A Whistle-Blower Rocks an Industry

In his 20 years as a pharmaceutical salesman, Douglas Durand thought he had seen it all. Then, in 1995, he signed on as vice-president for sales at TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc. in Lake Forest, Ill. Several months later, in disbelief, he listened to a conference call among his sales staff: They were openly discussing how to bribe urologists. Worried about a competing drug coming to market, they wanted to give a 2% "administration fee" up front to any doctor who agreed to prescribe TAP's new prostate cancer drug, Lupron. When one of Durand's regional managers fretted about getting caught, another quipped: "How do you think Doug would look in stripes?" Durand didn't say a word. "That conversation scared the heck out of me," he recalls. "I felt very vulnerable."

Durand didn't end up in stripes. Far from it. To protect his good name and, as he puts it, to "cover his rear," Durand began gathering the inside dope on TAP and feeding it to one of the country's leading federal prosecutors. It was the first step in what would become a six-year quest to expose massive fraud at the company. Durand's 200 pages of information were so damning that TAP pleaded guilty to conspiring with doctors to cheat the government. And last October, after negotiating a settlement for two years, federal prosecutors announced a record $875 million fine against the company. For his efforts, Durand won an unprecedented award of $77 million, or 14% of the settlement, as allowed under the federal whistle-blower statute.