Rhode Island based pharmacy and prescription drug management company CVS Caremark is about to pay $20 million to settle claims that it defrauded state pension systems in California, Florida and Illinois by reselling returned drugs, changing prescription orders to make them more expensive and submitting false reports about how long it took to fill...

The federal government has announced a $17 million settlement of a False Claims Act qui tam action with KV Pharmaceutical Company, the parent company of now-defunct Ethex Corporation. The qui tam lawsuit alleged that dozens of small and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies have been allowed (and some continue to be allowed) to sidestep the...

Investigators from Harvard and UCLA recently completed an analysis of the radmized drug trial from six prestigious medical journals and concluded that the credibility and reliability of those studies is highly questionable. The researchers also questioned the credibility of the persons performing those studies. The findings concluded, among other things that: Many medication studies...

American pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme has agreed to pay $950 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims related to its promotion and marketing of the painkiller Vioxx (rofecoxib), the Justice Department announced today.ΠΠΠUnder the terms of the resolution, Merck will plead guilty to a one-count information charging a single...

GlazoSmithKilne has agreed to pay $3 billion to settle U.S. criminal and civil investigations concerning its improper marketing of Avandia and other drugs for unapproved uses and other matters. The investigation into its marketing of certain drugs was kicked off in 2004 in Colorado and the allegations related to the marketing of drugs which...

Pfizer Inc. has agreed to pay the United States $14.5 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging improper marketing of the prescription drugs Detrol and Detrol LA. Detrol was approved by the FDA for over active bladder with symptoms of urge incontinence. The lawsuit said Pfizer marketed the drug to men who were suffering...

Walgreens (WAG) recommended that its pharmacists use one liners on their customers to convince them that its illegal swicthing of their medications to a more expensive brand was to their advatnage because the capsules were easier to swallow. This scam was revealed in a now unsealed whistleblower lawsuit. Walgreens settled the allegations for $35...

CardioNet Inc. is facing a probe by the Department of Justice over allegations that the company used inappropriate diagnosis codes when submitting claims for payment to Medicare for its real-time outpatient cardiac monitoring services. CardioNet said that it received a Civil Investigative Demand issued by DOJ for documents for the period January 1 2007...

According to a whistleblower lawsuit, the HIV drug makers Gilead and Pfizer and its subsidiary Aouron waged an illegal bidding war over bribes paid to doctors in Brooklyn where prices reached over $100,000 per physician. The whistleblower, former sales representative David Moore says that Gilead is an AIDS drug specialty company and has produced...

A physician has had his medical license recoked for exaggerating his patients' artery blockages so that he could justify implanting cardiac stents. The case resulted in payment of $22 million by St. Joseph's Medical Center in Maryland after a hospital employee filed a whistleblower case reporting the fraud. The hospital mailed letters informing 585...