Thursday, March 18, 2010

$75 million drug heist is bitter pill for Lilly

From the Indianapolis Star:
It was a brazen, well-planned break-in, straight out of "Mission: Impossible" -- but the loot wasn't gold bars or bundles of cash.

Thieves made off with $75 million worth of pharmaceutical drugs from an Eli Lilly and Co. warehouse in Enfield, Conn., the latest and perhaps largest in a rising string of industry thefts, raising questions about drug security and where the products will wind up.
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Early Sunday, under cover of darkness, bandits scaled the side of the building and cut a hole in the roof, rappelled inside on ropes, disabled the alarm and spent more than an hour loading pallets of drugs into a waiting vehicle at the loading dock.

"It wasn't a random, impulsive act," said Carl Sferrazza, police chief of Enfield.

Increasingly, pharmaceutical drugs are becoming a lucrative target of thieves, who are using more aggressive and sophisticated methods to break into warehouses, hijack trucks and make off with millions of dollars worth of painkillers, antidepressants and other popular drugs. ...more

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