BOSTON
The founder of an Arizona pharmaceutical company was ordered to spend 5 1/2 years in prison Thursday for orchestrating a bribery and kickback scheme prosecutors said helped fuel the opioid crisis.

John Kapoor, 76, the former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was sentenced in Boston's federal court after a jury found him guilty of racketeering conspiracy last May. The 10-week trial revealed sensational details about the company's marketing tactics, including testimony that a sales executive once gave a lap dance to a doctor the company was wooing. Kapoor was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine.

Kapoor and others were accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to doctors across the United States to prescribe the company’s highly addictive oral fentanyl spray, known as Subsys. The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors.

Prosecutors also said the company misled insurers to get payment approved for the drug, which is meant to treat cancer patients in severe pain and can cost as much as $19,000 a month.

n recent court documents, prosecutors said Kapoor personally approved bribes for doctors who abusively prescribed opioids and also approved financial incentives for sales reps to make sure doctors prescribed the highest doses of the drug.

“Put simply, Kapoor ran Insys without a moral compass, without any concern that his strategies would harm people,” they wrote.

Kapoor's lawyers argue the bribery scheme was concocted by other executives at the company. In a court filing, they said their client has been portrayed as a “caricature” of a mob boss when he is really an “immigrant success story.” They say the India-born exec developed Subsys after seeing his wife suffer and die from breast cancer.

During the trial, jurors heard from former employees who said Insys made a habit of hiring attractive women as representatives to boost sales of the drug. One former employee testified that a regional sales manager once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor whom Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions.

Jurors were also shown a rap video in which Insys employees danced and rapped around a person dressed as a giant bottle of the fentanyl spray. Prosecutors said the video was shown at a national sales meeting in 2015 and was intended to motivate reps to push Subsys to doctors.

Kapoor, who spoke after hearing a number of patients and relatives talk about the suffering they went through as a result of the drug Subsys, said he was sorry and he created the drug to help his wife who had breast cancer.

“I saw my wife suffer in pain, and I felt guilty of not being able to help her. It nearly destroyed me. You can have all the success in the world and still be powerless," he said. "I thought that at least I could make a product that would help others like her so they would not have to suffer like she did.”

The case was considered the first that sought to hold an opioid maker criminally liable for the drug crisis, which has claimed nearly 400,000 lives over the last two decades. At least two others have since faced criminal charges, but prominent companies including Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, have only faced suits that carry no threat of prison time.

After the trial, Insys reached a $225 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to end its criminal and civil probes. The company has since filed for bankruptcy protection, and it’s not clear whether the company will fully pay what’s owed.

The company has been approved to sell off Subsys and its other drugs for about $30 million, but it maintains its assets, all told, are worth only $175 million.

Along with Kapoor, four others from Insys also were convicted last year, while two pleaded guilty and testified against their former colleagues. Alec Burlakoff, a former vice president of sales who pleaded guilty in 2018, also is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in Boston.

Others in the case have been dealt sentences ranging from a year and a day to nearly three years in prison.

LINK: https://www.thestate.com/news/article239580453.html

Public execution would have been more appropriate!

Wow.

Poor inner city kids get more for a bag of grass.

I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

Exactly. Doctors are mostly not dummies. I understand going after the guy with the deep pockets, and what this guy did was WAAAAY out of control...but ultimately it's the doctor who decides what to write for the patient.

I'm a medical rep and I can get shit canned for giving a doctor, or even the front desk lady a pen with the company name on it.

Would I give doctors lap dances for more business?....Maybe.

quote:

Would I give doctors lap dances for more business?....Maybe.

^^^^^^^^^^^
Come on Post your slick moves.

A sales executive gave a lap dance to the doctor. Yeah, "sales executive".

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
A sales executive gave a lap dance to the doctor. Yeah, "sales executive".

You don’t get lap dances from sales execs? Wrong field of medicine Q...

I've known pharma reps I would have loved to get a lap dance from (and ,yes, they were legit.)

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
I've known pharma reps I would have loved to get a lap dance from (and ,yes, they were legit.)

There’s a lot of bombshell female reps I work with, I mean total smoke shows.

Not only are they beautiful, but most of them are intelligent and have great personalities.

That was the case here. Unfortunately, but predictably, she was married.

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
I've known pharma reps I would have loved to get a lap dance from (and ,yes, they were legit.)

There’s a lot of bombshell female reps I work with, I mean total smoke shows.

Not only are they beautiful, but most of them are intelligent and have great personalities.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

quote:

Would I give doctors lap dances for more business?....Maybe.

