from the digital-idiocy-gets-back-to-reality dept.
Various sites report FedEx has been indicted for allegedly shipping prescription drugs from online pharmacies. WallStreet Journal provides a bit more details than the others:
The Justice Department on Thursday charged FedEx Corp. with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances for its alleged role in transporting painkillers and other prescription drugs that had been sold illegally.
In a 15-count indictment filed in San Francisco, federal prosecutors say that beginning in 2004 the company repeatedly ignored warnings from the government it was breaking the law by shipping drugs ordered from online pharmacies that dispensed them to anyone who filled out an online questionnaire. Among the charges included in the indictment are conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to distribute misbranded drugs, distribution of controlled substances and misbranding drugs.
FedEx has repeatedly asked for a list of online pharmacies that are illegally shipping prescription drugs, Mr. Fitzgerald [FedEx spokesman] said. "Whenever DEA provides us a list of pharmacies engaging in illegal activity, we will turn off shipping for those companies immediately," he added.
"We are a transportation company - we are not law enforcement," Mr. Fitzgerald added.
If found guilty, FedEx faces a potential fine of at least $1.6 billion, along with restitution and forfeiture of profits, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in the Northern District of California.
Prosecutors say FedEx made at least $820 million shipping the drugs. If found guilty, the company faces a potential maximum fine of twice that. FedEx has been summoned to appear in court July 29 in San Francisco.
This world looks to my eyes more "the onion"-y by the day. How long 'til toll highway operators will be indicted for letting controlled substances passing through toll gateways?
[Ed's Note: Non-paywalled link]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @02:11PM
Doesn't conspiracy only apply if you know about it? If they were explicitly denied information about it, then they quite obviously didn't know about it, so they could not enter into any conspiracy about it, right?
But well, basically it's just transferring to the offline domain the absurdity all-too-well known from the online domain.
Next, they'll probably sue phone book providers who list phone numbers of pharmacies selling such drugs. Or address book providers who print their address.
But there I have an idea: Can we also sue the tax office for collecting taxes from such pharmacies? After all, they profit from illegal behaviour that way, don't they? ;-)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday July 20 2014, @03:59PM
"Next, they'll probably sue ..."
Follow the money.
Next, they'll probably sue shippers who knowingly ship "international" cheap editions of textbooks to US addresses. Or sorta gray market-ish electronics. Someone's selling copied DVDs instead of genuine, that type of thing. Is everything DX sells, UL listed and FCC certified (real, not fake)?
Old fashioned brick and mortar stores have semi-private relationships with warehouses and shipping companies so they have nothing to fear. Making public carrier shipping essentially illegal for residential delivery other than maybe mfgr drop shipping and USPS too expensive, might be the only chance legacy brick and mortar retail has of surviving.
The consumer world of the future is pretty much nothing other than Walmart and Amazon and gas stations/convenience stores and thats about it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Friday July 18 2014, @02:13PM
How the hell is FedEx supposed to know what is in the packages? So they are now going to open every package shipped through their system?
No, what this is really is now a federal agent will be sitting at every fedex location, and will now have the legal right to open and inspect every package through their system.
If you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?
No sane Judge would even let this go to trial... but I am not convinced there are any sane Judges left.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 18 2014, @02:27PM
By Federal officials telling them. According to TFS,
So what that sounds like is the "pharmacies" were selling controlled substances without a prescription, the Feds (FDA? DEA? FBI? Does it matter?) told FedEx "these distributors are illegally selling drugs through your service, stop accepting their packages" and FedEx didn't do anything.
TFA is paywalled so I can't see the details but it sounds pretty logical that if you get a warning from Federal agents you're breaking a law, and you don't stop, the next step is criminal charges.
As I said, TFA is paywalled. The manner in which this played out determines whether it's FedEx or the Feds being the assholes here, and from TFS there is not enough evidence to form an opinion (unless you have one already and don't require facts).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Friday July 18 2014, @02:34PM
Ok, perhaps I rushed a bit too fast. But why do these "pharmacies" exist if they are doing something illegal? Maybe they are based overseas. But then why would they stamp their name and address on the packages if they knew what they were doing is illegal here? It still doesnt add up.
