Man Sentenced to 15 Years In Jail Who Worked for a Phama Waste Disposal Company And Sold The Waste Powder from Sanofi Plant to Criminals to Make Crystal Meth

The Sanofi plant in Kansas City is now closed as they failed to find a buyer for the plant but prior to the closure, an employee of the waste company contracted to take care of the waste product made from the manufacturing sold the pharmaceutical grade of pseudoephedrine powder sold it to criminals who were making crystal meth. The article states there was enough sold to create over $40 million dollar’s worth of the illegal drug.

What lead to the discovery of this scheme was when the thieves became greedy and decided to step from just selling the powder and were plotting to flat out steal the pseudoephedrine supply beyond just selling the throw away powder that was not up to tolerance levels for the manufacturing of the drug. All men in the case pleaded guilty So the next question, who do you trust?

This case could in fact stand to open yet more inquiries I might guess on how pharmaceutical companies do in fact dispose of their waste and perhaps take a look at how their contractors are taking care of business. This somewhat leads to the old saying that someone else’s garbage is another man’s gold in a sense.

Heritage Environmental Services, and stole hundreds of kilos of the pseudoephedrine powder over a 10-year period and the drug manufactured at the now closed facility was Allegra-D for allergies. This is why I think we now have the extra controls at the drug store when we just want to purchase some allergy medications as we have all seen in the last couple of years to make sure we do in fact have allergies and are not making crystal meth. BD

One of the men behind a multimillion-dollar racket in which pharmaceutical waste from a Sanofi-Aventis manufacturing facility in the USA was diverted to make narcotics was sentenced to 15 years in prison last week.
Garland Duane Hankins of Oak Grove, who worked for an environmental waste disposal company contracted by Sanofi-Aventis, was one of a group of men who pleaded guilty in January to protracted theft of a pharmaceutical grade of pseudoephedrine powder that was unsuitable for use in finished products.

In 2004, the US Drug Enforcement Administration tightened up the requirements for companies making, distributing, importing or exporting pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and propanolamine with measures designed to prevent the theft and diversion of the substances.

SecuringPharma - Kansas man gets 15 years in jail for pharmaceutical diversion