Wisconsin to receive $9.6 million in GlaxoSmithKline settlement

WISCONSIN -- Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to pay $3 billion to settle criminal and civil claims over some of its medications. Wisconsin stands to receive about $9.6 million of that money.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen says the money will go to Wisconsin's Medicaid Program.

The U.S. Justice Department had accused the company of marketing some of its drugs as treatments for conditions they weren't approved for.

A prosecutor says the company also bribed doctors in order to get them to prescribe their medications.

"In marketing these drugs and others as well, that are incorporated into the civil settlement, GSK sales force bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high-priced entertainment. From Hawaiian vacations, to paying doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours, to a European pheasant hunt, to tickets for Madonna concerts," U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz said.

In a statement, the company's CEO Andrew Witty said the company regrets what happened and has learned from the mistakes it made.

This is the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history and the largest payment ever by a drug company.