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A Nevada man has been charged with fraudulently obtaining about $2 million in federal coronavirus relief aid, meant for small businesses, to buy luxury vehicles and condominiums in Las Vegas...The U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada accused Jorge Abramovs with bank fraud after he allegedly applied for funding to at least seven banks between April and June 2020...The complaint said Abramovs used a variety of company names — National Investment Group Corporation, National Legal Advisors In Care Of and National Investment Group — that “misrepresented the number of employees and the amount of revenue and payroll his companies had” to the banks...READ MORE

Authorities arrested a suburban Milwaukee pharmacist Thursday suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by removing them from refrigeration for two nights...Police...said the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment, adulterating a prescription drug and criminal damage to property, all felonies. The pharmacist has been fired and police said in a news release that he was in jail. Police did not identify the pharmacist, saying he has not yet been formally charged...His motive remains unclear. Police said that detectives believe he knew the spoiled doses would be useless and people who received them would mistakenly think they’d been vaccinated when they hadn’t...READ MORE

Police in Oakland and other East Bay cities have been dealing with a rash of brazen robberies and other incidents since Tuesday night...Among those businesses hit, was Oakland's longtime High Street Pharmacy...It started with a blow torch at the back door of the 73-year-old pharmacy, as seen on the store's surveillance cameras. Several men show up just after 10:30 p.m., cut their way through a metal back door and then the marathon begins...For five hours, until after 3:30 in the morning, dozens of people run into the pharmacy, smashing computers, wrecking displays, stealing drugs and other merchandise and ransacking a business that..."We feel like we deserve a little bit better," said owner Gareen Avakian, who told us she's heard from neighbors who called 911 almost as soon as the brazen break-in began. An alarm company also apparently tried to call, but Oakland police didn't respond for five hours...READ MORE

Walmart has filed suit against the United States Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration, asking a US District Court judge to clarify the roles and responsibilities of pharmacists and pharmacies under the Controlled Substances Act...Although Walmart’s pharmacies have blocked “thousands” of questionable physicians from having their opioids scripts filled by its pharmacists, “certain DOJ officials have long seemed more focused on chasing headlines than fixing the crisis,” the retailer said. “They are now threatening a completely unjustified lawsuit against Walmart, claiming in hindsight pharmacists should have refused to fill otherwise valid opioid prescriptions that were written by the very doctors that the federal government still approves to write prescriptions.”...READ MORE

A Mississippi owner of pharmacies and pharmacy distributors has been sentenced to 18 years in prison and ordered to repay the government nearly $287.7 million for his part in what prosecutors described as a $510 million health care fraud involving high-priced pain cream...Wade Ashley Walters...of Hattiesburg, also was ordered...to forfeit nearly $56.6 million that he gained personally from the scheme...Walters had been charged in a 37-count indictment. He pleaded guilty in July to one count each of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering...Between 2012 and 2016, Walters orchestrated a scheme to defraud Tricare, the insurance program for U.S. military, veterans, and their families, and private health insurers by distributing compounded medications that were not needed...READ MORE

The Trump administration sued Walmart Inc. Tuesday, accusing the retail giant of helping to fuel the nation’s opioid crisis by inadequately screening for questionable prescriptions despite repeated warnings from its own pharmacists...The Justice Department’s lawsuit claims that Walmart sought to boost profits, understaffed its pharmacies and pressured employees to fill prescriptions quickly. That made it difficult for pharmacists to reject invalid prescriptions, enabling widespread drug abuse nationwide, the suit alleges...Walmart, the country’s largest retailer by revenue, has been expecting this complaint and sued the federal government in October to fight the allegations pre-emptively...In its suit, Walmart accuses the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration of attempting to scapegoat the company for what it says are the federal government’s own regulatory and enforcement shortcomings...READ MORE

In a first in the nation, Oregon has rejected charging drug users with criminal offenses, with voters passing a ballot measure that decriminalizes possession of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other hard drugs...“Today’s victory is a landmark declaration that the time has come to stop criminalizing people for drug use,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which was behind the measure. “Measure 110 is arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date.”...The measure completely changes how Oregon’s justice system treats those who are found with personal-use amounts of the hard drugs...READ MORE

Yvelice Villaman Bencosme of Miami, Florida, has entered a guilty plea in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in response to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud...Bencosme (who served as primary investigator for clinical purportedly conducted at the medical clinic Unlimited Medical Research in Miami) admitted that from approximately 2013 to 2016, she participated in a scheme to defraud an unnamed pharmaceutical company by fabricating the data and participation of subjects in a clinical trial at UM Research...READ MORE

Why did Christie Smythe upend her life and stability for Martin Shkreli, one of the least-liked men in the world?...she chucked it all...Over the course of nine months, beginning in July 2018, Smythe quit her job, moved out of the apartment, and divorced her husband. What could cause the sensible Smythe to turn her life upside down? She fell in love with a defendant whose case she not only covered, but broke the news of his arrest. It was a scoop that ignited the Internet, because her love interest, now life partner, is not just any defendant, but Martin Shkreli: the so-called “Pharma Bro” and online provocateur, who increased the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000 percent overnight and made headlines for buying a one-off Wu-Tang Clan album for a reported $2 million. Shkreli, convicted of fraud in 2017, is now serving seven years in prison...READ MORE

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights leveraged $1,000,000 in fines against Aetna Life Insurance Company and $202,400 against the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to settle potential HIPAA violations...The fines are just the latest moves on the part of OCR to enforce HIPAA regulations around protected health information..."When individuals contract for health insurance, they expect plans to keep their medical information safe from public exposure. Unfortunately, Aetna's failure to follow the HIPAA Rules resulted in three breaches in a six-month period, leading to this million dollar settlement," said OCR Director Roger Severino in a statement...READ MORE