Category:

Martin Shkreli must turn over almost $7.4 million...a judge ruled in a win for prosecutors who say the hedge-fund manager turned pharmaceutical executive cheated his investors...The jailed convict is scheduled to be sentenced March 9 for lying to investors in his hedge funds about his track record and performance as well as a fraud that involved Retrophin Inc., a company he founded...Shkreli had argued that he shouldn’t have to forfeit anything -- or just over $500,000 at the most -- because he didn’t profit from the crimes. Money from his investors went into the stock market, and he didn’t get anything from a plan to control Retrophin shares...Investors ultimately got their money back...Shkreli’s assets -- a Picasso, $5 million in cash in a personal trading account, a one-of-a-kind special edition album by the Wu-Tang Clan, an unreleased Lil Wayne album and shares in Vyera Pharmaceuticals...can be used to fulfill the forfeiture if there’s not enough cash available...

Drug-toting travelers now have a place to trash their stash before boarding a flight at McCarran International Airport...Green metal bins have popped up at the nation’s eighth-busiest airport, creating a safe space for airline passengers to dispose of marijuana before boarding a flight...Even though recreational marijuana is legal in Nevada, the drug is banned inside Clark County’s network of airports and security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration...About 20 “amnesty boxes” were installed over the past week outside high-traffic areas of McCarran, Henderson Executive and North Las Vegas airports, bearing a sign citing the local law that prohibits pot within airport property...The move comes after Clark County’s Board of Commissioners banned marijuana possession and advertising on airport property as a way to comply with existing federal laws...

A Massachusetts pharmacist was sentenced...to eight years in prison after being convicted on racketeering and fraud charges stemming from his role in a 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak that killed 76 people and sickened hundreds more...Glenn Chin, the former supervisory pharmacist at New England Compounding Center, was convicted by a federal jury in Boston in October but was cleared of second-degree murder charges, which would have exposed him to a maximum prison sentence of life...Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns to sentence Chin...to 35 years in prison for overseeing the dispensing of substandard drugs made in filthy conditions at the now-defunct...NECC...Prosecutors said those drugs included mold-tainted steroids...that were then injected into patients, harming at least 793 people in 20 different states...

Just one week after some of Allscripts’ services were shut down by ransomware, the EHR giant is facing a lawsuit for allegedly failing to secure its systems and data from cyberattacks...Allscripts went down on Jan. 18, after two of its data centers...fell victim to SamSam ransomware...Florida-based Surfside Non-Surgical Orthopedics is suing Allscripts on behalf of all clients impacted, as the system outage resulted in canceled appointments, care disruptions and "significant business interruption and disruption and lost revenues.”...The provider was unable to access its patient records or electronically prescribe medications, and as a result of the outage, Surfside has “expended significant time and effort resolving these issues resulting from the breach.”...Surfside alleges that Allscripts was aware of “deficiencies in its products and services [that] could result in privacy and security vulnerability or compromises and failed to take adequate measures to protect against any such event.”

A Georgia pediatric cardiologist pleaded guilty...wrongfully disclosing information about his young patients to an Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc sales representative seeking to identify potential new users of an expensive cholesterol drug...Dr. Eduardo Montana...entered his plea in federal court...Montana pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge that he wrongfully disclosed patients’ individual identifiable health information. While he faces up to a year in prison, prosecutors have agreed to recommend a term of probation...According to prosecutors, after Aegerion in 2012 received regulatory approval to market Juxtapid for treating high cholesterol in adults with a rare genetic disease, the drugmaker promoted it for use by patients who lacked the condition...Montana...also disclosed information to a senior Aegerion executive promoting Juxtapid’s off-label uses and provided the sales representative the code to access his electronic medical record system...

