The Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last month said they confiscated more than half a million medical supplies from price gougers and began distributing them to healthcare workers in New York and New Jersey.
“If you are amassing critical medical equipment for the purpose of selling it at exorbitant prices, you can expect a knock at your door,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a media release.
The FBI said it discovered the supplies during an enforcement operation by the task force on March 30. It then alerted HHS, which used its authority under the Defense Production Act to order that the supplies be immediately furnished to the United States. It found approximately 192,000 N95 respirator masks, 598,000 medical grade gloves and 130,000 surgical masks, procedure masks, N100 masks, surgical gowns, disinfectant towels, particulate filters, bottles of hand sanitizer and bottles of spray disinfectant.
“Cracking down on the hoarding of vital supplies allows us to distribute this material to the heroic healthcare workers on the frontlines who are most in need,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in the same release.
HHS said it will pay the owner of the hoarded equipment pre-COVID-19 fair market value for the supplies. It also said it quickly began distributing the items to meet the critical need for the supplies among healthcare workers in New York and New Jersey.
Peter Navarro, Defense Production Act policy coordinator and assistant to the president, said this effort at stopping price gouging was one of several investigations underway.
“Our FBI agents and other law enforcement agencies are tracking down every tip and lead they get, and are devoting massive federal resources to this effort,” he said.
