What makes this story special is some of the details:
They set up a waiting room, hired an elderly physician and gave the place a name that sounded like an ordinary clinic: Lake Medical.
The doctor began prescribing the opioid painkiller OxyContin – in extraordinary quantities. In a single week in September, she issued orders for 1,500 pills, more than entire pharmacies sold in a month. In October, it was 11,000 pills. By December, she had prescribed more than 73,000, with a street value of nearly $6 million
You might thing that someone would notice that a single doctor was writing prescriptions for millions of dollars of Oxy per month. And Big Pharma did notice, and was pleased!
A sales manager went to check out the clinic and the company launched an investigation, concluding that Lake Medical was working with a corrupt pharmacy in Huntington Park to obtain large quantities of OxyContin.
“Shouldn’t the DEA be contacted about this?” the sales manager, Michele Ringler, told company officials in a 2009 email. Later that evening, she added, “I feel very certain this is an organized drug ring…”
Hahaha, contacting the DEA about this physician? Really? Normally they have to hire a bunch of sexy sales reps to get a doctor to write $20,000 of Oxy scripts a month. But this vibrant doctora did so all on her own!
Purdue did not shut off the supply of highly addictive OxyContin and did not tell authorities what it knew about Lake Medical until several years later when the clinic was out of business and its leaders indicted.
By that time, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the hands of Armenian mobsters, the Crips gang and other criminals.
Don’t worry, no rich Pharma execs will even face a wrist-slapping:
The federal government has not accused Purdue of any wrongdoing in the case of Lake Medical or other suspected drug operations.
