WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Dr. Elmer Mosley worked at Walgreens for about 50 years, starting as an intern in Chicago when he was fresh out of college, working his way up to pharmacy manager.
"When you finish pharmacy school, you take an oath," Mosley said. "And that is life first, preservation of life before anything else. I took that oath. I meant it."
WATCH BELOW: This West Palm Beach resident blew the whistle on Walgreens
In 2013, Mosley said he began to notice some prescription requests that he felt didn't align with that oath.
"Why am I filling prescriptions from all over the country, first of all?" Mosley said. "Then you begin to look at the quantities."
Mosley said he tried to report the suspicious prescriptions to his employer, and was even reprimanded when he declined to fill them.
"I didn't get any results. Nothing changed," Mosley said. "You take it home with you. It's your kid. And sometimes you can't sleep because you know that the 240 I just filled were way too many."
Mosley resigned and eventually became one of four whistleblowers who helped the U.S. Department of Justice file a lawsuit in 2018, which led to the $300 million settlement announced this week.
The lawsuit claims that for about 10 years, Walgreens knowingly filled numerous illegitimate opioid prescriptions.
"What drove him to speak out was human lives," Sia Baker Barnes, one of Mosley's attorneys, said. "He just couldn't do it any longer."
"We're not only advocating as lawyers for a client, but we're actually advocating for an improvement to society and social purpose," attorney Adam Rabin, who also represented Mosley, said. "Putting profits over the safety and health of patients is not going to fly in the long term."
In addition to the monetary settlement, Walgreens will also have to enter into a corporate integrity agreement.
"Those agreements are designed to tell them what they need to do in order to ensure that they're doing the right thing when no one is watching," Baker Barnes said.
The settlement stated that it's not an admission of liability by Walgreens, which told WPTV in a statement that it "strongly disagree(s) with the government's legal theory and admit(s) no liability."
"Our pharmacists are dedicated healthcare professionals who care deeply about patient safety and continue to play a critical role in providing education and resources to help combat opioid misuse and abuse across our country," a spokesman for the company went on to say. "This resolution allows us to close all opioid related litigation with federal, state, and local governments and provides us with favorable terms from a cashflow perspective while we focus on our turnaround strategy that will benefit our team members, patients, customers, and shareholders."
"It's not about the settlement. It was about the lives that I saved," Mosley said. "When you see something, say something. Just don't turn your head."
According to Rabin, much of the $300 million settlement will go back to government-funded healthcare programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE, as reimbursement for the allegedly fraudulent prescriptions those programs paid for.
The settlement states the whistleblowers will also get a portion of the money, something the federal government typically does to incentivize everyday people to hold the powerful accountable.
