In the second-largest fine ever levied on a pharmaceutical company, Endo Health Solutions was ordered to pay nearly $1.1 billion in criminal penalties and another $450 million in criminal forfeiture for illegally marketing its Opana ER prescription opioid.
The company, which last month pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, admitted that, from April 2012 through May 2013, some of its sales representatives marketed its medicine, also known as oxymorphone, to doctors by touting the drug as abuse deterrent, as well as resistant to tampering and crushing. Yet Endo lacked the clinical trial data to support those assertions, according to federal officials.
“Through extensive false advertising efforts to conceal oxymorphone’s deleterious effects, Endo Health Solutions demonstrated a callous disregard for the safety and well-being of the people who were prescribed this highly addictive drug,” said Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge in the Miami Field Office of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a statement.
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