Online retailer eBay has agreed to pay $59 million to settle claims that it violated the Controlled Substances Act (‘CSA’) by selling pill presses that were then used in illegal drug manufacturing. The Justice Department said in a press release Wednesday: “Pill presses and encapsulating machines can be used by criminals to manufacture illegal drugs …when used with a mold, stamp, or die mimicking commonly prescribed controlled substances.”  eBay has also agreed to impose tighter controls on the sale of prohibited and controlled items.

The Justice Department said that some of the pill presses sold via eBay were used to mimic existing brands and that some were capable of pressing thousands of pills in a short time. According to the Justice Department, the CSA requires identities of the purchasing party to be verified for certain kinds of medical equipment, including pill presses.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, chair of the Justice Department’s Opioid Epidemic Civil Litigation Task Force, said: “the civil division will continue to work with our law-enforcement partners to ensure that all those involved in the sale of counterfeit pills and the equipment used to manufacture counterfeit pills are held accountable.”

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