Robert Courtney, the Kansas City pharmacist whose drug dilution scheme attracted national headlines 19 years ago, is being released from prison seven years earlier.
In a letter last week, the US Department of Justice informed some of Courtney’s victims and their families that Courtney will be moved to an intermediate house this week and then to her confinement in Trimble, Missouri.
The letter stated that Courtney, 67, had been eligible for home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Attorney General William Barr instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to release inmates who “have a minimal risk of recidivism.”
Courtney, whose pharmacy was located at the Kansas City Research Hospital, was sentenced in 2002 after pleading guilty to diluting medications for cancer patients and other seriously ill people and pocketing the resulting earnings. She had been serving a 30-year prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood, Colorado, a low-security prison for inmates. It was to be released in 2027.
People who learned of his impending release said they were horrified.
Kelly Ann Allen, whose grandmother was treated with cancer drugs mixed by Courtney and died in 2000, said that people who were victims of Courtney’s plan were contacted by her parents this week.
“I lost my grandmother when I was a teenager and that, of course, was difficult,” said Allen. “It is difficult to go from thinking that an illness led your family member to thinking that greed and murder took your family member.”
Michael Ketchmark, an attorney from Leawood, Kansas, who helped negotiate legal settlements on behalf of Courtney’s victims, said he couldn’t imagine the pain they were feeling.
“My heart goes out to all of Robert Courtney’s victims, the thousands of lives he impacted. The pain they must feel when they hear this is unimaginable. ”
FBI and Food and Drug Administration agents began an investigation in the summer of 2001 after Kansas City oncologist Verda Hunter notified them that a vendor from drug maker Eli Lilly and Co. had told her that Courtney was administering much more cancer medication than Gemzar. purchasing.
Agents organized a sting operation to buy medications from Courtney, which mixed cancer drugs for Hunter, and found that the medications were much less potent than Hunter had ordered. One sample contained less than 1 percent of the prescribed amount.
Authorities said the scheme lasted a decade and affected up to 4,200 patients and 98,000 prescriptions for cancer drugs and a variety of other drugs.
Hundreds of their victims and their families sued Courtney and the makers of two of the Courtney cancer drugs watered down, alleging that the companies knew or should have known about the Courtney scheme through their detailed sales records.
The pharmaceutical companies, Eli Lilly and Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., finally struck a confidential settlement with the plaintiffs, which they later disclosed a total of approximately $ 71 million. The company that insured Courtney and its two pharmacies agreed to pay an additional $ 35 million.
The settlements came after a Jackson County jury in October 2002 ordered Courtney to pay Georgia Hayes, an ovarian cancer patient, $ 225 million in compensatory damages and $ 2 billion in punitive damages. The judge then reduced the amounts to $ 30.1 million and $ 300 million, respectively.
The Hayes case was the only one to go to trial. The sentence was largely symbolic because Courtney had already agreed to give up her assets to the government. But the case was an important factor in persuading the pharmaceutical company defendants to reach a settlement.
In issuing a maximum sentence of 30 years in December 2002, US District Judge Ortrie Smith told Courtney: “Their crimes are a shock to the conscience of a nation, the conscience of a community, and the conscience of this court. “
In a statement before his sentencing, Courtney apologized to her victims and her family: “From this moment on, and for a long time to come, I will be distressed by what I have done,” he said. “My hope is that… everyone knows that I apologize. And I’m sorry. For the rest of my life, whatever good I can do, whatever kindness I can show, I will do it. ”
