Purdue’s Sacklers Consider Adding Another Billion to Opioid Settlement
Aha! The evil Sacklers are back in the spotlight. Since their last offer to buy themselves out of responsibility for the deaths of close to 500,000 Americans for a paltry $4.3billion, they are trying again to escape the hammer by raising their offer by another $billion.
Of course they still want immunity for the family and their friends from future prosecution and will continue to enjoy billionaire status from the many more $billions they have reportedly stashed away in accounts around the globe. They did so assisted by the best lawyers and financial minds their money could buy, But will this latest move get them “Out of Dodge,” so to speak?
We’ll see how it goes. But what we can know right now is that the basic law of nature and physics, The Law of Cause and Effect, embodied in the words “What Goes Around Comes Around”, will extract exactly the right pound of flesh the Sackler’s deserve.
Purdue’s Sacklers Consider Adding Another $1 Billion to Opioid Settlement
- Settlement bid now $5.325 billion to end all U.S. litigation
- Deal boosted to sway holdouts after judge rejected earlier bid
Members of the billionaire Sackler family that own Purdue Pharma LP are weighing whether to add $1 billion to the OxyContin-maker’s faltering opioid settlement bid in an effort to win over holdouts, according to people familiar with the talks.
The move would bring the family’s total contribution to $5.325 billion to get a handful of state attorneys general to drop their opposition to Purdue’s bankruptcy plan, the people said. In return, the states would abandon appeals of the Sacklers’ demands to be freed from liability in current and future opioid lawsuits, the people added.
“This sounds like a good deal for the Sacklers to me,” Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who has followed opioid litigation and the Purdue bankruptcy case. “They get their releases for another $1 billion after they helped devastate large swaths of the country with OxyContin? I doubt it’s enough.”
Purdue and other companies involved in the opioid industry face thousands of lawsuits by states and municipalities that allege they helped create a crisis that’s claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. Most of the cases are still pending, though some companies, including Johnson & Johnson and McKesson Corp., have proposed broad settlements.
The latest development is a result of court-ordered mediation that came after a judge in December threw out the original settlement deal over litigation releases granted to Sackler family members. That ruling came after some states appealed the deal, saying Purdue’s owners shouldn’t get lifetime immunity from suits targeting them for the company’s role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.
A representative for Purdue Pharma said the mediation is governed by strict court-ordered confidentiality and declined to comment further. A representative for the Mortimer Sackler wing of the family declined to comment. Representatives for the Raymond Sackler wing of the family didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Even Closer’
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman — serving as mediator in the Purdue case — said earlier this week the family and states are “even closer” to a deal than before. Chapman asked Judge Robert Drain, who is overseeing Purdue’s bankruptcy, to extend the mediation to Feb. 16.
Purdue’s settlement would let the company resolve trillions of dollars in claims against it over its role in the opioid crisis. The accord calls for handing nearly all of the drugmaker’s assets to the states and local municipalities that sued and would provide billions of dollars to anti-addiction programs.
States and local governments accuse Purdue of duping doctors and patients about OxyContin’s addictive properties and blame the Sacklers and the company for fueling a public-health crisis. Their suits seek compensation for billions of tax dollars spent battling the opioid epidemic, which has claimed almost 500,000 lives in the U.S. over the past two decades.
As part of the $1 billion increase to the settlement, the Sacklers would get more than nine years to pay that portion, the people said. That’s longer than the payout deadline for the original $4.325 billiondeal, they said.
The Holdouts
A bigger settlement that has the backing of dissident states could ease Purdue’s exit from Chapter 11 and direct more funds to opioid abatement initiatives.
“At a time when drug overdose deaths are at record levels, using Purdue’s settlement funds for opioid crisis abatement programs, victim compensation, and overdose rescue medicines is more needed than ever,” the company said in a statement earlier this week. “We believe a global settlement is the best way to achieve this goal.”
The expanded settlement bid must be approved by attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia, who rebuffed the family’s earlier offer, the people added. Some of the states accused the Sacklers of overreach for pushing the controversial litigation-immunity provisions for family members.
Representatives of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum declined Thursday to comment. A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even though the family is considering a bump in their cash contribution, that may not be enough to get all the states on board, said Elizabeth Burch, a University of Georgia law professor who has been following the Purdue case. “For some people, I don’t think it’s all about the money,” Burch said in an interview. “It’s about accountability. Some see the Sacklers’ cash as the equivalent of hush money.”
The bankruptcy case is Purdue Pharma LP, 19-23649, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (White Plains).
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Purdue’s Sacklers Consider Adding Another Billion to Opioid Settlement
Purdue’s Sacklers Consider Adding Another Billion to Opioid Settlement
Here’s a case of “Group malfeasance, blamed on poor judgement, from the consumption of too much wine!” A nine month investigation of the American chapter of “The Court of Master Sommeliers” has revealed a widespread expectation/demand of sexual favors in return for mentoring female applicants, undergoing the rigorous exam process, required for membership and recognition as an official Sommellier.
This follows the complaint of 21 women that their supposed mentors, had pressured them for sex, apparently a well-established condition with a long history. So far 22 men have been investigated.
The point being, that when a lowly activity becomes “institutionalized” in a grouping of people, ie: company, sport, union, association, religion, etc, it can go on undetected for a long time. It may even acquire an almost “accepted as part of the game” kind of cover, with those participating considering it, “just one of their perks”, and no big deal! That is, until someone blows the lid off.
That’s when everything changes for those who took part. It is not after all, that they didn’t know there was something amiss about the game they were playing. They just thought they had a really good cover! Instead, that cover just went poof, as all covers eventually do. Just another example that, “What Goes Around Comes Around!” Its just difficult to predict when.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.