A wholesale drug distributor linked to the flood of opioids into Appalachia and two of its former executives were charged with conspiring to illegally distribute millions of painkiller pills, federal authorities said Thursday.
The former executives of Ohio-based Miami-Luken — the president and compliance officer — along with two pharmacists in West Virginia were indicted by a federal grand jury in Cincinnati, said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman. The conspiracy allegedly involved pharmacies from Portsmouth, Ohio, along the Ohio River to rural towns through West Virginia and Kentucky, a region particularly hard-hit by painkiller overprescribing and overuse.
Glassman said authorities mean to "hold accountable" anyone criminally involved at any point in drug distribution.
Benjamin Glassman, United States Attorney of the Southern District of Ohio, speaks during a news conference, Thursday, July 18, 2019, in Cincinnati. Federal authorities say Miami-Luken, an Ohio-based wholesale drug distributor that's been linked before to the opioid drug crisis, has been charged in a painkiller pill conspiracy cases. (AP PhotoJohn Minchillo)
"If you are intentionally violating the law, you can and should and will face justice regardless of where you are," Glassman said. "Whether you are on the street corner or in a boardroom."
Prescription opioid statistics made public this week underscored how pill distribution soared as the nation's overdose epidemic grew.
Miami-Luken distributed 120 million pills from 2006 through 2012, according to newly public federal data published by The Washington Post.
Benjamin Glassman, United States Attorney of the Southern District of Ohio, speaks during a news conference, Thursday, July 18, 2019, in Cincinnati. Federal authorities say Miami-Luken, an Ohio-based wholesale drug distributor that's been linked before to the opioid drug crisis, has been charged in a painkiller pill conspiracy cases. (AP PhotoJohn Minchillo)
An Associated Press analysis found that 11.4 million of those pills, or nearly 10%, went to Mingo County, West Virginia, an area with a population of about 24,000. The company was the top opioid pill distributor in the county over that stretch; it was in the top five of only one neighboring county, Kentucky's Martin County, where the company distributed 574,000 pills over that span.
Richard Blake, an attorney who has previously represented Miami-Luken, said Thursday he was unaware of the charges.
There was no answer Thursday at the phone number listed for the company in Springboro, a suburban city 18 miles (29 kilometers) south of Dayton. The Dayton Daily News reported earlier this year that the company was in the process of dissolving amid mounting legal problems
Miami-Luken has been named in lawsuits pending before a federal judge in Cleveland. More than 2,000 state, local and tribal governments have sued members of the drug industry. West Virginia's attorney general in 2016 settled a lawsuit for $2.5 million against Miami-Luken, resolving allegations that the company failed to detect, report and stop the flood of suspicious drug orders into the state.
As part of the settlement, Miami-Luken was required to report suspicious orders to West Virginia State Police and the attorney general's office within 72 hours of discovering them.
"Today's announcement represents yet another step in law enforcement's continuing effort to fight this epidemic," West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement.
Federal authorities identified the indicted as:
— Miami-Luken's former president, Anthony Rattini, 71, of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
— Miami-Luken's former compliance officer, James Barclay, 72, of Springboro.
— Samuel "Randy" Ballengee, 54, of Lovely, Kentucky, identified as a pharmacist who owned Tug Valley Pharmacy in Williamson, West Virginia.
— Devonna Miller-West, 49, of Oceana, West Virginia, identified as a pharmacist who owned Westside Pharmacy.
Barclay remained at large Thursday, Glassman said, while the other three were arrested without incident and will face a court appearance in Cincinnati later this month. They each face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Investigators have said that as early as 2011, Miami-Luken was aware that the Westside Pharmacy in Oceana (population 1,394) was filling prescriptions for doctors located hours away, and that a large number of prescriptions for hydrocodone and oxycodone were paid for with cash. Yet, congressional findings said the company continued to supply the pharmacy with more than 3.36 million opioids over the next four years.
Glassman said Miami-Luken allegedly distributed more than 3.7 million hydrocodone pills in 2008-2011 to an unnamed pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia (population around 400).
Several other pharmacies were mentioned but not named in the indictment, and Glassman said investigations are continuing across the region.
