The Purdue Frederick Company, Inc., along with its President, Chief Legal Officer, and former Chief Medical Officer pled guilty to charges of misbranding Purdue’s addictive and highly abusable drug, OxyContin. The government alleged that Purdue fraudulently misbranded OxyContin as being less addictive and less subject to abuse and diversion than other pain medications. As part of the global resolution, Purdue and the executives paid a total of $634.5 million to resolve their criminal and civil liabilities. In particular, Purdue forfeited $276.1 million to the United States, paid the United States and State government agencies $160 million to resolve liability for false claims made to Medicaid and other government healthcare programs, set aside $130 million to resolve private civil claims (with unclaimed amounts to revert to the United States), paid $5.3 million to the Virginia Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit to fund future health care fraud investigations, paid $20 million to fund the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program, and paid the maximum statutory criminal fine of $500,000. In addition, the three Purdue executives paid over $34.5 million to the Virginia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
Source: HHS Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program, Annual Report for FY 2007
This article was posted on July 15, 2012
