The former president of Cumberland Distribution, Inc. was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in a 32-month long scheme that saw over $50 million of diverted drugs shipped to pharmacies around the country, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Indicted in January 2013 along with co-conspirators Charles Jeffrey Edwards and…
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A pretrial bail hearing gave the world some insights into a case out of South Carolina that is still sealed. Agents with a DEA-lead task force arrested Eric Hughes in August of 2017 after a car accident caused thousands of plls to spill out of his vehicle and onto the roadway. Hughes is allegedly the leader of a counterfeit pill drug ring that used rental properties to manufacture millions of counterfeit Xanax and oxycodone pills which were sold online…
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Police arrested triplet brothers in North Carolina on suspicion of manufacturing and selling counterfeit Xanax that contained fentanyl. An investigation led police to believe the trio to be a major supplier of those pills to Holly Springs High School students…
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Newly released court documents show the role that Steven Barros Pinto played in an international drug ring that made and sold fake fentanyl pills across the United States, including in North Dakota, Oregon, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Georgia. The DOJ believes that the counterfeit pills made by this ring with fentanyl and other illegal ingredients caused multiple deaths or serious injuries in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Oregon…
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Kelly Luanne Schaible pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of wire fraud and one count of introduction of misbranded medical devices into interstate commerce. Schaible operated numerous websites that sold $2.3 million in non FDA-approved and misbranded Botox and Juvederm…
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In a first case of its kind, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two people from New Jersey for operating multiple fake online pharmacies that shipped some customers counterfeit pills made with fentanyl. The pills that Evelin Bracy and Jorge Rodriguez Lopez sold killed one of their customers in Boise, Idaho…
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced indictments against a New Jersey mother and son for their roles in a drug trafficking conspiracy. Candace and Tyler Gottlieb both sold counterfeit pain pills that contained both fentanyl and heroin to a confidential human source…
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Washington (July 19, 2018) – Shabbir Imber Safdar, executive director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines, released the following statement regarding today’s announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services to create a drug importation working group at FDA: “We are deeply concerned about today’s announcement, particularly given the deaths of Americans in at…
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The U.S. Department of Justice announced another guilty plea from the second co-owner of a dietary supplement company based out of Corpus Christi, Texas. Vanessa Gonzales admitted to purchasing pills produced in China that contained undeclared or banned pharmaceutical ingredients…
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For the last 15 years, the FDA and HHS have opposed drug importation for safety reasons, but there is another question that is often overlooked: If a pharmacy inadvertently distributes a counterfeit drug it legally purchased from a foreign wholesaler, can the pharmacist be held liable? A 2004 lawsuit, Fagan v. AmerisourceBergen Co, raises disquieting questions.
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