The kingpin behind a scheme that sold $17 million worth of foreign-made cancer meds and other drugs--claiming that they were FDA approved--in the U.S. is going to prison.
According to the FDA, 47-year-old William Scully, one of the owners of Medical Device King and other companies, has been sentenced to 60 months in prison and ordered to forfeit nearly $900,000. The Commack, NY man was convicted last fall of 64 felonies for violations of the the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act and mail and wire fraud.
A 6-week trial disclosed that Scully bought foreign-made chemo and other drugs from middlemen in Turkey and other places, and deceived doctors into believing they were the same FDA-approved drugs they had bought from other suppliers. The doctors administered them to patients, some of them suffering from stage 4 cancer.
“Our office will aggressively pursue those who place patients at risk and who seek to profit from the importation and distribution of potentially dangerous foreign unapproved drugs,” George M. Karavetsos, director of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, said in a statement.
The FDA and DOJ began investigating Scully after reports that foreign-made cancer meds had been found in the U.S. supply chain, including Altuzan, the trade name used in Turkey for Roche's Avastin.
The feds said Scully was so bold that he kept up his illegal operation even after his office has been searched by FDA agents and all of his existing products were seized. He established a new entity, Taranis, which he operated out of a storage space where he kept his drugs. And even after that storage space was searched and additional products were seized, Scully continued selling products to unsuspecting doctors, authorities said.
- read the announcement
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