Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma Sentenced for Fraud and Kickback Conspiracies

Opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma LP (Purdue) was sentenced today in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, and ordered to pay criminal penalties of over $5 billion for its role in fueling the opioid epidemic. According to court documents, from 2007 and 2017, Purdue illegally marketed its opioid products to hundreds of prescribers the company had good reason to believe were prescribing these addictive drugs without a legitimate medical purpose. Purdue defrauded the DEA by misrepresenting the effectiveness of its programs designed to prevent illegal diversion, and used prescriptions written by problematic prescribers to justify its fraudulent requests to the DEA to increase the amount of its products it was permitted to manufacture. In order to induce doctors to prescribe more of its addictive opioid products, Purdue also paid kickbacks to prescribers through its doctor speaker program and to an electronic health record platform.

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