http://nj.gov/oag/newsreleases17/Insys-Complaint.pdf Read the bottom of Page 39 and Page 40 - this is the type of people we hire at Opko. 151. Insys, for example, rewarded one of its top New Jersey prescribers and speakers by creating a brand new sales territory specifically for the purpose of hiring that prescriber's brother. By email dated October 3, 2013, SSP Breitenbach emailed the resume of the New Jersey prescriber's brother to Burlakoff for consideration, to which Burlakoff replied: "I'll see what I can do." Eleven days later, on October 14, 2013, Xun (Sean) Yu emailed the prescriber's brother and Burlakoff revealing that he would be "working with [his] team to create a territory [for him] centered on Saratoga and Albany, with areas covering north & eastei -~Z NY, as well as possibly western Vermont and Massachusetts." That day, Burlakoff made sure that the New Jersey prescriber knew about this development by asking Breitenbach to forward Yu's email to him. The New Jersey prescriber replied, "Wonderful.
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Insys Therapeutics shares plummet 8% on Justice Dept. charges against founder and six former executives 7:11 a.m. Oct. 26, 2017 - By Emma Court Insys Therapeutics shares plummet 8% on Justice Dept. charges against founder and six former executivesInsys Therapeutics Inc. shares plummeted 8% in heavy midday trade Thursday after the company's founder and majority owner was arrested and charged, along with six former executives, with illegally acting to promote the company's opioid medications and fuel the opioid epidemic. Insys founder John Kapoor, Michael Babich, a former CEO and president of the company, and others were charged by the Department of Justice with allegedly bribing doctors and misleading and defrauding health insurers to promote the powerful opioid medication Subsys. "We must hold the industry and its leadership accountable - just as we would the cartels or a street-level drug dealer," said Acting United States Attorney William Weinreb . Insys shares have plummeted 43% to $6.85 over the last three months, compared with a 3.5% rise in the S&P 500 .
Founder charged in opioid scheme can remove GPS monitoring The founder of a pharmaceutical company charged with leading a nationwide conspiracy to bribe doctors to prescribe an opioid pain medication has won his bid to remove his electronic monitoring bracelet. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Boal in Boston said Monday that prosecutors have shown no evidence that John Kapoor of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics Inc. intends to flee. Prosecutors said at a hearing this month he should remain on GPS monitoring because he's a flight risk. Kapoor and other Insys executives are accused of offering kickbacks to doctors to write large numbers of prescriptions for a fentanyl-based pain medication that's meant for cancer patients. Defense attorney Brian Kelly said Kapoor is grateful for the ruling and looks forward to fighting the charges.
http://marketrealist.com/2018/01/insys-therapeutics-legal-tangles?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=feed&yptr=yahoo
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tweet-factbox/factbox-trump-on-twitter-wsj-interview-daca-tax-cuts-idUSKBN1F40B7
Authorities charged five New York doctors with participating in Insys' Subsys scheme. The case of Insys Therapeutics has played out for several years as suspicions first cropped up in 2014 that the company aggressively marketed its powerful opioid painkiller Subsys, often for off-label uses. Now, the feds have charged five New York-area physicians for taking bribes from the drugmaker in exchange for writing more scripts. In addition to the new complaint, authorities announced that two former Insys employees have taken guilty pleas and are cooperating with the government. New York doctors Gordon Freedman, Jeffrey Goldstein, Todd Schlifstein, Dialecti Voudouris and Alexandru Burducea face up to 20 years in prison for their alleged participation in the scheme, according to a Justice Department release. "Payments from pharmaceutical companies should not influence how doctors prescribe—especially when a potent and dangerous drug like fentanyl is involved," Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement. He added that the doctors violated a "solemn oath" and used "their patients as an instrument for profit." The doctors pleaded not guilty and posted bail, according to Reuters. Allegations against Insys and its former management have been piling up in recent years, and in October, authorities made their way to the company's billionaire founder John Kapoor, charging him with racketeering and other felonies. Kapoor responded by saying "I am confident that I have committed no crimes and believe I will be fully vindicated after trial." Before Kapoor, six other Insys executives and other lower-level employees have faced charges relating to the alleged bribes-for-scripts arrangement. Prosecutors say the company set up a "speakers bureau" to recruit doctors to write more Subsys scripts, holding "sham" speaking events that didn't offer any educational elements. Sign-in sheets were routinely forged, according to the government. And so, prosecutors allege, the company used the events to funnel money to doctors in exchange for more Subsys scripts, even though many of the prescriptions were outside of the drug's FDA label: to treat breakthrough pain from cancer. One patient's parents sued over "reckless" marketing that they said caused their daughter's death. In one trip to New York, Insys executives allegedly took two of the newly charged doctors and others to a Manhattan strip club and spent $4,100. Schlifstein's scripts increased dramatically after the trip, according to the complaint. In 2014, a New York Times investigation into higher-than-expected Subsys sales raised suspicions about the situation. Meanwhile, Insys has overhauled its management and is working to improve its image. The company has said it could have to spend $150 million on a potential settlement.
