A for­mer se­nior staffer at Take­da was ar­rest­ed this week over an al­leged scheme to de­fraud the com­pa­ny of about $2.3 mil­lion.

Priya Bham­bi, a for­mer em­ploy­ee in Take­da’s tech­nol­o­gy op­er­a­tions group, has been charged with wire fraud along with Samuel Mon­tronde. The de­fen­dants, who live to­geth­er in Boston, were ac­cused of schem­ing via text mes­sage and us­ing the stolen funds to buy a Mer­cedes-Benz, ac­cord­ing to an af­fi­davit by FBI Spe­cial Agent Bren­dan Don­lan.

“… I have put some wheels in mo­tion to pur­suit [sic] a small hus­tle, lol… You know how we talked about oth­er types of work a few days ago? I ba­si­cal­ly found a seed and some seed $ for it. I can’t be the face of it though,” Bham­bi texted Mon­tronde last Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

The al­leged ruse be­gan when an un­named per­son af­fil­i­at­ed with Bham­bi start­ed a com­pa­ny in 2018 to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices to Take­da, ac­cord­ing to the af­fi­davit. While “it does not ap­pear that Com­pa­ny 1 ever en­gaged in any ac­tu­al busi­ness,” Take­da made about $300,000 worth of pay­ments be­tween Au­gust 2018 and De­cem­ber 2019, Don­lan re­port­ed.

About two years af­ter that com­pa­ny was dis­solved, Mon­tronde formed Evoluzione Con­sult­ing. Bham­bi al­leged­ly sub­mit­ted a let­ter to Take­da claim­ing that the first com­pa­ny had been ac­quired by Evoluzione. Take­da made three pay­ments of $460,000 each to Evoluzione be­tween Ju­ly and Oc­to­ber 2022.

“We be­come mil­lion­aires and we re­tire babe,” Mon­tronde texted Bham­bi, ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ments. “If I get it right…dream home 2022 for us,” Bham­bi said in a dif­fer­ent text.

Both the plain­tiffs’ and Bham­bi’s at­tor­ney Az­iza Hawthorne de­clined to com­ment to End­points News.

While the af­fi­davit does not re­fer to Take­da by name, Bham­bi’s LinkedIn page list­ed her as work­ing at Take­da be­tween 2017 and 2022, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple re­ports. The LinkedIn ac­count has since been re­moved.

When asked about the case, Take­da told End­points via email: “We are aware of the events and are work­ing in full co­op­er­a­tion with the au­thor­i­ties. We can­not com­ment fur­ther since the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.”

Bham­bi was fired in No­vem­ber 2022 fol­low­ing an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ac­cord­ing to the court doc­u­ments.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

We now know where Roche’s ex-pharma chief Bill Anderson is going.

German pharma giant Bayer announced Wednesday that Anderson will be taking on the role as CEO, less than six weeks after Anderson stepped down from his perch at Roche as head of the group’s pharmaceutical division.

Roche announced back in December that Anderson would depart on Dec. 31 to “pursue opportunities outside of Roche.” His replacement, Genentech vet and Roche’s current head of global product strategy, Teresa Graham, will start her role in March.

As talk of AI this-and-that gobbles up headline after headline, one Big Pharma is losing its AI leader as she transitions to another drug giant: Iya Khalil will trade in her hat as Novartis’ go-to expert and leader in the space for Merck as VP and head of data, AI and genome sciences next week.

After nearly three years leading the artificial intelligence team at Novartis — as Big Pharma and biotechs alike latch onto the ripening AI-for-drug-discovery mode of operation — Khalil will switch employers to head up a similar post at Merck, where she’ll work out of Cambridge, MA beginning Feb. 13, the company tells Endpoints News.