Gang steals $70m worth of prescription drugs

Thieves got away with around $70m (€50.9m) of prescription drugs after cutting through the roof of a pharmaceutical warehouse in the US.

They slid down ropes, disabled an alarm, then loaded pallets of anti-depressants into a truck in the town of Enfield.

“Just by the way it occurred, it appears that there were several individuals involved and that it was a very well planned-out and orchestrated operation,” police chief Carl Sferrazza said.

The FBI has been called in to investigate.

A spokesman for drugs company Eli Lilly said the haul included Prozac and Cymbalta and the antipsychotic Zyprexa. No narcotics or painkillers were taken.

Zyprexa and Cymbalta were Eli Lilly’s two best-selling drugs last year. Prozac was it’s first billion-dollar drug and the company’s top seller before it lost patent protection several years ago.