Pfizer Pays $2.3 Billion for Being a REPEATING CORPORATE CHEAT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines Wednesday and called the world's largest drugmaker a repeating corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.

Loucks said that even as Pfizer was negotiating deals on past misconduct, they were continuing to violate the very same laws with other drugs. "There's so much money in selling pills, that there's a tremendous temptation to cheat," said Bill Vaughan, an analyst at Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. "There's a kind of mentality in this sector that (settlements) are the cost of doing business and we can cheat.

This penalty is so huge I think consumers can have some hope that maybe these guys will tighten up and run a better ship."

Excerpts above taken from "Repeat offender Pfizer paying record $2.3B settlement for illegal drug promotions" by Devlin Barrett. For complete article click HERE.

See also: http://www.courant.com/business/sns-ap-us-pfizer-settlement,0,3526777.story