Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc. USA, a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer in Mahwah, New Jersey, agreed to pay $25 million for allegedly conspiring to fix the price of a generic drug.

The U.S. government alleged under the False Claims Act that Glenmark gave and received payments between 2013 and 2015 in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute by arranging price, supply and customer allocation with other drug makers for a generic drug made by Glenmark, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said.

The drug, which is called pravastin, is widely used to treat high cholesterol and triglyceride levels. 

Glenmark previously entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ's Antitrust Division to resolve related criminal charges.

Glenmark previously paid a criminal penalty of $30 million and admitted to conspiring with two other generic drug companies to fix prices on pravastatin, the DOJ said.

Russian Duo Charged With Stoking Division In U.S. Through Social Media, Money Laundering

Two Russian nationals are facing federal charges for “amplifying domestic division” in the U.S. and laundering money through a company set up in Tennessee to distribute Russian-made videos on social media.

Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, also known as Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, also known as Lena, were indicted with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering on Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.

Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva are at large, the DOJ said.

Read Also: Financial Crime Weekly: Health Care Provider To Pay $3.85M For Medicare Scheme, Co-Conspirators To Pay $70M For Vitol Bribery Scheme

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a state-controlled media outlet funded and directed by the Russian government. Over the past year, RT and its employees, including Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company called U.S. Company-1.

The company, launched in November 2023, published almost 2,000 English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone.

Using the fake personas Helena Shudra and Victoria Pesti, Afanasyeva directed the company to post hundreds of videos intended to slander the U.S. by, for example, blaming the U.S. and Ukraine for a March 22, 2024, terrorist attack on a music venue in Moscow,

RT also wired about $9.7 million to U.S. Company-1 from shell companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius between October 2023 and August 2024 and said the money was to pay for electronics. One wire note said a $318,000 wire payment from a shell company in Turkey was intended to pay for a smartphone, the DOJ said.

Nigerian Ordered to Pay $5M, Sentenced To Prison For Phishing Scheme

A Nigerian national has been ordered to pay nearly $5 million and sentenced to prison for carrying out a computer hacking and email compromise scheme that caused over $5 million in losses to multiple victims in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Ebuka Raphael Umeti, 35, was sentenced on Aug. 27 to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $5 million in restitution.

Co-defendant Franklin Ifeanyichukwu Okwonna, 34, pleaded guilty on May 20 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for his role in the scheme.

Umeti was convicted by a federal jury on June 13 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer and intentional damage to a protected computer.

According to court documents, Umeti, Okwonna and co-conspirators caused millions of dollars in unauthorized wire transfers by sending victim businesses phishing emails between February 2016 and July 2021.

The emails falsely appeared to come from trusted sources, but they would infect victims’ computers with malware that gave Umeti and Okwanna unauthorized access to the victims’ computer systems and email accounts, after the victims opened an attachment.

The defendants and their co-conspirators then exploited that access to obtain sensitive information they used to deceive individuals at the victim companies into executing wire transfers to accounts specified by the co-conspirators.

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