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A federal judge declined Monday to either decide or dismiss a condemned Nevada killer’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state plan for what would its first lethal injection in more than 16 years...U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II left open Zane Michael Floyd’s case — at least for now — and set an Oct. 11 date for attorneys representing Floyd and the state to return to court in Las Vegas...The judge said he might still close the matter in coming weeks for what he termed “mootness,” since state prison officials testified that they do not have the drugs they would need to conduct an execution. The prison supply of the sedative ketamine expired Feb. 28, and officials said they’ve had trouble procuring more...READ MORE

Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was released from prison on Wednesday after serving most of his seven-year sentence for lying to hedge fund investors and defrauding drug company investors...Shkreli, 39, was released from a prison in Allenwood, Pa., and moved “community confinement,” or a halfway house overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ New York Residential Reentry Management Office, the AP reported. The bureau said his projected release date is Sept. 14...READ MORE

Two co-founders of a Taiwan biotechnology company were sentenced Tuesday for plotting to steal trade secrets from Genentech in a $101 million scheme...Racho Jordanov, former CEO of JHL Biotech Inc., and former chief operating officer Rose Lin were sentenced in San Francisco federal court to a year and a day each in federal prison...They pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and wire fraud...JHL Biotech, now known as Eden Biologics, Inc., is a biopharmaceutical startup based in Taiwan. According to plea agreements, between 2011 and 2019, Jordanov used confidential Genentech information from ex-Genentech workers he hired to speed up and reduce costs for producing generic versions of products made by the South San Francisco-based company...READ MORE

With a crucial drug in the state’s supply of lethal injection materials set to expire at the end of February, Nevada officials are pressing forward in their attempt to execute death row inmate Zane Floyd, even as lawyers for Floyd are imploring the court to explore alternative methods, such as a firing squad...The experts, including multiple anesthesiologists who have experience with the drugs involved in the protocol, testified that the untried drug cocktail could result in suffering or an agonizing death...READ MORE

Federal authorities are expanding an investigation into Chicago-based Northshore Clinical Labs following a ProPublica story that raised questions about its COVID-19 testing operations in Nevada...an investigator with the Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicated he planned to subpoena documents from Nevada health officials...“Myself and other law enforcement agencies have had a case opened regarding Northshore Clinical Lab for quite some time,” wrote Special Agent Peter Theiler, who is based in Chicago. “After reading the ProPublica article on Northshore Clinical Lab regarding Nevada patients, we are interested in obtaining records related to testing for COVID-19 for Northshore Clinical Lab rapid test results and PCR test results for Nevada.”...READ MORE

A federal judge in Las Vegas said Monday he’ll decide in three weeks whether to dismiss a condemned Nevada killer’s lawsuit challenging the state’s plan for his lethal injection, because the state doesn’t have one of the drugs it would use...U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II acknowledged during a brief hearing with attorneys for the state and the inmate, Zane Michael Floyd, that key questions about the execution method remain unanswered following weeks of testimony late last year...But the Nevada Department of Corrections supply of the sedative ketamine expired on Feb. 28, and Randall Gilmer, chief deputy state attorney general, said prison officials have been unable to get more...READ MORE

Ex-GlaxoSmithKline researcher Lucy Xi has pled guilty to conspiracy to steal trade secrets from her former company to help a rival firm launch a business in China. She is the fourth person to plead guilty to the offense...Xi and co-defendants Yan Mei, Yu Xue, Yan Mei, and Tao Li created Renopharma in the guise of conducting research and development of anti-cancer therapies. However, it was found that Renopharma had been operating as a repository of stolen GSK information and was receiving compensation and subsidies from the People's Republic of China to do so...READ MORE

This week, a federal judge in Greeneville, Tennessee, sentenced seven individuals and seven related corporate entities for their roles in a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme...Peter Bolos and his co-conspirators, Michael Palso, Andrew Assad, Scott Roix, Larry Smith, Mihir Taneja, Arun Kapoor and Maikel Bolos...deceived pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, regarding tens of thousands of prescriptions. The PBMs processed and approved claims for prescription drugs on behalf of insurance companies. Bolos and his co-conspirators defrauded the PBMs into authorizing millions of dollars’ worth of claims that private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and public insurers such as Medicaid and TRICARE, paid to pharmacies controlled by the co-conspirators...READ MORE

San Francisco's district attorney's office...announced the conviction and sentencing in a high-profile Walgreens theft from last May...Jean Lugo Romero, who pled guilty to felony grand theft and misdemeanor petty theft, was sentenced to 16 months in prison and one-year probation, according to District Attorney Chesa Boudin's office...The brazen incident was caught on video and became an early flash point in examples of viral videos touting crime running rampant in the city. Lugo Romero is seen grabbing items off the shelf from a now-permanently-closed Hayes Valley Walgreens store, placing them into a garbage bag and then riding a bicycle through the store, past an employee and a security guard, to make an escape through the front door...These types of videos have been used as ammunition against Boudin, who critics say is too lenient on crime. Boudin faces a recall election this summer. A recent poll suggests that recall effort has strong support...READ MORE

A former Immunomedics executive was charged with tipping his partner and several relatives of confidential information that the biotech's then-experimental breast cancer drug had succeeded in a clinical trial, according to a suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in New Jersey district court...Usama Malik, Immunomedics' chief financial officer from 2017 until late 2020, learned the drug, now sold as Trodelvy, benefited patients in the late-stage study. Within hours of being told of the trial's success, the SEC charges said, Malik relayed the news to his former girlfriend Lauren Wood and three relatives, who subsequently bought shares in Immunomedics before the results were disclosed publicly...READMORE