Month: December 2022

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Gas Station Shooting Leads to Federal Firearm Charges

Source: United States Department of Justice News

DETROIT – A shooting in broad daylight at a gas station in Detroit has led to federal firearm charges, United States Attorney Dawn N. Ison announced today.

Ison was joined in the announcement by Acting Special Agent in Charge Craig Kailimai, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

James Taylor, age 27, of Detroit, MI, was arraigned today on an indictment that charged him with two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and one count of felon in possession of ammunition.  Each count carries a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The defendant was ordered detained pending trial. The case has been assigned to the Honorable Robert H. Cleland, U.S. District Court Judge, Eastern District of Michigan.

The charges in this case stem from an incident on April 25, 2022. According to an affidavit filed in the case, just after 7:00 pm, Taylor was caught on a surveillance camera firing shots at the driver of another vehicle at a gas station located near Livernois and Waverly Street in Detroit. After the other driver fled from his vehicle, Taylor circled around the gas station several times in an apparent effort to look for the other driver. Taylor then took the other driver’s car from the gas station. Fortunately, no one was injured during the incident. Taylor, who was on pretrial release in Wayne County for a different felony offense, was on tether at the time of the shooting.

“The type of brazen behavior alleged in this case is shocking, and it is a miracle that someone was not injured or killed,” U.S. Attorney Ison said. “We will not tolerate it any longer. My office will work closely with our federal partners, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, and the Detroit Police Department to ensure the most violent are taken off the street. This is an example of that type of coordination.”

“Crime gun intelligence utilized in this case illustrates ATF’s priorities on effectively identifying and removing violent criminals from our communities,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Craig Kailimai. “The efforts of our federal, state, tribal, and local partnerships have had a significant impact on reducing the threat of gun violence.”

The United States Attorney’s Office and the ATF are focused on prosecuting those individuals who are using firearms to commit violent acts against people in the Eastern District of Michigan. The strategy is a part of the United States Attorney’s Office’s Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative. PSN continues to be the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts.  Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders works together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems and develop comprehensive solutions to address them.  PSN is an evidence-based program that focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs to pursue lasting reductions in crime.

An indictment is only a formal charging document and is not evidence of guilt.  A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

This case was investigated by ATF with the assistance from the Detroit Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Violent and Organized Crime Unit within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.

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NH Man Pleads Guilty to Violent Home Invasion in York

Source: United States Department of Justice News

PORTLAND, Maine:  A Hooksett, New Hampshire man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Portland today to conspiracy and robbery charges stemming from a violent home invasion in York.

According to court records, in August 2019, Derek Daprato, 34, and three other co-conspirators met in Hooksett, New Hampshire and planned a home invasion of a York residence to rob marijuana and marijuana sale proceeds from the home’s resident. The group traveled to the York residence where two co-conspirators, armed with handguns and wearing masks, waited in the woods for the victim to return home. When the victim arrived home, accompanied by two others, a violent physical altercation ensued. During the fight, a firearm was discharged, and the bullet struck the victim in the lower abdomen. The two co-conspirators fled. Police arrived approximately 15 minutes later, and the victim was rushed to the hospital where he underwent surgery to remove a .45 caliber bullet from his lower abdomen.

Daprato faces a period of imprisonment of up to 20 years on the conspiracy charge and up to 20 years on the robbery charge. He will be sentenced after the completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

The FBI, in conjunction with the York Police Department and the York County Sheriff’s Office, investigated the case.

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Justice Department Files Nationwide Lawsuit Against AmerisourceBergen Corp. and Subsidiaries for Controlled Substances Act Violations

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Complaint Alleges Companies’ Years of Repeated Violations Contributed to Opioid Epidemic

In a civil complaint filed today, the Department of Justice alleges that AmerisourceBergen Corporation and two of its subsidiaries, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation and Integrated Commercialization Solutions, LLC (together “AmerisourceBergen”), collectively one of the country’s largest wholesale pharmaceutical distributors, violated federal law in connection with the distribution of controlled substances to pharmacies and other customers across the country, contributing to the prescription opioid epidemic.

The complaint alleges that this unlawful conduct resulted in at least hundreds of thousands of violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The Justice Department seeks civil penalties and injunctive relief.

“The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who fueled the opioid crisis by flouting the law,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement. Our complaint alleges that AmerisourceBergen — which sold billions of units of prescription opioids over the past decade — repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement.”

“AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest wholesale distributors of opioids in the world, had a legal obligation to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and our complaint alleges that the company’s repeated and systemic failure to fulfill this simple obligation helped ignite an opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “The men and women of the DEA will stop at nothing to hold accountable registrants that fail to uphold their responsibility of saving American lives by filing suspicious order reports.”

Pharmaceutical distributors that sell controlled substances, including AmerisourceBergen, have a longstanding legal obligation to monitor the orders that they receive from pharmacies and other customers and must inform the DEA each and every time they receive a suspicious order.

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleges that over the course of nearly a decade, from 2014 through the present, AmerisourceBergen violated the CSA by failing to report at least hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders of controlled substances to the DEA as required by law. The alleged unlawful conduct includes filling and failing to report numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids. Today’s filing is the result of a multi-year investigation by the DEA, the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and several U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.

“For years, AmerisourceBergen put its profits from opioid sales over the safety of Americans,” said U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger for the District of New Jersey. “According to the complaint, this was part of a brazen, blatant and systemic failure by one of the largest companies in America to comply with its obligations to report suspicious opioid orders, contributing to the epidemic of opioid abuse throughout this country.”

“Companies like AmerisourceBergen that sell controlled substances across the country have a significant responsibility to ensure that their product is handled appropriately and that they comply with their federal legal obligations,” said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “The allegations against AmerisourceBergen are disturbing, especially for a company that is headquartered only a few miles from neighborhoods in Philadelphia devastated by the opioid epidemic.”

“When drug distributors like AmerisourceBergen fail to alert the DEA of suspicious orders of prescription drugs by pharmacies, they shirk a key obligation in dealing with addictive drugs that can end lives,” said U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan for the District of Colorado. “This complaint makes clear that the Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable corporations that disregard the public’s safety for their own profit.”

“We allege that AmerisourceBergen, a wholesale drug distributor, flagrantly and repeatedly violated its obligation to notify DEA of suspicious orders for controlled substances, which directly contributed to the epidemic of prescription opioid abuse across the United States,” said U.S.  Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York.

The government’s complaint specifies several pharmacies for which AmerisourceBergen allegedly was aware of significant “red flags” suggesting the existence of diversion of prescription drugs to illicit markets. The complaint asserts that AmerisourceBergen nevertheless continued to distribute drugs to the pharmacies for years and reported few suspicious orders to the DEA. The five examples include: two pharmacies, one in Florida and one in West Virginia, for which AmerisourceBergen knew the drugs it distributed were likely being sold in parking lots for cash; a New Jersey pharmacy that has pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling controlled substances; another New Jersey pharmacy whose pharmacist-in-charge has been indicted for drug diversion; and a Colorado pharmacy that AmerisourceBergen knew was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in all of Colorado. The government further alleges that for this Colorado pharmacy, AmerisourceBergen specifically identified eleven patients as potential “drug addicts” whose prescriptions likely were illegitimate. Two of those patients subsequently died of overdoses.

The complaint further alleges that AmerisourceBergen not only ignored red flags of diversion, but also relied on internal systems to monitor and identify suspicious orders that were deeply inadequate, both in design and implementation. These systems allegedly flagged only a tiny fraction of suspicious orders, thereby enabling diversion and AmerisourceBergen’s failure to report orders it was legally obligated to identify to the DEA. In fact, the complaint asserts that in the midst of the opioid epidemic, AmerisourceBergen intentionally altered its internal systems in a way that reduced the number of controlled substances reported as suspicious. Even for the small percentage of orders that AmerisourceBergen did identify as suspicious, the company routinely failed to report them to the DEA.

The government’s complaint alleges that for years AmerisourceBergen flouted its legal obligations and prioritized profits over the well-being of Americans.

If AmerisourceBergen is found liable, it could face escalating civil penalties depending on when each violation occurred and the type of controlled substance at issue, specifically, up to $10,000 for each reporting violation before November 2015, up to $16,864 for each violation between November 2015 and October 2018 and for each violation relating to a suspicious order for a non-opioid controlled substance not reported after October 2018, and up to $109,374 for each violation relating to a suspicious opioid order not reported after October 2018, potentially totaling billions of dollars in penalties. The court also may award injunctive relief to prevent AmerisourceBergen from committing future CSA violations.

