Ex-Drug Firm Executive Gets Prison Term
A former top executive of Bolar Pharmaceutical Co. was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $1 million in federal court Friday, the stiffest penalty imposed on an individual in the fraud and corruption probe of the nation’s generic drug industry.
Jacob H. Rivers, 63, of Great Neck, N.Y., former executive vice president of the drug company, pleaded guilty in April to making false statements and obstructing investigators.
He was accused along with seven other Bolar executives--almost the entire former hierarchy of the firm--of covering up a scheme to short-cut manufacturing standards in their rush to get Food and Drug Administration approval of heart medicine and other drugs ahead of competitors in the multibillion-dollar generic drug industry.
“It was greed . . . a total frenzy to see who could get there first,” said U.S. District Judge John R. Hargrove, who has presided over the more than two dozen generic drug prosecutions here since 1989.
Prosecutor Gary P. Jordan said the misconduct at Bolar was the “most egregious” he has seen, and Rivers was “intimately involved” in it.
“I’m aware of all the wrongdoing,” Rivers told Hargrove. “I’m sorry. I apologize.”
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