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration and Dutch law enforcement officials...announced sustained action against drug trafficking on the dark web, following last summer’s significant market takedowns of AlphaBay and takeover and subsequent takedown of the Hansa market. DEA continued to partner with the National Police of the Netherlands...to identify individuals who purchase drugs on the dark web and to further disrupt dangerous drug trafficking. Further examination of the Hansa Market data revealed illicit drug purchase information identifying U.S. and Dutch individuals, resulting in numerous face-to-face doorstep visits by police to suspected opioid buyers throughout the U.S. and the Netherlands...AlphaBay operated as a hidden service on the “Tor” network, and utilized cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero and Ethereum in order to hide the locations of its underlying servers and the identities of its administrators, moderators, and users. Based on law enforcement’s investigation of AlphaBay, authorities believe the site was also used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars deriving from illegal transactions on the website...the Hansa Market, another prominent dark web market...was used to facilitate the sale of illegal drugs, toxic chemicals, malware, counterfeit identification documents, and illegal services. The administrators of Hansa Market, along with its thousands of vendors and users, also attempted to mask their identities to avoid prosecution through the use of Tor and digital currency.

The turmoil at Canada’s largest homegrown pharma company, generics maker Apotex, continues with the resignation of CEO Jeremy Desai even as the company deals with the fallout from the murders of the company’s founder...The resignation of Desai comes six months after Teva filed a lawsuit against him and Apotex claiming that for two years Desai received copies of Teva trade secrets from his girlfriend, Barinder Sandhu, who before her 2016 departure was Teva’s chief of regulatory affairs for its American generics business...Separately, Toronto police...announced that they were investigating the strangulation deaths of 75-year-old Apotex founder Barry Sherman and his 70-year-old wife, Honey, as a targeted double murder...The Canadian billionaire was known to be litigious and was involved in a number of legal battles...

The Justice Department said...it will support local officials in hundreds of lawsuits against manufacturers and distributors of powerful opioid painkillers that are fueling the nation's drug abuse crisis...The move is part of a broader effort to more aggressively target prescription drugmakers for their role in the epidemic, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. The Justice Department will file a statement of interest in the multidistrict lawsuit, arguing the federal government has borne substantial costs as a result of the crisis that claimed more than 64,000 lives in 2016...the Justice Department...which has also sought to crack down on black market drug peddlers and doctors who negligently prescribe...Targets of the lawsuits include drugmakers such as Allergan, Johnson & Johnson, and Purdue Pharma, and the three large drug distribution companies, Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. Drug distributors and manufacturers named in these and other lawsuits have said they don't believe litigation is the answer but have pledged to help solve the crisis.

Diverging penalties in EU Member States for the falsification of medicines raise concerns for organised crime, says Medicines for Europe...The European Commission has submitted a report detailing the application of penalties for those involved in the production and circulation of falsified medicines to the European Parliament on the request of the Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU)​...While the Commission said measures taken by Member States are “satisfactory”​, it has called for their strict enforcement...“…penalties are only effective if they are well-enforced,”...“I urge all EU countries to make sure that criminals falsifying medicines are punished.”...A lack of data regarding illegal activity in Member States makes it challenging to determine the effectiveness of national penalties...According to the report, all Member States deem at least some activities relating to the falsification of medicinal products a criminal offence. However just 21 EU countries enforce criminal penalties for the manufacture, distribution, brokering, import, export and sale at a distance of falsified medicines...

Canadian pharmaceuticals billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife Honey, who were found hanged at their indoor swimming pool, were murdered...Detective Sergeant Susan Gomes said investigators came to the conclusion after six weeks of investigation, but declined to discuss possible motives or suspects...“We have sufficient evidence to describe this as a double homicide investigation and that both Honey and Barry Sherman were in fact targeted,”…Sherman, the founder of generic drug maker Apotex, and his wife were found dead in their mansion on December 15...Sherman was a fiercely competitive businessman, once musing that a rival might want to kill him...The 75-year-old tycoon was known for litigiousness and aggressive businesses practises as he developed Apotex, which has a global workforce of about 11,000. He conceded he made enemies in Prescription Games, a 2001 book about the industry.