The FDA and the Department of Justice have taken down a couple more of the 33 players indicted in a massive drug diversion scam that undermined the U.S. pharma supply chain.
The feds say that Fernando Galan, 50, of Simi Valley, CA, and David Konigsberg, 58, of East Hanover, NJ, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy charges related to their part in selling diverted prescription drugs to David Miller and Minnesota Independent Cooperative (MIC).
In May, authorities alleged in an indictment that Miller and MIC were buying drugs from a network of operators in Florida, New York and California, who often got them off the street, repackaging them and then selling them to wholesalers and retail pharmacies in nearly 40 states.
In a separate indictment in California, Miller and others were accused of being part of a sprawling "criminal enterprise" involved in a massive check and bank fraud operation and in obtaining illegal tax refunds, while some of the players were accused of trying to arrange a "hit," the feds said.
Authorities have broken up other similar operations, which they say are stealing money all along the supply chain from legitimate drugmakers and wholesalers while putting patients at risk. The dangers when drugs are diverted are that there is no way of knowing their provenance or whether they have been stored properly or are expired and so become unsafe or ineffective, or if they may be counterfeits.
- here's the release
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