The owner of a suburban Chicago prescription drug wholesale distribution company purchased more than $57 million worth of diverted, unregulated prescription drugs and re-sold them to unsuspecting pharmacies and other wholesalers, according to a federal indictment returned in US District Court in Chicago. Gurucharan Dua, 50, used his Plainfield, Ill.-based distribution company to knowingly obtain wholesale amounts of the diverted prescription drugs at discounted prices from unlicensed suppliers, the indictment states. Upon receipt of the diverted drugs, Dua directed his employees to clean the bottles to fraudulently make the drugs appear to be from a regulated prescription drug distribution chain, the indictment states. Dua then knowingly sold the diverted prescription drugs to unsuspecting pharmacies and other wholesalers, falsely representing to them that his company had acquired the prescription drugs from a licensed source in a regulated supply chain, the indictment states. The charges allege that from 2011 to 2017, Dua purchased approximately $57.2 million worth of diverted prescription drugs that he later re-sold to the pharmacies and wholesalers. Some of the pharmacies were located in Chicago, Joliet, Ill., and Springfield, Mass., the indictment states.
