The billionaire family who profited off the opioid epidemic are finally facing legal reprisals

The Sackler Family (previously) are a family of self-styled philanthropist billionaires who have been largely successful in their campaign to whitewash their family name by giving away a few percentage points off the profits they earned from deliberately creating the opioid epidemic by tricking and bribing doctors to overprescribe Oxycontin, falsely claiming that it was not addictive, and promoting the idea that any doctor who left a patient feeling pain was engaged in malpractice.

Destroying America was only the beginning for the Sacklers: even as their family business, Purdue Pharma, was admitting to its wrongdoing, they were engaged in exactly the same kind of deliberate corporate murder in new markets like Brazil -- and then attacking public education with a ideologically motivated PR campaign aimed at replacing public schools with charter schools.

But the noose is tightening on the Sacklers: as the family dissolves into a bickering mess, they are facing mass litigation and criminal investigations all around the world.

The Guardian's Joanna Walters rounds up a good cross-section of the legal troubles descending on the Sacklers, who are on the receiving end of legal threats from cities, states, class actions, and more.

A spokesman for John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, declined to comment. Prosecutors for the southern and eastern federal districts of New York state did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the northern district of New York said the Department of Justice does not confirm, deny or comment on the existence of any investigation.