The United States is represented in the filed action by Trial Attorneys Michael Wadden, Amy DeLine and Deborah Sohn of the Justice Department’s Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Hayden M. Brockett and Jordann R. Conaboy for the District of New Jersey, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anthony D. Scicchitano and Landon Jones for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Rocque and David Moskowitz for the District of Colorado, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elliot M. Schachner and Diane Leonardo for the Eastern District of New York. The DEA collaborated with the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to investigate the case.

Additional information about the Consumer Protection Branch and its enforcement efforts may be found at http://www.justice.gov/civil/consumer-protection-branch.

The claims made in the complaint are allegations that, if the case were to proceed to trial, the government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence.

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Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks on the AmerisourceBergen Press Call

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Good morning. Today, the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint against pharmaceutical distribution company AmerisourceBergen Corporation and two of its subsidiaries.

The Controlled Substances Act, or CSA, prevents the unlawful diversion and illicit use of controlled substances, including opioids, by requiring pharmaceutical distributors to report to the DEA suspicious orders that they receive from pharmacies and other customers.

Today’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleges that, from 2014 through the present, AmerisourceBergen and its subsidiaries repeatedly violated that obligation for at least hundreds of thousands of controlled substances orders.

This alleged unlawful conduct includes failures to report orders from pharmacies that defendants knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids, like oxycodone and fentanyl.

For example, we allege that AmerisourceBergen knew that, at two of the pharmacies it sold to in Florida and West Virginia, its opioids likely were being distributed in the parking lot for cash.

We allege that AmerisourceBergen continued selling opioids to a New Jersey pharmacy with such unusual order patterns that the company terminated the relationship, only to immediately set up a proxy relationship through a third-party middleman to continue the sales.

We allege that AmerisourceBergen sold to pharmacies in West Virginia and Colorado that AmerisourceBergen’s auditors flagged were dispensing opioids to people likely suffering from addiction, including to people who later died of drug overdoses.

In each instance, we allege that AmerisourceBergen failed to report suspicious orders from these pharmacies to federal law enforcement, as the CSA requires.

In addition to ignoring these red flags, we allege that AmerisourceBergen failed to erect the safeguards necessary to catch and report suspicious orders.

In the midst of a catastrophic opioid epidemic, AmerisourceBergen allegedly altered its internal systems in a way that reduced the number of orders that would be flagged as suspicious. 

And even as to the orders that AmerisourceBergen identified as suspicious, the company routinely failed to report those suspicious orders to DEA.

In short, the government’s complaint alleges that, for years, AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans’ wellbeing.

If AmerisourceBergen is found liable for this allegedly unlawful conduct, it could face substantial civil penalties, potentially totaling billions of dollars. The court may also award injunctive relief to prevent AmerisourceBergen from committing future CSA violations.

I’d like to thank the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, along with the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the District of New Jersey, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, District of Colorado and Eastern District of New York for their efforts in preparing this lawsuit, as well as the DEA for their assistance with the investigation. You’ll hear shortly from two U.S. Attorneys whose offices have been central to this suit and from the Principal Deputy Administrator of the DEA. I also want to recognize Brian Boynton, head of the Civil Division, and Arun Rao, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Consumer Protection Branch, for their leadership on this matter.

This case is an example of the whole department coming together to hold accountable those responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic.

We continue to pursue other alleged corporate wrongdoers for their roles in the opioid crisis, including Walmart, one of the largest retail pharmacies and distributors in the country, allegedly responsible for dispensing and distributing thousands of unlawful opioid prescriptions.

And we continue our efforts to get deadly drugs off the streets. In 2022, the DEA has seized 50.6 million fentanyl-laced, fake prescription pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder. The DEA estimates that these seizures represent more than 379 million deadly doses of fentanyl.

I’d now like to turn it over to Philip Sellinger, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, to provide more information about our complaint.

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Department of Justice Files Nationwide Lawsuit Against AmerisourceBergen Corp. and Subsidiaries for Controlled Substances Act Violations

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Complaint Alleges Companies’ Years of Repeated Violations Contributed to Opioid Epidemic

BROOKLYN, NY – In a civil complaint filed today, the Department of Justice alleges that AmerisourceBergen Corporation and two of its subsidiaries, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation and Integrated Commercialization Solutions, LLC (together “AmerisourceBergen”), collectively one of the country’s largest wholesale pharmaceutical distributors, violated federal law in connection with the distribution of controlled substances to pharmacies and other customers across the country, contributing to the prescription opioid epidemic.