^^^^^^^^^^^
Come on Post your slick moves.

(Awkwardly dancing) “Awww yeah doctor, you’re gonna prescribe my medication. You’re gonna prescribe my medication so hard because you’re a naughty doctor and you don’t care about the Sun Shine Act.”

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

Exactly. Doctors are mostly not dummies. I understand going after the guy with the deep pockets, and what this guy did was WAAAAY out of control...but ultimately it's the doctor who decides what to write for the patient.

I'm a medical rep and I can get shit canned for giving a doctor, or even the front desk lady a pen with the company name on it.

Would I give doctors lap dances for more business?....Maybe.

Now, not back in the day. My sister and ex-BIL both have been pharmaceutical reps for the past 20 and 25+ years each. Back in the day they used to take entire offices out to $100 a plate dinners, all kinds of gifts for the entire office, high end lunches at the office, expensive shows, and on and on and on...….my sister had an entire mini storage full of pens, note pads, etc. that they gave away like candy...….up until probably 10 years ago, when the FED put an end to that.

Another great story that shows health care in our country is no longer about caring for the sick. It is more about greed and money.

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

While I don't have much sympathy for the accused, holding a manufacturer or even an individual responsible for the Opiod epidemic is stupid (but very progressive, I'm sure).
It is akin to holding a gun manufacturer responsible for gang violence in Chicago.

What happened to the doctors who accepted the bribes and actually wrote the prescriptions?

quote:

Kapoor and others were accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to doctors across the United States to prescribe the company’s highly addictive oral fentanyl spray, known as Subsys

Fentanyl, like most prescriptions can be addictive but for those who actually need them, they are a god send. Fentanyl is one of the few pain meds that my wife can use, that actually works for her when she needs it.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

Exactly. Doctors are mostly not dummies. I understand going after the guy with the deep pockets, and what this guy did was WAAAAY out of control...but ultimately it's the doctor who decides what to write for the patient.

I'm a medical rep and I can get shit canned for giving a doctor, or even the front desk lady a pen with the company name on it.

Would I give doctors lap dances for more business?....Maybe.

Now, not back in the day. My sister and ex-BIL both have been pharmaceutical reps for the past 20 and 25+ years each. Back in the day they used to take entire offices out to $100 a plate dinners, all kinds of gifts for the entire office, high end lunches at the office, expensive shows, and on and on and on...….my sister had an entire mini storage full of pens, note pads, etc. that they gave away like candy...….up until probably 10 years ago, when the FED put an end to that.

Ha! Truth. When I bring my meager offering of Chik Fil A or Panera sandwiches to doctors offices for inservice educational lunches, the older docs love to reminisce about the old days and how the reps used to give them watches, box seats, open strip club tabs, and exotic family vacations.

Chik Fil A is better than lap dances dammit!!

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
I've known pharma reps I would have loved to get a lap dance from (and ,yes, they were legit.)

There’s a lot of bombshell female reps I work with, I mean total smoke shows.

Not only are they beautiful, but most of them are intelligent and have great personalities.

Ex-drug rep turned cop. E-mail me when you get a chance, would like to chat about what happened to our industry and respective companies after Obamacare passed. Thanks.

If the manufacturer / distributor was at arms length from the doctor and patient, and didn't get involved with the prescribing process, I would tend to agree with you. If you look at what this company was doing, that was very much NOT the situation in this case.

quote:

Originally posted by xl_target:

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
I hope all the Drs he bribed are getting time too

While I don't have much sympathy for the accused, holding a manufacturer or even an individual responsible for the Opiod epidemic is stupid (but very progressive, I'm sure).
It is akin to holding a gun manufacturer responsible for gang violence in Chicago.

What happened to the doctors who accepted the bribes and actually wrote the prescriptions?

quote:

Kapoor and others were accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to doctors across the United States to prescribe the company’s highly addictive oral fentanyl spray, known as Subsys

Fentanyl, like most prescriptions can be addictive but for those who actually need them, they are a god send. Fentanyl is one of the few pain meds that my wife can use, that actually works for her when she needs it.

quote:

Originally posted by xl_target:
Fentanyl, like most prescriptions can be addictive but for those who actually need them, they are a god send. Fentanyl is one of the few pain meds that my wife can use, that actually works for her when she needs it.

Fentanyl in it's IV form has been a part of most anesthetics since the mid 1960's.... Essentially....if you've had anesthesia, you've had Fentanyl.