Defunct opioid firm, former executives facing charges
Federal prosecutors in Cincinnati filed criminal charges Thursday against an opioid distributor and two of its former executives, accusing them of conspiring with doctors and pharmacies to pour millions of addictive pain pills into Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.
The indictment of Miamiluken, its former president and its former compliance officer was the second time in three months that federal prosecutors have used criminal laws against a drug distributor in their efforts to stem the prescription opioid epidemic. That is a more aggressive posture than the Justice Department has adopted since 2007, when it began using civil and administrative actions to enforce laws against drug distributors.
“There’s a need, in my opinion, to devote sufficient charges right here and now to stop the dying,” U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman said.
The single count of the grand jury indictment accused former Miamiluken president Anthony Rattini and former compliance officer James Barclay of knowingly distributing powerful narcotic painkillers for other than medical reasons. The company itself, which went out of business late last year, also was charged.
Two West Virginia pharmacists, Devonna Miller-west and Samuel Ballengee, who owned small-town drugstores that allegedly received millions of pills, were also charged. All face as much as 20 years in prison.
The indictment says Miami-luken ignored “obvious signs” that drugs were being diverted to illegal users and dealers between 2011 and 2015. Prosecutors said the company sent 4.9 million pills to Miller-west’s drugstore in Oceana, West Virginia, where the population is 1,394.
Miami-luken sent more than 6 million pills between 2008 and 2014 to Ballengee’s Tug Valley pharmacy in Williamson, West Virginia, where about 2,800 people live, according to the charges. The pharmacy is now closed.
Glassman said investigators found “many overdose deaths that could arguably be linked to the conduct” of people accused in the conspiracy, but did not obtain enough evidence to charge anyone.
The conspirators “unlawfully enriched themselves” by “distributing and dispensing large amounts of opioids to known pill mills,” prosecutors charge. The conduct continued, the indictment alleges, even after warnings from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Some of the drugs went to other unnamed pharmacists and physicians, the indictment alleges. Starting in 2008, for example, the company sent more than 750,000 pills to a physician despite knowing the doctor was under DEA investigation for illegal drug distribution.
In 2016, The Washington Post reported that a Wheelersburg physician ordered large amounts of oxycodone from Miamiluken that the company did not investigate, according to the DEA.
Miami-luken was a midsize drug distributor that shipped pharmaceuticals to more than 200 locations in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee, some of the states hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.
Under federal law, wholesalers are required to monitor the flow of controlled substances and alert the DEA when they identify suspicious purchases that could indicate that pills are being diverted to the black market. But many companies ignored that responsibility as profits soared, authorities allege.
The Post revealed Monday that previously undisclosed DEA data shows that drug distributors saturated the country with 76 billion opioid doses between 2006 and 2012, many more than previously known.