to defraud the United States and willfully failing to file suspicious order reports.

Laurence Doud III, the company's former CEO, and William Pietruszewski, the company’s former chief compliance officer, are individually charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Pietruszewski is also charged with willfully failing to file suspicious order reports with the DEA.

Both Doud, 75, and Pietruszewski, 53, face life in prison. Doud will appear in court Tuesday, and Pietruszewski pleaded guilty last Friday, said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York also filed a lawsuit against Rochester Drug Co-operative Tuesday seeking "penalties and injunctive relief."

"This prosecution is the first of its kind: Executives of a pharmaceutical distributor and the distributor itself have been charged with drug trafficking, trafficking the same drugs that are fueling the opioid epidemic that is ravaging this country," Berman said. "Our office will do everything in its power to combat this epidemic, from street-level dealers to the executives who illegally distribute drugs from their boardrooms.”

Between 2012 and 2016, Rochester Drug Co-operative is accused of distributing tens of millions of doses oxycodone, fentanyl, and other opioids to pharmacies that its own compliance department found had no legitimate need for them.

Prosecutors said Rochester Drug Co-operative went against the DEA and its own policies and distributed drugs to pharmacies that were "filling controlled substances prescriptions issued by practitioners acting outside the scope of their medical practice, under investigation by law enforcement, or on RDC’s 'watch list.'"

Rochester Drug Co-Operative "distributed controlled substances to those pharmacies even after identifying 'red flags,'" said a statement from the U.S. attorney. And at Doud's direction, the company took on pharmacies that had been terminated by other distributors.

Rochester Drug Co-Operative’s own employees "described some of the company’s customers as 'very suspicious,' and even characterized particular pharmacies as a 'DEA investigation in the making' or 'like a stick of dynamite waiting for DEA to light the fuse,'" the statement said.

And executives at Rochester Drug Co-Operative purposefully kept suspicions of pharmacies' illegal activity from the DEA, fearing investigations into the pharmacies and potentially losing customers, according to a criminal complaint.

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Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdict-kapoor.html

Top Executives of Insys, an Opioid Company, Are Found Guilty of Racketeering


BOSTON — A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation’s opioid epidemic.

The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company’s founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients’ need for the drug.

The verdict against Insys executives is a sign of the accelerating effort to hold pharmaceutical and drug distribution companies and their executives and owners accountable in ways commensurate with the devastation wrought by the prescription opioid crisis. More than 200,000 people have overdosed on such drugs in the past two decades.

Federal authorities last month for the first time filed felony drug trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor, Rochester Drug Cooperative, and two former executives, accusing them of shipping tens of millions of oxycodone pills and fentanyl products to pharmacies that were distributing drugs illegally.

During the 10-week trial, federal prosecutors had detailed Insys’s audacious marketing plan — which included paying doctors for sham educational talks and luring others with lap dances — to spur sales of Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray approved to treat patients with cancer.

Company executives were accused of paying doctors to write prescriptions for a much wider pool of patients than the drug was approved for, and of misleading insurance companies so they would cover the potent and pricey medication. With the drug’s sales soaring, Insys became a darling of Wall Street, generating annual sales at one point of more than $300 million.

In addition to Mr. Kapoor, the other executives found guilty were Richard M. Simon, the former national director of sales; Sunrise Lee and Joseph A. Rowan, both former regional sales directors; and Michael J. Gurry, former vice president of managed markets. Lawyers for the defendants either did not comment or said they planned to appeal.

At the Insys trial, the government suggested that executives at the Arizona-based company often operated like drug dealers and that Mr. Kapoor was the ringleader.

“The decisions, the money, the strategy came from the top,” K. Nathaniel Yeager, a federal prosecutor, said during closing arguments

Details of Insys’s strategy from 2012 to 2015 to target doctors and allegedly bribe them have been revealed in lawsuits and news reports for about five years. The trial of Mr. Kapoor and his four co-defendants has brought to light the extent to which the schemes permeated the entire company and its national sales team.

Former Insys sales representatives, testifying for the prosecution, said their bonuses were tied to the dosages of Subsys prescribed by the doctors they recruited. The higher the dose, the higher the bonus. Evidence presented in court showed that sales representatives had to justify low doses to their boss within 24 hours.

Not only did Subsys cost more at higher doses, but patients were also more likely to become dependent on the highly addictive medication. Subsys is up to 100 times more potent than morphine. Abuse of fentanyl, especially black-market versions imported from overseas, have increasingly contributed to the opioid epidemic.

Alec Burlakoff, the former vice president of sales at Insys, pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy. He wrote in an email read at trial that patients on high doses would be desirable because they “will continuously refill their monthly prescriptions indefinitely.” Court filings in a separate case suggest Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, pursued a similar strategy.

Two Insys sales representatives made a rap video in 2015 about titration, the technique used to increase a patient’s dose. The main lyric: “I love titrations, and it’s not a problem. I got new patients, and I got a lot of them.” The video, in which the salesmen dance alongside a person in a Subsys dispenser costume, was shown at a national Insys sales staff meeting where Mr. Kapoor was present.

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Isn't Boston hella corrupt and or fucked up in general or something?

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Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/30/health/mallinckrodt-whistleblower-lawsuit-acthar/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F



(CNN) — Two whistleblowers at a pharmaceutical company responsible for one of the largest drug price increases in US history said the company bribed doctors and their staffs to increase sales, according to newly unsealed documents in federal court.
The effort, the whistleblowers said in a lawsuit against the company, was part of an intentional "multi-tiered strategy" by Questcor Pharmaceuticals, now Mallinckrodt, to boost sales of H.P. Acthar Gel, cheating the government out of millions of dollars.
The price of the drug, best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder, has increased almost 97,000%, from $40 a vial in 2000 to nearly $39,000 today.
The Justice Department has now intervened in the case after conducting its own extensive investigation -- a sign that the government believes the allegations levied by the whistleblowers are credible. In a statement to CNN, Mallinckrodt did not deny the accusations but said the fault lies primarily with Questcor.

The bombshell allegations lay bare what the whistleblowers say was a culture designed to sell the drug at all costs, from lying to the Food and Drug Administration to offering bribes to doctors.
The price increase, combined with an aggressive sales push in rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and other areas, has pushed the drug's annual sales over $1 billion.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*