When the world's largest pharmaceutical company was found to have engaged in a massive illegal marketing campaign, federal prosecutors decided the company was too big to punish -- so they let it set up a shell corporation to take the blame.
Yet when the government threatened Pfizer with prosecution for off-label marketing fraud, it realized that a conviction would, under federal law, require that Pfizer be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid -- and that this would probably put the company out of business.
So Pfizer and the government agreed that a subsidiary of the company would plead guilty instead. That subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., was formed in 2007 to plead guilty to another charge and has never conducted any business.
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