"It looks like a war zone down here," Perry County, Kentucky, Sheriff Joseph Engle said Wednesday after release of federal data showed that on average, 175 pills a year per person were distributed in Perry County during the period covered.
Associated Press writers John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Claire Galofaro in Louisville, Kentucky; Goff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Matthew Perrone in Washington D.C.; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Kantele Franko, Julie Carr Smyth and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus contributed to this report.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official, was widely believed to be running the country as it reeled from the killing of its supreme leader and a widening war. Israel said Tuesday that it killed Larijani in an overnight strike.
Israel's military also said it killed Iranian Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, who led a powerful internal security force that has crushed waves of mass protests against the Shiite theocracy.
Iran has not yet confirmed or denied their deaths. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top security officials were killed in the surprise U.S. and Israeli strikes that started the war. Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, who was appointed to replace him, has not been seen in public, and Israel suspects he was wounded.
The killing of top leaders has so far had little impact on the war itself, as Iran's Revolutionary Guard continues to fire missiles at Israel and Arab Gulf countries. Iran has also effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's traded oil passes, sending prices up and rattling the world economy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes were aimed at weakening Iran's government “to give the Iranian people the opportunity to remove it.” There have been no signs of anti-government protests since the war began, as many Iranians are sheltering from the American and Israeli strikes.
Larijani hails from one of Iran’s most famous political families, which many media outlets have compared to the Kennedys in the United States. One brother, Sadeq, served as the head of Iran’s judiciary, while another, Mohammad Javad, was a senior diplomat who closely advised the late Khamenei on foreign affairs.
Larijani has been a conservative force within Iran’s theocracy, issuing increasingly hard-line threats throughout the years. In the 1990s, he served as Iran’s culture minister, tightening censorship. He served as parliament speaker from 2008 to 2020, and most recently as head of the Supreme National Security Council.
Larijani has also written at least six philosophy books, including three exploring the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
He was appointed to advise Khamenei on strategy in nuclear talks with the Trump administration and traveled to Oman to meet with mediators just two weeks before the war began. Like other top Iranian leaders, he was under heavy U.S. sanctions and implicated in the violent repression of mass protests in January.
He was ineligible to become supreme leader because he is not a Shiite cleric. But he was widely expected to serve as a top adviser, and many believed he was running the country as U.S. and Israeli strikes have driven Iran's leadership underground.
A week ago, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if Tehran stopped oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, Larijani responded to him on X.
“The sacrificial nation of Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran,” he wrote. “Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
Less is known about Soleimani, who led Iran’s paramilitary Basij, an all-volunteer force fiercely loyal to the Islamic Republic. He is not related to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top general who was killed in a U.S. strike in 2020.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Soleimani was killed in a combat tent alongside other Basij commanders, who were using it as makeshift headquarters as Israel has targeted several of their bases.
Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani was born in the mid-1960s in the western Iranian city of Farsan. He first joined the Basij as a volunteer in 1984 during the Iran-Iraq war, when it was notorious for launching human wave attacks at fortified Iraqi positions. He became the commander of the Basij in 2019.
The Basij numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and includes military-style brigades, anti-riot police and a vast network of informers who spy on Iranian society. During protests, plainclothes members can often be seen attacking, beating and hauling away demonstrators.
Soleimani has been under U.S. and international sanctions since 2021 connected to his involvement in crushing protests going back to the disputed presidential election of 2009. The U.S. Treasury said the Basij killed “hundreds of Iranian men, women and children” when it cracked down on protests in 2019.
Thousands were killed and tens of thousands detained in January when Iranians again rose up. It was the bloodiest such crackdown since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and caught the attention of Trump, who threatened to intervene on the protesters' behalf before shifting his attention to Iran's nuclear program.
Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel and Spike from Budapest, Hungary.
FILE - Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, smiles as he attends in a ceremony at Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, 300 kms 186 (miles) south of capital Tehran, Iran, Monday April, 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)
FILE - Ali Larijani, center, head of Iran's National Security Council, gestures as Hezbollah supporters throw rice to welcome him outside Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
FILE - Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani gives a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Dec. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, greets journalists upon his arrival to meet with the Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
