It Takes Moxie to Push Oxy
A pharmacist goes to prison. Purdue Pharma settles. The Sacklers walk.
“You will never find justice in a world where criminals make the rules.” – Bob Marley
Mohamed Hassan built a 20-pharmacy empire across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
At 35, he’s now in Fort Dix serving 18 years for pushing oxycodone.
As a licensed pharmacist, Hassan built an impressive empire running pharmacies under names that included Nile RX, Nile Ridge, Nile City, Sunset Corner, Prospect Care, Downtown RX and Forest Care.
He kept a Brooklyn doctor busy churning out bogus scripts for 30 mg oxycodone tablets – the kind prescribed for end-stage cancer pain.
Runners posing as patients picked them up. Street dealers sold them for cash.
They sold more than 1.6 million pills that were worth more than $48 million on the street.
Supervising pharmacist Yousef Ennab, and other co-defendants, also received prison time or are awaiting their sentencing. At least they’re still alive. Some of their end-users have met their ends.
Oh, the outrage:
“The corrupt pharmacists who filled illegitimate oxycodone prescriptions to supply drug dealers, acted out of pure greed and complete disregard for the harm they were causing.” – Joseph Nocella, U.S. Attorney.
Hassan’s real blunder wasn’t illegally peddling pills. It was doing it without effective corporate protection.
Here’s how it works in the major leagues:
On Tuesday, a judge finally approved a criminal sentence for Purdue Pharma.
The Stamford, Conn.-based oxycodone maker had pleaded guilty to fraud and kickback conspiracies in 2020, but the case goes back further. In May 2007 the company and some of its executives pleaded guilty for misbranding its highly addictive and widely abused drug, OxyContin.
On Tuesday, Purdue Pharma was ordered to pay more than $5 billion for fueling an opioid crisis linked to more than 800,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999.
Read More: The Outrageous Acts Of Criminally Charged Corporations (Blunder Lists)
Cue the outrage:
“Purdue Pharma put profits over patient health and safety. The company willfully rejected the law and ignored the diversion of their highly addictive prescription drugs.” – Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
But unlike Hassan’s enterprise, nobody at Purdue Pharma is going to prison.
And the Sackler family that ran this far more sophisticated, and far more deadly, syndicate will likely hold on to at least some of their billions, despite having to pay some onerous financial penalties over time.
