Massive lawsuit says Sackler family broke laws to profit from opioids

Group of more than 500 cities, counties and tribes accuses family of helping to create ‘worst drug crisis’ in US history

A group made up of more than 500 cities, counties and Native American tribes across the United States has filed a massive lawsuit accusing members of the Sackler family, who own the maker of the opioid painkiller OxyContin, of helping to create “the worst drug crisis in American history”.

The lawsuit represents communities in 26 states and eight tribes and accuses Sackler family members of knowingly breaking laws in order to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars, while hundreds of thousands of Americans died. read more »

Miner Vale quashed dam safety audit efforts before Brazil disaster: prosecutor

Executives at Vale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, quashed efforts by Brazilian authorities to audit one of the company’s mining dams months before it collapsed and killed over 300 people, a state prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website G1 on Wednesday.

Investigators have been scrutinizing the relationship between Vale and Tuv Sud, which had certified the dam as safe, including allegations made by prosecutors that the auditor was hired after another firm declined to certify the structures as safe.

The tailings dam at Vale’s Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine burst on Jan. 25, releasing a torrent of mining waste that buried workers and local residents in the nearby town of Brumadinho. read more »

Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Facebook said on Thursday that millions of user account passwords had been stored insecurely, potentially allowing employees to gain access to people’s accounts without their knowledge.

The Silicon Valley company publicized the security failure around the same time that Brian Krebs, a cybersecurity writer, reported the password vulnerability. Mr. Krebs said an audit by Facebook had found that hundreds of millions of user passwords dating to 2012 were stored in a format known as plain text, which makes the passwords readable to more than 20,000 of the company’s employees.

The security failure is another embarrassment for Facebook, a $470 billion colossus that employs some of the most sought-after cybersecurity experts in the industry. It adds to a growing list of data scandals that have tarnished Facebook’s reputation over the last few years. Last year, amid revelations that a political consulting firm improperly gained access to the data of millions, Facebook also revealed that an attack on its network had exposed the personal information of tens of millions of users. read more »

The Predatory Lending Scheme Destroying American Lives

If you're running a small business in America and you need to borrow money, you may be forced to sign a "confession of judgment" - an obscure legal document that gives your lender the right to seize your assets with no trial or advance warning.

some lenders have used this strategy to seize borrowers' money thousands of times in recent years, often bankrupting businesses and ruining lives. read more »

MedStar Health to Pay U.S. $35 Million to Resolve Allegations that it Paid Kickbacks to a Cardiology Group in Exchange for Referrals

MedStar Health Inc in Columbia, Maryland., MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, and MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center, both in Baltimore, have agreed to pay the United States $35 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act that it paid kickbacks to MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates a cardiology group based in Pikesville, Maryland, in exchange for referrals, through a series of professional services contracts at Union Memorial and Franklin Square Hospitals in Baltimore.

The settlement also resolves another lawsuit brought by whistleblowers who were former patients of John Wang, M.D. who claimed that Dr. Wang, MedStar, and Union Memorial engaged in a pattern and practice of performing medically unnecessary percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty with stent placement procedures and submitted false claims to Medicare for those cardiac stent procedures.  The lawsuit was filed in the District of Maryland in December 2012.

The whistleblowers, or relators, brought their actions under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, which permit private citizens with knowledge of false claims against the government to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the United States and to share in any recovery. Under the civil settlement announced today, the relators will receive a portion of the federal share of the recovery. read more »

Rajat Gupta Won’t Say Sorry

Rajat Gupta was once a member of the financial elite: the head of McKinsey, a board member of Goldman Sachs and an adviser to Bill Gates. Then he was convicted in 2012 of tipping an insider-trading ring.

Mr. Gupta still says he’s innocent of securities fraud, despite having been convicted of illegally slipping the hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam confidential information about Goldman Sachs. His only regret? Being a little too loose-lipped about corporate secrets. read more »