Department of Justice sues Walmart over opioid crisis

CBS

The Justice Department is suing Walmart, alleging the country's largest retailer unlawfully dispensed controlled substances through its pharmacies and helped fuel the nation's opioid crisis.

In a civil complaint filed Tuesday, the federal government alleges that Walmart pressured its pharmacists to fill opioid prescriptions quickly, denying them the ability to refuse invalid prescriptions. As a result, the complaint alleges, those pharmacists knowingly filled thousands of prescriptions that came from "pill mills," prescriptions for particular drug combinations widely abused, and prescriptions that other Walmart pharmacies had flagged as invalid. The latter meant that "when a Walmart pharmacist recognized that a customer's prescription was invalid, the customer could simply shop around for another Walmart pharmacist or store to fill the same or a similar prescription," the complaint reads.

The government also charges Walmart with failing to detect and report suspicious prescriptions to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, as the law requires it to do. read more »

SEC Charges Ripple and Two Executives with Conducting $1.3 Billion Unregistered Securities Offering

SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has filed an action against Ripple Labs Inc. and two of its executives, who are also significant security holders, alleging that they raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.

According to the SEC's complaint, Ripple; Christian Larsen, the company's co-founder, executive chairman of its board, and former CEO; and Bradley Garlinghouse, the company's current CEO, raised capital to finance the company's business. The complaint alleges that Ripple raised funds, beginning in 2013, through the sale of digital assets known as XRP in an unregistered securities offering to investors in the U.S. and worldwide. Ripple also allegedly distributed billions of XRP in exchange for non-cash consideration, such as labor and market-making services. According to the complaint, in addition to structuring and promoting the XRP sales used to finance the company's business, Larsen and Garlinghouse also effected personal unregistered sales of XRP totaling approximately $600 million. The complaint alleges that the defendants failed to register their offers and sales of XRP or satisfy any exemption from registration, in violation of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws. read more »