Spot the industry plagued by wrongdoing and huge fines No, not everybody's favourite inside trading hedge fund. The fine that really made us gasp this week was the $2.2bn penalty levied against Johnson & Johnson for promoting unapproved uses of anti-psychotic drugs in children, the elderly, and disabled. From the FT: Selling Johnson & Johnson's antipsychotic medicine to children was neither easy nor legal a decade ago, but enterprising sales staff came up with sweeteners to overcome the hurdles. They planned ice-cream parties, snacks and lunches to help boost prescriptions. The US will not stand for this sort of behaviour. At today's sentencing, Judge Saris said in substance that off label promotion has been a big problem, she has seen a barrage of off-label marketing cases, and that she hoped that the size of today's settlement and the fact that the government continues to press these cases will send a signal to the industry that this is not acceptable conduct. Oh no, hang on, that was from the judgement imposing a $322m fine on Merck last year, part of a $628m civil settlement for illegal promotion of its painkiller Vioxx. OK, the US is really on this: Today's landmark settlement is an example of the Department of Justice's ongoing and intensive efforts to protect the American public and recover funds for the federal treasury and the public from those who seek to earn a profit through fraud. It shows one of the many ways in which federal government, in partnership with its state and local allies, can help the American people at a time when budgets are tight and health care costs are increasing," said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli. Sorry, wrong again, that was the record $2.3bn fine against Pfizer in 2009 for fraudulent marketing of Bextra. Quite a record, or it was until GlaxoSmithKline was fined $3bn last year for more unlawful promotion, as well as failing to report safety data. There do seem to be a lot of these. A search on the Department of Justice website for "pharmaceutical fine" brings up 365 results. In March ProPublica toted up a non-exhaustive list of recent notable fines in the US that comes to more than $10.6bn. A three-year count by the Independent a year ago came to more than $11bn, from penalties levied against 26 companies, including eight of the ten largest globally. Meanwhile don't forget Europe. Just this summer Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck and 8 other manufactures were fined €146m for conspiring to delay the market entry of a generic antidepressant back in 2002. The cost of doing business, no doubt. We would be very interested to see an exhaustive list from the last ten years. Its a good job the banks are around to put all of those sums in perspective.