The Digest WellPoint Gets Subpoena WellPoint Health Networks has received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston regarding its relationship with TAP Pharmaceuticals. TAP Pharmaceuticals manufactures Prevacid, a drug that has gained popularity among WellPoint’s 13 million medical members because of its ability to effectively treat heartburn. TAP has been under federal scrutiny ever since the company reached an $875 million criminal and civil settlement last fall on charges it provided sales representatives with $40,000 worth of Lupron. The company allegedly used its prostate cancer drug to woo doctors to buy more of the product instead of less expensive alternatives. LAUSD Buys Boeckmann Property The Los Angeles Unified School District has purchased a 14.4-acre site for a new middle school in the northeast San Fernando Valley from Jane and Bert Boeckmann, owners of the Galpin Ford dealership in North Hills. The onetime Van Nuys Drive In Theater at Roscoe Boulevard and Noble Avenue cost the school district $12.9 million. About $2.5 million of the purchase price will be offset by transferring ownership of the district’s maintenance and operations yard in the 8200 block of Orion Avenue to the Boeckmanns. The Boeckmanns bought the site for $9.94 million in June 2000 from Circuit City Stores Inc. The new school is expected to accommodate 1,629 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Telemarketer Convicted of Securities Fraud A salesman with a Canoga Park telemarketing firm has been sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.5 million in restitution to defrauded investors. Authorities charged Aldo Tarallo, 71, of conning victims into believing that they were investing in companies about to go public. Assistant U.S. Atty. Steve Olson said investors across the country lost a total of about $6.2 million in the scam. A federal jury convicted Tarallo in November on six counts of securities fraud and four counts of mail fraud. Tarallo, free on $250,000 bond, was given until July 22 to surrender to serve his sentence so that he can make arrangements for the care of his seriously ill wife. The firm’s president, David Allan Colvin, 57, of Chatsworth, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 78 months in prison. Sales manager John Larson, 51, was sentenced to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty. According to evidence presented during Tarallo’s two-week trial, the telemarketers touted investments in an assortment of companies they claimed were on the verge of going public. The companies included one that supposedly could detoxify a drug addict within 15 minutes and another that was developing a guide to adult sex sites on the Internet.
