In November 2019, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs overturned convictions for Kapoor and three other executives for alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act and for alleged honest services fraud arising from the executives’ part in marketing and selling Subsys.
Subsys is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that was intended to manage cancer pain.
The convictions for mail fraud and wire fraud types of predicate racketeering stood for the five executives.
He hired top executives to help him bribe practitioners to prescribe Subsys to patients, often when medically unnecessary, the statement said.
“Out of pure greed, Insys executives, from John Kapoor on down, bribed doctors to prescribe this powerful and highly addictive narcotic to people who did not need it,” US Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement. “Despite increasing public fears of a drug epidemic fueled by pain pill prescriptions, these defendants, led by Kapoor, ploughed ahead, setting weekly quotas for doctors on their payroll, urging them to prescribe Subsys in higher and higher doses, all so they could make millions of dollars at patients’ expense.
The other defendants in the case were sentenced this week by Burroughs. Michael Gurry, the former vice president of Insys Therapeutics was sentenced to almost three years for pushing doctors to prescribe unnecessary opioids on patients.
Besides Kapoor and Gurry, the other defendants were Richard Simon, 48, the former national director of sales; Sunrise Lee, a former regional sales director; and Joseph Rowan, a former regional sales director.
Two other high-level Insys executives — former President and CEO Michael Babich and Alec Burlakoff, once the vice president of sales — pleaded guilty ahead of trial and testified against their former colleagues.
CNN’s Sheena Jones contributed to this report.
Source : CNN