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

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.