A man from Montana charged with selling cancer drugs that were not approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration was sentenced to be on probation for a total of five years and home confinement for a period of six months. The law enforcement officials also added that his assets worth $6 million will also be forfeited.
The case is just one of the dozen cases that have been recently filed by the FDA and the U.S Department of Justice against resellers of unapproved medicines.
The U.S District Court of Missoula, Montana, ruled that the man, identified as Paul Daniel Bottomley, 48, had agreed to hand over a 2011 Aston Martin worth $110,000 from an auction, cash worth $1.1 million, and 10 parcels of real estate. The Justice Department valued the total forfeiture amount to have reached around $6 million.
John Roth, FDA’s office of criminal investigations director, explained that Bottomley was exempted from a jail term because he had been fully cooperative while they were conducting the investigation.
Bottomley’s sentence came a day right after a jail sentence of 18 months had been issued to a British man, Richard Taylor, charged of selling to U.S physicians the Turkish counterpart of the multibillion-dollar cancer medicine Avastin from Roche Holding AG. As a consequence, he was sentenced to serve 18 months in prison and pay a fine of $800,000.
When the fake Avastin drug was discovered in U.S oncology practices in the latter part of 2011, it had sparked a series of investigation on an international scale. The drugs were said to be exclusively sold in the country by Montana Healthcare Solutions owned by Bottomley.
In October 2010, Bottomley decided to sell his company to Rockley Ventures Ltd., a subsidiary of the Internet-based pharmacy Canada Drugs Ltd. based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The deal is said to be worth $5 million. Bottomley on the other hand maintained his presence at Canada Drugs as an adviser.