The complaint alleges that this unlawful conduct resulted in at least hundreds of thousands of violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The Justice Department seeks civil penalties and injunctive relief.

“AmerisourceBergen, a wholesale drug distributor, flagrantly and repeatedly violated its obligation to notify DEA of suspicious orders for controlled substances, which directly contributed to the epidemic of prescription opioid abuse across the United States,” stated United States Attorney Peace.

“The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who fueled the opioid crisis by flouting the law,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement. Our complaint alleges that AmerisourceBergen—which sold billions of units of prescription opioids over the past decade—repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement.”

“AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest wholesale distributors of opioids in the world, had a legal obligation to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and our complaint alleges that the company’s repeated and systemic failure to fulfill this simple obligation helped ignite an opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “The men and women of the DEA will stop at nothing to hold accountable registrants that fail to uphold their responsibility of saving American lives by filing suspicious order reports.”

To prevent the unlawful distribution of opioids and other controlled substances, the CSA requires that wholesale drug distributors like AmerisourceBergen report suspicious orders of controlled substances to DEA. An order is suspicious if it has an unusual size, deviates substantially from a normal pattern, has an unusual frequency, or carries other signs that the order is suspicious, such as suspicions about the legitimacy of the customers’ business practices.  

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleges that over the course of nearly a decade, from 2014 through the present, AmerisourceBergen violated the CSA by failing to report at least hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders of controlled substances to the DEA as required by law. The alleged unlawful conduct includes filling and failing to report numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids.  Today’s filing is the result of a multi-year investigation by the DEA, the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and several U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.

The government’s complaint specifies several pharmacies for which AmerisourceBergen allegedly was aware of significant “red flags” suggesting the existence of diversion of prescription drugs to illicit markets.  The complaint asserts that AmerisourceBergen nevertheless continued to distribute drugs to the pharmacies for years and reported few suspicious orders to the DEA.  The five examples include: two pharmacies, one in Florida and one in West Virginia, for which AmerisourceBergen knew the drugs it distributed were likely being sold in parking lots for cash; a New Jersey pharmacy that has pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling controlled substances; another New Jersey pharmacy whose pharmacist-in-charge has been indicted for drug diversion; and a Colorado pharmacy that AmerisourceBergen knew was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in all of Colorado. The government further alleges that for this Colorado pharmacy, AmerisourceBergen specifically identified eleven patients as potential “drug addicts” whose prescriptions likely were illegitimate. Two of those patients subsequently died of overdoses.

The complaint further alleges that AmerisourceBergen not only ignored red flags of diversion, but also relied on internal systems to monitor and identify suspicious orders that were deeply inadequate, both in design and implementation. These systems allegedly flagged only a tiny fraction of suspicious orders, thereby enabling diversion and AmerisourceBergen’s failure to report orders it was legally obligated to identify to the DEA. In fact, the complaint asserts that in the midst of the opioid epidemic, AmerisourceBergen intentionally altered its internal systems in a way that reduced the number of controlled substances reported as suspicious. Even for the small percentage of orders that AmerisourceBergen did identify as suspicious, the company routinely failed to report them to the DEA.

The government’s complaint alleges that for years AmerisourceBergen flouted its legal obligations and prioritized profits over the well-being of Americans.

If AmerisourceBergen is found liable, it could face escalating civil penalties depending on when each violation occurred and the type of controlled substance at issue. Specifically: up to $10,000 for each reporting violation before November 2015, up to $16,864 for each violation between November 2015 and October 2018 and for each violation relating to a suspicious order for a non-opioid controlled substance not reported after October 2018, and up to $109,374 for each violation relating to a suspicious opioid order not reported after October 2018, potentially totaling billions of dollars in penalties. The court also may award injunctive relief to prevent AmerisourceBergen from committing future CSA violations.

The claims made in the complaint are allegations that, if the case were to proceed to trial, the government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence.

The United States is represented in the filed action by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elliot M. Schachner and Diane Leonardo for the Eastern District of New York, Trial Attorneys Michael Wadden, Amy DeLine, and Deborah Sohn of the Department of Justice Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Hayden M. Brockett and Jordann R. Conaboy for the District of New Jersey, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anthony D. Scicchitano and Landon Jones for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Rocque and David Moskowitz for the District of Colorado. The DEA collaborated with the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices to investigate the case.