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Warner Chilcott U.S. Sales LLC, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical manufacturer Warner Chilcott PLC, has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of health care fraud, the Justice Department announced...The plea agreement is part of a global settlement with the United States in which Warner Chilcott has agreed to pay $125 million to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s illegal marketing of the drugs Actonel, Asacol, Atelvia, Doryx, Enablex, Estrace and Loestrin…company committed a felony violation by paying kickbacks to physicians throughout the United States to induce them to prescribe its drugs, manipulating prior authorizations to induce insurance companies to pay for prescriptions of Atelvia that the insurers may not have otherwise paid for and making unsubstantiated marketing claims for the drug Actonel…As part of today’s resolution, the whistleblowers will receive approximately $22.9 million from the federal share of the civil recovery.

Novartis agreed to pay about $390 million to wrap up federal kickback claims before the $3.3 billion case went to trial. The Justice Department and a number of U.S. states had sought up to $3.4 billion in damages in the case, which zeroed in on the Swiss drugmaker's relationships with specialty pharmacies…settlement, together with other one-time charges, knocked down Novartis' third-quarter net income, which declined to $1.8 billion…Novartis offered special deals to pharmacies to boost prescriptions of its transplant drug Myfortic (mycophenolic acid) in a head-to-head competition with Roche's CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil). The drugmaker set up another scheme to increase refills of its iron chelation drug Exjade (deferasirox)…

James Schiffer, RPh, associate at Allegaert Berger & Vogel LLC, talks about the 18 times he was burglarized over the course of his career.

A…nurse who admitted taking kickbacks from a drug company that makes…Subsys (fentanyl sublingual) was pressured by sales representatives to increase her prescribing "so that the Subsys numbers would also increase,"…federal prosecutors charged that Heather Alfonso "continued to increase her prescribing of Subsys and to find more patients for whom she could prescribe the drugs" in exchange for a series of $1,000 kickbacks, totaling $83,000, from the company, Insys Therapeutics…the…narcotic is approved only for cancer patients, some of the patients given Subsys by Alfonso "did not have a cancer diagnosis,"...But "prior authorizations" submitted on behalf of patients falsely represented that they had cancer, misleading insurers into paying for the drug…She…was the highest prescriber in Connecticut in 2013, writing $2.7 million in prescriptions.

A Rowland Heights doctor was convicted of second-degree murder…in connection with the overdose deaths of three patients, capping a landmark case that was closely watched by medical and legal professionals across the country…Dr. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng, who prosecutors say is the first doctor convicted of murder in the United States for recklessly prescribing drugs to patients, was accused of ignoring “red flags” about her prescribing habits, including the overdose of a patient in her clinic and nine phone calls in less than three years from authorities informing her that patients had died with drugs in their system…. Tseng was one of only a handful of doctors across the country who have faced murder charges for prescribing painkillers that led to a patient's death...

Questions about a cryotherapy worker who died last week at her south Las Vegas Valley job lingered…but it wasn't clear who was going to find the answers…Multiple agencies told the Review-Journal they were not responsible for any investigations and that cryotherapy businesses are not regulated like medical clinics or salons… Ake-Salvacion died while using a cryotherapy machine, according to her family and the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration…OSHA is not investigating…The agency responded when the body was found but won't press on…. the business is not regulated by any medical board…and their procedures and equipment are not monitored by the Food and Drug Administration… Nevada regulations do not cover the use of cryotherapy for cosmetic procedures, according to the executive director of the cosmetology board…Neither the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services nor the Southern Nevada Health District regulate such businesses… Rejuvenice's website says it provides “medical therapy” with full-body devices at negative 240 degrees.

Enforcement officers from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have seized approximately half a million doses of unlicensed erectile dysfunction medicines, with an estimated value of more than £1 million ($1.5m), during a raid on in Datchet, Slough...A 37 year old man has been arrested… The news comes less than two months after Sundeep Amin from Essex was sentenced to 16 months in prison after MHRA officers seized £900,000 worth of falsified ED drugs en route from India..

Drug Enforcement Administration…announced...an indictment today against three individuals and two pharmacies for a multimillion-dollar oxycodone distribution scheme…through pharmacies operated in Brooklyn and Queens. Lilian Jakacki, Marcin Jakacki, Robert Cybulski, European Apothecary Inc, Chopin Chemists, MW&W Global Enterprises Inc…charged with illegally distributing more than 500,000 pills of oxycodone...with a street value between $10 million and $15 million.  The defendants are also charged with money laundering and health care fraud…one of the largest illegal diversions of oxycodone…in a New York State pharmacy. Pharmacies also illegally diverted more than 160,000 additional pills by accepting 1,300 fraudulent prescriptions…including prescriptions made out in the names of famous luxury brands such as “Coach” or “Chanel.”

Mahesh Kuthuru, M.D…of Henderson…pleaded guilty today to unlawfully writing prescriptions…was indicted in October 2014, pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of a controlled substance…faces not more than 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million… According to the plea agreement…operated a medical practice known as Desert Pain Management in Las Vegas…wrote prescriptions for Oxycodone, Percocet, MS Contin, Roxicodone and Methadone to undercover officers who posed as patients…

GNC Holdings Inc., the chain of health and wellness stores, plummeted as much as 21 percent after Oregon sued the company, claiming it sold supplements made with illegal ingredients…the company’s nutritional and dietary supplements were laced with unapproved drugs. One is picamilon, a Russian prescription medicine for neurological conditions, and the other is BMPEA, which was first synthesized in the 1930s as a replacement for amphetamines and never studied in humans, according to the state’s complaint.