NEW YORK—The former chief executive of Rochester Drug Co-operative was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring to distribute opioids illegally, in the first criminal opioid trafficking case against a drug wholesaler and its executives.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels sentenced Laurence Doud, 79, to 27 months at a hearing in Manhattan. Daniels said Doud’s crime was serious and “motivated solely by profit,” but that the government’s requested sentence was more than needed.
Prosecutors had sought 15 years, while Doud’s attorneys argued that no prison time was warranted because similar conduct had been punished with only civil penalties in the past.
Rochester Drug Co-operative (RDC), Doud and another executive were charged in 2019 with conspiring to distribute illegal narcotics.
At Doud’s trial in January 2022, prosecutors told jurors that under his leadership the company funneled opioids to “bad pharmacies” and “dirty doctors,” ignoring clear signs, like large bulk orders of pills and payments in cash, that the drugs were being sold illegally.
Doud’s lawyers countered that he was being used as a scapegoat for the opioid epidemic.
The other executive, Chief Compliance Officer William Pietruszewski, pleaded guilty and testified against Doud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 29.
RDC, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, agreed in 2019 to pay $20 million to settle criminal and civil charges related to its opioid sales.
More than half a million people died from drug overdoses in the United States in the period from 1999 to 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has said opioid overdoses surged further during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing 38 percent in 2020 over the previous year and another 15 percent in 2021.
The opioid epidemic has spawned thousands of civil lawsuits by state and local governments accusing manufacturers of concealing their drugs’ risks, and distributors and pharmacies of failing to prevent illegal trafficking. Those lawsuits have so far resulted in more than $50 billion in settlements.
