The legal complaint, released at a news conference by state Attorney General Letitia James, was heavily redacted. Even so, it contains details alleging fraud not only by the Sacklers but also by a group of companies that distributed alarming amounts of prescription painkillers amid a rising epidemic of abuse that has killed hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.
The major pharmaceutical distributors — Cardinal Health, McKesson and Amerisource Bergen — warned pharmacies when their monthly opioid limits were approaching, then helped them manipulate the timing and volume of orders to circumvent the limits, the complaint charged. On the rare occasion when a distributor would conduct “surprise” audits of its customers, it would often alert them in advance, the complaint says.
Over the past two decades, more than 200,000 people have died in the United States from overdoses involving prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The suit names eight Sacklers. It seeks to claw back funds it alleges were transferred from Purdue Pharma to private or offshore accounts held by family members in an effort to shield the assets from litigation; to order the Sacklers to return any transferred assets; and to restrain them from disposing of any property.
A spokesman for the Sackler family called the allegations “a misguided attempt to place blame where it does not belong for a complex public health crisis.”
A spokesman for Purdue Pharma said the company and its former directors “vigorously deny” the charges set forth in the complaint, and will defend themselves.
The New York lawsuit alleges Sackler family members abolished quarterly reports, insisted numbers be recounted only orally to board members, and voted to pay themselves millions of dollars, often through offshore companies.
The suit alleges the distributors turned “a collective blind eye as orders for opioids in New York skyrocketed” and drugs known to be dangerous “came to be dispensed like candy.”
A spokeswoman for Cardinal Health said the company has a rigorous system in place to flag and report suspicious orders and has enhanced the program over time.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.