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Robert Courtney, the former Kansas City pharmacist whose dilution of cancer medications led to the premature deaths of hundreds and possibly thousands of patients, will not be released from prison early...The decision to keep Courtney in prison would mark a reversal by the Bureau of Prisons to release him to a halfway house today and then to home confinement in Trimble, Missouri, because of the COVID-19 pandemic...Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2002 to various crimes associated with his drug dilution scheme...READ MORE

The Food and Drug Administration in the past month has stepped up seizures of prescription drugs being sent to American customers from pharmacies in Canada and other countries, according to operators of stores in Florida that facilitate the transactions...While seizures at the nation’s international mail facilities have periodically spiked during the past two decades, the latest crackdown is distressing many older customers whose goal is to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic...READ MORE

Walgreens has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a consumer protection lawsuit brought by California authorities who said the company employed an unlicensed pharmacist for more than a decade...The action is in response to a complaint filed by the district attorneys of Alameda and Santa Clara counties that alleges Kim Thien Le worked as a pharmacist in multiple Walgreens locations in the Bay Area for more than 10 years though she was not licensed by the Board of Pharmacy...While working as a pharmacist, Le participated in filling more than 745,000 prescriptions, including more than 100,000 for controlled substances,..READ MORE

A Chinese court jailed...the founder of a local traditional Chinese medicine firm for running a pyramid scheme, after the death of a young girl with cancer was linked to the company in an online article that sparked anger on social media...Shu Yuhui, founder and chairman of Quanjian Nature Medicine Technology Development, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 50 million yuan ($7.2 million), according to the court. The company was fined 100 million yuan..READ MORE

DYNALABS, in St. Louis, Missouri, announced the new policy after Reuters published an investigation...that named some of the companies involved in a secret supply chain to make and test a drug ahead of the first federal executions in 17 years...DYNALABS, told Reuters they did not know the samples of the drug, pentobarbital, belonged to the Justice Department, nor that it was intended for executions...“It will be our policy going forward to require a statement from our client indicating their preparation will not be used for execution,” Michael Pruett and Russell Odegard, DYNALABS’ co-founders, said in a statement published on Friday on their website. “Clients that decline to make that declaration will not be allowed to submit their pentobarbital preparations to DYNALABS for testing.”...READ MORE

Amid efforts to close a $1.6 billion opioid settlement, Mallinckrodt has fought tooth and nail to escape a massive Medicaid rebate bill for its controversial H.P. Acthar Gel. Instead of ceding ground, the U.S. government opted to take the fight right back to Mallinckrodt––and it could create even more trouble for the embattled drugmaker...The federal government has joined a False Claims Act whistleblower suit filed in Boston accusing Mallinckrodt of underpaying Medicaid rebates for Acthar by "hundreds of millions of dollars,"...READ MORE

Purdue has been identified as "Pharma Co. X," an unnamed opioid maker at the center of a federal kickback probe that netted a $145 million criminal and civil settlement...from Practice Fusion, a subsidiary of Allscripts Healthcare...According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Vermont, Practice Fusion admitted that it had solicited and received kickbacks from a major opioid company––allegedly Purdue, which shelled out roughly $1 million in payments––in exchange for using its electronic health record software to influence physician prescribing of opioid pain medications..."During the height of the opioid crisis, (Practice Fusion) took a million-dollar kickback to allow an opioid company to inject itself in the sacred doctor-patient relationship so that it could peddle even more of its highly addictive and dangerous opioids,” Christina Nolan, U.S. attorney for the District of Vermont, said in a statement...READ MORE

Federal prosecutors turned up the heat in recent months on a generic price-fixing probe that targeted some of the industry's biggest players before COVID-19 slowed the hunt. Teva, the biggest target in that investigation, has reportedly bailed on settlement talks in a decision meant to test the government's resolve...Teva walked away from negotiations with federal prosecutors, daring the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue criminal price-fixing charges against the drugmaker at a time when it's part of the COVID-19 pandemic response...Teva is betting that its role in aiding the U.S. coronavirus response, including donating millions of doses of antimalarial hydroxychloroquine sulfate to hospitals, will put the Justice Department in a bind on its decision to file charges...READ MORE

A federal probe of pharma’s charity contributions has secured settlements from drugmakers large and small, and Sanofi is the latest to ink a deal with the government over allegations its payments were kickbacks...Sanofi agreed to pay $11.85 million to resolve allegations that it used The Assistance Fund as a “conduit” to help multiple sclerosis patients pay their Medicare co-pays for Lemtrada...The drug costs nearly $100,000 per year, and patient co-pays can run thousands of dollars per year...“Sanofi sought to undermine the Medicare program through its use of kickbacks disguised as routine charitable donations aimed at helping patients battling multiple sclerosis and who were struggling with costly copays,”...READ MORE

With federal prosecutors laying waste to Insys' executive team, one big domino was still left to fall: Founder and former CEO John Kapoor, who had a leading role in the drugmaker's opioid kickback scheme. Now, Kapoor will face a stiff prison sentence that sets the bar for executives in the opioid industry...A federal judge in Boston sentenced Kapoor...to five and a half years in prison for his role in a doctor kickback scheme to boost subscriptions of Subsys...READ MORE