‘We feel like our system was hijacked’: DEA agents say a huge opioid case ended in a whimper

After two years of painstaking investigation, David Schiller and the rest of the Drug Enforcement Administration team he supervised were ready to move on the biggest opioid distribution case in U.S. history.

The team, based out of the DEA’s Denver field division, had been examining the operations of the nation’s largest drug company, McKesson Corp. By 2014, investigators said they could show that the company had failed to report suspicious orders involving millions of highly addictive painkillers sent to drugstores from Sacramento, Calif., to Lakeland, Fla. Some of those went to corrupt pharmacies that supplied drug rings.

The investigators were ready to come down hard on the fifth-largest public corporation in America, according to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes.” read more »

Inside China's Vast New Experiment In Social Ranking

America invented the three-digit credit score. Now companies in China are taking the idea to the extreme, using big data to track and rank what you do—your purchases, your pastimes, your mistakes.

If you live in the United States, you are by now accustomed to relinquishing your data to corporations. Credit card companies know when you run up bar tabs or buy sex toys. Facebook knows if you like Tasty cooking videos or Breitbart News. Uber knows where you go and how you behave en route. But Alipay knows all of these things about its users and more. read more »

Paradise Papers Research Raises Questions Over Glencore’s $440m Congo Discount

Mining companies now controlled by commodities giant Glencore won $440 million in discounts on payments in 2008 to a Democratic Republic of Congo-controlled copper mining company – a massive financial loss for the desperately poor nation, according to a new report based on the Paradise Papers. read more »

Mental health agency paying $7M to settle fraud claims

One of Mississippi's regional mental health boards is paying nearly $7 million over claims that it bilked Medicaid for services to preschoolers that were either substandard or not provided at all.

U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst announced the settlement of the whistleblower lawsuit Thursday.

Region 8 Mental Health Services will pay the money after a former employee, Julie Farmer, filed the False Claims Act lawsuit on behalf of the government in 2009. She'll get $1.25 million of the $6.93 million. Some of the money will also go to the Mississippi state government to repay the state's share of the state-federal Medicaid program. The bulk of the settlement money will go to the federal government. read more »