Why do we post useless paywalled articles here? (not that I would have read it before commenting, obviously...)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 18 2014, @02:47PM
That is kind of like asking "why isn't the enforcement of all laws comprehensive, instantaneous, and flawless?" ;-) Even in an ideal world, it would take a while to determine who the bad actors are and what penalty their offenses merit.
We can only speculate because of the paywall. Maybe they have a mostly legal business. Maybe they are shipping from an address outside US jurisdiction and the only thing the Feds can do is block their shipments. Maybe they are like other crooks who simply shut down their operation when they sense they're under investigation, and start up in another location under another name. Maybe they're just idiots who figured they'd never get caught. Who knows?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 18 2014, @03:48PM
Whoa, back up. One of Big Pharma's leading talking points on why US citizens should not order prescription drugs from outside the US is the supposed danger that those drugs will be of substandard quality or outright fakes. They provide no numbers. What percentage of foreign drugs are bad? Apparently no one cares to find out. And, what of the domestic supply? Does adultery of drugs never happen in the US because, you know, of our strong laws and enforcement?
They also push the thinking that even if these drugs are good, they're still illegal, manufactured or imported in violation of Big Pharma's patents. Never mind that those patents themselves might be no good, never should have been granted at all, perhaps being on a drug derived from a plant based treatment known to some native peoples for centuries.
One of the sickest incidents was the co-opting of US border guards, whose pay comes from the public, to serve the interests of Big Pharma by confiscating the prescriptions of seniors returning from a visit to Canada, in a few cases even if those drugs were brought from the US into Canada in the first place! The seniors didn't have proof the drugs were bought in the US, and were presumed guilty. Drilling FedEx is merely more of the same. Conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, yeah right. Trying to get unfair and extreme patents enforced against the will of the public, and to add to the insult, get someone else to pay for enforcement.
This story reads like Big Pharma wrote it. The Wall Street Journal is a known industry mouthpiece.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @04:02PM
" One of Big Pharma's leading talking points on why US citizens should not order prescription drugs from outside the US is the supposed danger that those drugs will be of substandard quality or outright fakes."
and, from my understanding, many of those same pharma companies buy their drugs or have them manufactured in other countries. IOW, the govt simply gives them a distribution monopoly. They get to produce their drugs in countries where labor and taxes are perhaps cheapest (to avoid having to pay Americans more for the same thing), which hurts jobs here in America and lowers our average pay, while at the same time they get to prevent us from buying directly from manufacturers overseas, which increases prices. They want to charge us to distribute drugs from other countries but they don't want to pay us to produce those drugs and they don't want to allow us to buy directly from those other countries at cheaper prices. They are simply a parasite middlemen leeching off of everyone else.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday July 18 2014, @08:17PM
Exactly. And Obama is using his DOJ to enforce this racket.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19 2014, @02:15AM
Never pass up an opportunity to insult the Other Team and make it into partisan politics, right?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 18 2014, @02:53PM
They need only comply with the laws of the jurisdiction they are in. It is the American recipient's duty to comply with U.S. law.
The funny part is that other than the opiates, the questionnaires are probably just as effective as the cursory exam a doctor might give the patient before prescribing. Just a hell of a lot cheaper.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @04:07PM
and I think that's the whole point of the govt requiring a prescription for everything. Because prescriptions cost money and so it keeps doctors and clinics employed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Friday July 18 2014, @06:15PM
An Ed's response. I am not the editor for this article but we do try to find an alternative link to submissions that contain paywalled links. I have now added one to the story. Perhaps at the time of editing, no-one else was showing the story. Many of the links that I found actually point back the the original WSJ site.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by danmars on Friday July 18 2014, @02:41PM
I'll use "Feds" since it's what you used. Seems appropriate in this case.
