Thieves Grab Up to $75 Million in Eli Lilly Drugs
March 18th, 2010Maybe it’s just run of the mill theft. I don’t really know what else it could be…
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Never mind.
Via: Reuters:
As much as $75 million in popular Eli Lilly & Co prescription medicines such as Prozac were stolen during a raging storm from a Connecticut warehouse over the weekend, police said on Tuesday.
Burglars broke into the Lilly warehouse either late Saturday or early Sunday in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, as violent rain and winds lashed the Eastern seaboard, Enfield Lt. Steven Kaselouskas said.
“You certainly don’t see a $50 million to $75 million burglary many times in your career,” he said. “This was a well-planned event.”
The thieves disabled a burglar alarm in the building and carted away dozens of pallets loaded with Lilly antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta, anti-psychotic Zyprexa and other company medicines, according to published reports.
A warehouse employee saw the hole in the roof on Sunday afternoon and notified police. Police did not receive notice of an alarm going off, said Kaselouskas.
Kaselouskas speculated the drugs could be headed for the black market and possibly overseas, where there is demand for medicines made in the United States because of their deemed safety.
Lilly officials could not immediately be reached for comment and did not issue a release about the theft.
But a Lilly spokesman said in a published report the loss may not have a material financial impact for the company and has not disrupted supply of medicines to the east coast.
That’s one nice business model to have, when someone can steal 50 to 75 Million dollars worth of your product and it won’t have a financially material impact on your company.
Some years back, in the West Central Florida area, someone was breaking into bank vaults by coming in through the roof. They’d chop a hole in the roof over the vault, drop down in and then chop a hole into the ceiling of the vault.
Alarms would be triggered, but the police were too lazy to get out of the cruisers and really investigate, so the crime would go undetected until the bank opened for business in the morning and the money was gone.
The ceiling hole in this case could have been mere “window dressing”.
Nothing like violent wind and rain, along with some hot coffee and donuts, to keep cops safely in their cars and out of the way.
Glad I’m on well water.
may not have a material financial impact for the company
translation: “we were going to sell this junk for 75 mill, but marginal manufacturing cost was about 75k. so we rang the CMO and asked them to do an extra production run last night. problem solved.”
the thing that struck me about this story was that no street-level narcotics, such as opiate derivatives, speed, etc., were stolen, only things like anti-depressants…what a strange world, where there would be a black-market for that kind of thing; I mean, I know they are extremely expensive for what they are, but typically docs prescribe these without second thought, whereas if you go to your doc and ask for the other, unless you have cancer or ADHD, getting perscription narcos is a thing of the past…except on the street.
I have often wondered where the vast quantities of perscription Oxy, morphine, amphetamines, benzo’s, etc., come from, except from thefts like this..unless it just goes out the back loading dock, in a back-door deal with the warehouse staff…there is no way, robbing pharmacies or scrip-doc’s could fill enough of that street supply of these drugs…
@ronjondoe
You haven’t been to DisneyWorld in a while, I’m guessing.
“Pain Clinics” dot the landscape with the same frequency as “Payroll Advance” places. The back page of the faux local rag “Creative Loafing” is filled entirely with ads for pain clinics or opiate addiction treatment clinics. (The only exception being a small ad for a DUI atty)
Despite the inadvisability of using opiates to treat chronic pain, prescriptions for the drugs soared during the Bush administration and don’t seem to be slowing under Obama.
In some communities of retired/fixed income people, it’s considered common practice to go to “pain management”(which is covered by medicare or insurance), then sell the pills on the street.
This practice is so common that in some areas the street price for pain pills is actually lower than the cash price you’d pay at the pharmacy if you had a prescription! Insurance or govt is subsidizing all but a small co-pay.
It’s no mistake that Rush Limbaugh lives in Fla.