Justice Department accuses Rite Aid of fueling opioid epidemic by ignoring red flags, illegally filling thousands of prescriptions

CLEVELAND, Ohio— The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday accused Rite Aid Corp. of intentionally ignoring red flags on hundreds of thousands of dubious opioid prescriptions, which helped fuel the epidemic that claimed the lives of some 500,000 people in the last two decades.

The Justice Department’s complaint, filed in a whistleblower lawsuit in federal court in Cleveland, accuses Rite Aid and several subsidiaries of violating federal law and illegally filling prescriptions to make millions of dollars in profits.