Some of the best #MuckReads we read this week. Want to receive these by email? Sign up to get this briefing delivered to your inbox every weekend.
Killer Pharmacy: Inside a Medical Mass Murder Case (Newsweek)
In @Newsweek: A pharmacy, a financial fraud, & scores of murders that came from it. Inside a deadly corporate crime. http://t.co/ti7JocDcO6
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) April 16, 2015"In the exam room, a doctor screwed a needle onto a syringe, inserted it into a 1-milliliter vial of liquid steroid and pulled back the plunger to fill the syringe. Then he carefully slid the needle into Rybinski’s back, near his spine. As the doctor slowly pushed down on the plunger, he was unknowingly injecting a microscopic fungus that had been floating unseen inside that contaminated vial."
Banned from Medicare, still billing Medicaid (Reuters)
Banned from Medicare for fraud, but still billing Medicaid http://t.co/QbjXfEi4Jw#muckreads
— Carrie Brown (@Brizzyc) April 29, 2015"Data input errors allowed Yevgeniy Goldman, a Philadelphia doctor, to remain approved to bill Pennsylvania's Medicaid program even while serving a 51-month prison sentence for taking $263,000 in illegal payments for patient referrals to a home hospice company."
How average Oregonians challenged the timber industry – and lost (The Oregonian)
What happened when average Oregonians challenged the timber and chemical industries? They lost. #muckreadshttp://t.co/eGZ3K3ro4G
— Rob Davis (@robwdavis) April 27, 2015"[Oregon state Senator Michael] Dembrow, who has received $400 in campaign contributions from the timber industry in the last seven years, was replaced [on the state's environment committee] by state Sen. Chris Edwards. The Eugene Democrat has received $25,000 from the industry since 2006 and once worked in it. One industry group, the Oregon Forest Industries Council, is Edwards' second-largest source of campaign funding. ... Those committee changes matter. The chairman has the power to decide which bills get hearings. Without hearings, the bills die."
Where are the children? For extortionists, undocumented migrants have become big business. (The New Yorker)
Cross the border --> get kidnapped --> get rescued --> immigration court. Riveting #longreadshttp://t.co/X7BvAgiI1O
— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) April 27, 2015"Fear of the police can loom as large as fear of captors, particularly in parts of the country where law enforcement is believed to detain undocumented people who come forward to report a crime. One person who did contact the police was Sonia Avila, a woman living in Texas whose teen-age son, Franklin, reached Arizona from Honduras in 2011, only to be abducted by men posing as good Samaritans and held captive in a stash-house bedroom. Franklin's kidnappers phoned Avila, demanding fifteen hundred dollars. Otherwise, they told her, they would chop off Franklin's ears, or kill him."
UNDUE FORCE (A #MuckReads Reprise from the Baltimore Sun)
#MuckReads reprise: Baltimore's paid ~ $5.7 million since 2011 over police brutality lawsuits http://t.co/jLjUVr8g8P
— Amanda Zamora (@amzam) April 29, 2015"Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson."
