ImClone's Waksal jailed
Sam Waksal, former CEO of ImClone Systems (New York, NY, USA), was sentenced on June 10 to 87 months in prison without eligibility for parole and fined over $4 million for insider trading and tax evasion. The infractions occurred in December 2001, when Waksal's friends and family sold shares of ImClone in the days before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA; Rockville, MD, USA) announced the firm's colorectal cancer drug, Erbitux, would require more clinical trials to receive marketing approval (Nat. Biotechnol. 20, 111, 2002). US District Judge William Pauley said Waksal “abused [his] position of trust...and undermined the public's confidence in the integrity of the capital markets, then [he] tried to lie [his] way out of it.” Indeed, the resulting 'ImClone debacle' has been repeatedly blamed for destroying investors' trust in biotechnology executives. Waksal is due to be sent to prison on July 2, but as Nature Biotechnology went to press the location had yet to be decided. Waksal's attorneys have requested that he be sent to Eglin Federal Prison Camp (Eglin, FL, USA), a minimum-security prison dubbed 'Club Fed' by the media, where inmates are reportedly rustled out of bed at 7 a.m. and forced to work eight hours each day for up to $0.40 per hour. AB
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution