Victims of cancer drug dilution scheme to receive checks soon.

2004 FEB 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Victims of former pharmacist Robert R. Courtney's dilutions of cancer drugs soon will begin receiving restitution checks.

Officials of U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri, said January 9, 2004, the initial batch of checks for cancer patients and their survivors would be written and sent by registered mail in the coming week.

Slightly more than 1,000 claimants have been approved to receive equal amounts from the approximately $10.5 million restitution fund that was created mainly from Courtney's seized assets.

Courtney pleaded guilty in early 2002 to 20 counts related to his dilution of 158 chemotherapy doses of the drugs Taxil and Gemzar which he prepared at his Kansas City business, Research Pharmacy. He is serving a 30-year prison term but has appealed the sentence.

The restitution program pertains only to the cancer-drug dilutions and is separate from the hundreds of civil lawsuits that arose from the scheme.

Courtney also admitted that he had tampered with 72 medications since 1992. Federal investigators have estimated that the dilutions affected as many as 4,200 patients and 98,000 prescriptions for many types of drugs.

Courtney made money by charging patients full prices for diluted doses of the expensive cancer medications and pocketing the difference. He said he was driven by greed and financial pressures, including a pledge to his church toward which he had already paid $600,000 in stock.