It's sounds like:
Feds: There are illegal pharmacies shipping drugs.
FedEx: Who are they?
Feds: Here's a list of those we know about.
FedEx: Okay, we won't ship from them.
Feds: You didn't stop all the pharmacies.
FedEx: We don't know who they are unless you tell us.
Feds: We'll take you to court for shipping from illegal pharmacies.
This seems like the exact same script as the copyright infringement thing. The industry believes telling Google, for example, of some specific cases will make similar cases go away forever, even those they don't specifically mention. In these cases, I tend to view the Feds and copyright industry as the "assholes", but I can understand the opposite opinion.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Friday July 18 2014, @02:45PM
Also from TFS:
FedEx has repeatedly asked for a list of online pharmacies that are illegally shipping prescription drugs, Mr. Fitzgerald [FedEx spokesman] said. "Whenever DEA provides us a list of pharmacies engaging in illegal activity, we will turn off shipping for those companies immediately," he added.
It sounds like the Feds are trying to blame FedEx fro their own failures.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 18 2014, @02:52PM
That is not in TFS. S is for "summary." That must be from the paywalled article.
From that excerpt, it does. It's kind of hard to have an informed discussion when the only link in the summary is to a paywalled article.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 18 2014, @08:12PM
I don't really deserve the "Insightful" mod. The quote from Mr. Fitzgerald IS in the summary -- on the second page. I missed it because it looked like what appeared on the front page was the whole summary. There were weak visual affordances [wikipedia.org] to indicate what I saw before I clicked "reply" was not in fact the entire summary.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 18 2014, @08:34PM
You're right, that is in the summary and I missed it because I didn't count how many words I had read on the first page, so there was no way to realize there were more.
I don't disagree with your assessment, that the Feds are trying to blame FedEx for their own failures. However, this Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] from elsewhere in this discussion paints a totally different picture.
In fact, the two stories have such wildly conflicting spin I don't know what to believe. I guess that's why we have juries.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @11:02PM
> In fact, the two stories have such wildly conflicting spin I don't know what to believe. I guess that's why we have juries.
I think the wapo is spinning the most. They uncritically repeat the line from the indictment that "packages from problematic shippers were held for pick up at specific stations." I use hold-for-pickup all the time with fedex. I'm a receiver not a shipper, but if a shipper wants to default to hold-for-pickup that seems like a good idea to me. They check id when you collect the package which they don't normally do when they deliver to a street address. That gets them proof of delivery versus the "toss it on the doorstep" approach that most home deliveries get.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 19 2014, @06:30AM
It is hard to tell. I agree w/ the AC that the wapo article does seem to be more slanted, but again, hard to be sure.
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Friday July 18 2014, @04:53PM
Not sure what the WSJ article had that any of the other news sites have because of the paywall, but from past experience reading WSJ I assume it is slanted toward the corporate view of invasive government.
Here is a list of sites with different takes on the situation:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_26168549/fedex-indicted-prescription-drug-probe [mercurynews.com]
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-17/fedex-indicted-for-distributing-controlled-drugs-online [businessweek.com]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fedex-indicted-drugs-internet-pharmacies-20140717-story.html [latimes.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/18/fedex-indicted-for-drug-dealing-not-a-delivery-guy-the-whole-company/?tid=hp_mm [washingtonpost.com]
For the actual indictment:
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/FedEx_Indictment.pdf [s-nbcnews.com]
Personally from what I see locally of the way their delivery personnel drive, it seem they may well be using certain drugs as well as muling them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_(smuggling) [wikipedia.org]
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by dboz87 on Friday July 18 2014, @08:18PM
From the Summary:
So the government is claiming that they are telling FedEx to stop shipping packages from these pharmacies, but not supplying a list of which pharmacies to stop processing shipments from.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday July 19 2014, @03:36AM
Maybe it can just be "other duties as assigned" for the government guys that are already there opening the telecom equipment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 18 2014, @02:40PM
Everyone, it has become plain for all to see that government in the United States has devolved into a protection racket for the status quo. Threaten the profits of established mega-corps, go to jail. Meanwhile, if you are one of those mega-corps, you have carte blanche. Launder money for Mexican drug cartels that perpetrate mass beheadings, defraud millions upon millions of middle-class homeowners, crash the world economy, foist unsafe drugs upon the market, meh, maybe a little slap on the wrist to keep up appearances.
