WASHINGTON — Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to settle allegations that its pharmacies illegally filled thousands of invalid opioid prescriptions, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced Friday.

The government's complaint, originally filed Dec. 22, 2020, and later amended in 2022 in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleged that since June 26, 2013, Walmart filled invalid prescriptions through the knowing actions of individuals on its compliance team and its pharmacists.

According to the complaint, members of Walmart's compliance team knew certain prescribers were operating as "pill mills" but filled their prescriptions anyway. Walmart's own pharmacists had flagged the conduct to the corporate compliance team through thousands of "refusal-to-fill" forms.

Rather than acting on those reports, one director on the compliance team acknowledged in an email that the team viewed "[d]riving sales and patient awareness" as "a far better use of our Market Directors and Market managers' time."

Walmart pharmacists also allegedly filled prescriptions they knew were invalid. Those prescriptions reportedly showed red flags such as dangerous combinations of opioids, excessively repeated fills of high-dosage opioids or repeated requests for early fills of often-abused controlled substances.

"Today's settlement proves this Department is committed to putting Americans' flourishing first," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said. "This Department will never shy away from vigorously enforcing pharmacies' obligations to comply with those protections, ensuring that potential profits never justify aiding our Nation's opioid epidemic."

As part of the settlement, Walmart also entered into a memorandum of agreement with the DEA covering its future obligations in dispensing controlled substances. The agreement requires Walmart to set up a hotline for employees and patients to report suspected illegal dispensing, monitor dispensing patterns across its pharmacies and establish a process to evaluate prescribers suspected of illegal prescribing.