Ripped From "Law and Order": US Execs Charged With Importing Tainted Chinese Toothpaste

By way of the WSJ Law Blog from the NYT: A Los Angeles city attorney filed criminal charges yesterday against executives from 2 LA-based importers of Chinese-made toothpaste that was tainted with diethylene glycol. According to the NYT report, most of the toothpaste was brought into the United States through Long Beach, CA, and ~78,000 tubes were sold and distributed by at least one importer between December 2005 and May 2007 to prisons, luxury hotels, hospitals, and discount stores. The importers' predictable response: We didn't know the toothpaste was contaminated.

On January 16, 2008, NBC aired episode 397 ("Bottomless") of "Law and Order," in which a murder investigation leads to the discovery of diethylene-glycol-tainted Chinese-made toothpaste sold by a Wal-Mart-like corporation. The discovery led to criminal charges in the show.