We really need to design a system of self-governance that does not select for psychopaths and all these behaviors--we can't afford it as a planet or species anymore. They're doing too much damage, to too many people, too fast.
In the meantime, the psychopaths we have now must hang.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rune of Doom on Friday July 18 2014, @05:05PM
I think it's slightly more complicated than that. For example, FedEx is a mega-corp, and its being target here. I think its more accurate to say that the US national government has broken, in large part due to the efforts of powerful status quo players.
Beyond that, yes, I basically agree. Rule of law is dying in the United States, and that will lead to the destruction of the US in its present form. That's going to be terrible, but hopefully something better will emerge.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fishybell on Friday July 18 2014, @02:49PM
(Score: 3) by fishybell on Friday July 18 2014, @02:54PM
FTFA:
Quite clearly FedEx should have paid the "protection" fee too, which surely would have been less then the cost of defending against prosecution.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by clone141166 on Friday July 18 2014, @03:48PM
The whole thing seems a bit absurd to me. Why is FedEx responsible for what people put in the packages? This seems like a similar issue to net neutrality. To me, the carrier (physical or data) should never be responsible for, or allowed to interact with what they carry. They aren't the ones putting objects/data into the packets; expecting them to police the content is a huge burden to place upon them, not to mention a massive rights/privacy violation.
If there is a law requiring them not to deliver from/to particular senders/receivers and a legally mandated process for providing this list of blocked senders/receivers, then yes they should have to block delivery from/to senders/receivers on that list. But a flimsy "request" from the Justice Department to "please don't deliver packages from these companies" does not seem like that should be legally binding? Unless there is a law that requires them to honour ALL requests made by the Justice Department in this regard?
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday July 18 2014, @09:28PM
I agree with the common carrier argument. After doing work for a courier company, an understanding of RFC791 was very helpful. Intentionally or not, courier companies handle routing and consignment fragmentation in a very similar manner.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by deimtee on Saturday July 19 2014, @12:39AM
If you read c0lo's link below, FedEx knew that certain packages were problematical. ( http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/07/17/fedex-faces-federal-indictment-over-role-in-distributing-controlled-substances-prescription-drugs/ [cbslocal.com] )
They changed the delivery procedure for certain packages so drivers could avoid the people who were waiting for them.
I think the argument is that if they could identify them to change the delivery, then they should have refused them altogether.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:32AM
They could identify the shipper as problematic. But problematic doesn't mean illegal. It really isn't for FedEx to judge. Kind of like how we were all very unhappy with the Mastercard/Visa/Amex/et al blockade of donations to wikileaks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Friday July 18 2014, @03:28PM
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-17/fedex-indicted-for-distributing-controlled-drugs-online [businessweek.com]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2014/07/17/fedex-charged-with-trafficking-drugs-for-web-pharmacies/12808643/ [usatoday.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @05:43PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19 2014, @02:19AM
Sometimes its the very act of having the links in the summary that causes them to become broken. Have you never heard of a site being "slashdotted"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @01:02PM
G3CwU6 csxgiaxokpxj [csxgiaxokpxj.com], [url=http://nvmwvntallio.com/]nvmwvntallio[/url], [link=http://lfkypmgbrzwg.com/]lfkypmgbrzwg[/link], http://gqqmuzawnqjj.com/ [gqqmuzawnqjj.com]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday July 19 2014, @12:42AM
Who's there?
FedEx
Fred's not here
knock knock knock
No, it's FedEx
Fred's not here
no no no idjit
knock knock knock
Who's there?
FedEx, I got your drugs man!
Well why didn't you say so?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.