James Wetta is a multi-millionaire from his activities as a whistleblower of the pharma industry–not once by twice and his recent revelations concerning AstraZeneca will result in $45 million to him. The former AstraZeneca sales rep filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company in 2004 and Astra revealed last week that it would pay$520 million to settle the inquiry into its marketing of the antipsychotic Seroquel. Interestingly, the whistleblower has done this before when he blew the whistle on Eli Lilly, which last year paid upwards of $1.4 billion to settle an antipsychotic marketing issue. Wetta got a share of the $100 million of the whistleblower portion of that settlement. According to his Astra suit, Wetta received negative evaluations at work after refusing to participate in the off-label marketing of Seroquel to child and adolescent psychiatrists, primary care doctors and elderly dementia sufferers. He was let go, he claims.
These type of activities are increasingly to subject of whistleblower cases revealed by employees or terminated employees who refuse to go along with the wrongdoing.