Trial for Former Insys Therapeutics Founder John Kapoor and Other Executives Set to Begin Today Published: Jan 28, 2019 By Alex Keown John Kapoor, the founder of Insys Therapeutics and former chief executive officer, along with four other former company executives, will head to court today over allegations they orchestrated kickback schemes to encourage doctors to prescribe the company’s fentanyl-based sublingual spray, Subsys. Subsys is a powerful pain killer used to treat cancer pain. The drug, which is made from fentanyl, is incredibly powerful, about 100 times more powerful than morphine. Kapoor, who was charged by the government in 2017, is the highest-level executive to be charged in the opioid epidemic lawsuits, Reuters noted. The criminal case brought against the executives marks a rare instance of the government using the criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to go after corporate executives, the Boston Globereported. Opening arguments in the trial are expected to begin today in Boston. Along with Kapoor, the government charged former CEO and company president Michael Babich, Alec Burlakoff, the former vice president of Sales; Richard Simon, the former national director of sales; former regional sales directors Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan; and former vice president of managed markets, Michael Gurry. When the indictments were handed down, the governments said all “conspired to bribe practitioners in various states, many of whom operated pain clinics, in order to get them to prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication.” The government first brought charges against Babich and the five other former Insys executives in December 2016. The charges against Kapoor were not issued until two years ago. The trial is expected to last up to three months, the Boston Globe reported. The indictment against Kapoor and the other former Insys executives allege the men “conspired to mislead and defraud health insurance providers” who did not want to approve payment for Subsys when it was prescribed for patients who did not have a cancer diagnosis. The U.S. Department of Justice said the company executives were able to get around those concerns by setting up the “reimbursement unit,” which was dedicated to obtaining prior authorization directly from insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. “In exchange for bribes and kickbacks, the practitioners wrote large numbers of prescriptions for the patients, most of whom were not diagnosed with cancer,” the government said in its 2017 announcement. The charges against Kapoor and the other executives were made on the same day President Donald Trump declared a nationwide public health emergency from the opioid crisis. The allegations made against Insys reveal a company that was hell-bent on increasing revenues from Subsys prescriptions, despite any concerns over abuse. The 2017 indictment against Kapoor revealed that former sales associates danced with a giant bottle of Subsys in a rap music video during a 2015 sales conference. The government’s charges against Kapoor and the other executives are part of a long list of charges against the company. In 2015, the company faced allegations it falsified data in order to sell more of its painkiller. Also in 2015, the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation (SIRF) issued a report alleging an Insys unit has been misleading insurers to change documents to state that pain was cancer-related in order to prescribe Subsys. After the charges were made against the company, Insys initiated a strategic makeover as it reorganized. That included the termination of 90 percent of the sales force that had been assigned to Subsys, as well as the bulk of its management team. In November, the company began to assess strategic alternatives for its opioid-related assets, including Subsys, as it continues to shift its focus to a new therapeutic – cannabinoids. Saeed Motahari, president and chief executive officer of Insys, said the company is shifting its focus away from the development of opioids and focusing on becoming a leader in pharmaceutical cannabinoids and novel drug delivery systems.
Lap Dances From an Insys Sales Executive Were Part of Insys' Practices to Boost Sales of Subsys, Trial Shows Published: Jan 30, 2019 By Alex Keown As the trial against John Kapoor and other former executives at Insys Therapeutics continues, more sordid details of an aggressive campaign to boost sales of the company’s fentanyl-based sublingual spray for cancer pain are being brought to light. In a Boston courtroom on Tuesday, Holly Brown, a former Insys sales representative based in Chicago, described how one company employee, a former stripper, gave a private lap dance to a doctor as the reps urged him to prescribe the company’s pain treatment Subsys more often. Brown said her boss, Sunrise Lee, was hired to be a “closer” for Subsys sales. The sales team took the doctor out for a night on the town, which ended up at a high-end strip club in Chicago. There, Lee sat on the doctor’s lap and allowed his hands to wander over her body as she swayed to the music, Brown testified, according to Bloomberg’s coverage of the first full day of the trial. Prosecutors, Bloomberg said, wanted to begin the trial with some of the more salacious examples of the ends to which the Insys sales teams went to boost sales of Subsys. The Boston trial against Kapoor isn’t the first time that allegations made against sales teams involved wild nights on the town. In 2016, Insys executives provided one Florida doctor “the night of his life” in order to boost sales of the potent pain reliever. That doctor immediately boosted his prescriptions for Subsys and also received $260,050 in payments over three years for participating in the “Insys speaking program,” which has been described as a kickback scheme. Subsys sales executives across the country have been charged with excessive practices to boost sales as the government clamps down on the kickback allegations. Kapoor and the other executives from Insys, along with members of its sales team, have been charged with orchestrating kickback schemes to encourage doctors to boost prescriptions of Subsys, Along with Kapoor, the government charged former CEO and company president Michael Babich, Alec Burlakoff, the former vice president of Sales; Richard Simon, the former national director of sales; former regional sales directors Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan; and former vice president of managed markets, Michael Gurry.The trial, which began Monday, is expected to last for three months. Bloomberg noted that Burlakoff is expected to testify that he hired the former stripper Lee, despite her having no experience in pharmaceutical sales. In her testimony Tuesday, Brown noted that Lee always dressed in a suggestive manner in order to sway doctors. Citing court documents, Bloomberg said Burlakoff was quoted by whistle-blowers as saying “doctors really enjoyed spending time with her and found Sunrise to be a great listener.” Burlakoff and Babich have pled guilty to charges tied to the racketeering and conspiracy case and have agreed to cooperate with the government, Bloomberg said. They are expected to be star witnesses for the government during the trial. The government first brought charges against the former Insys executives in December 2016. The government’s charges against Kapoor and the other executives are part of a long list of charges against the company. In 2015, the company faced allegations it falsified data in order to sell more of its painkiller. Also in 2015, the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation (SIRF) issued a report alleging an Insys unit has been misleading insurers to change documents to state that pain was cancer-related in order to prescribe Subsys.
Former Insys sales executive to shell out $9.5M in opioid spray kickback scheme by Kyle Blankenship | Apr 3, 2019 11:43am Alec Burkaloff agreed to turn state to assist Arizona prosecutors in their case against former CEO Michael Babich and founder John Kapoor in a "pay-for-scripts" scheme to boost sales of a powerful opioid spray. (Insys Therapeutics) release. "This ‘profits-over-patients’ attitude has had a devastating impact on individuals and families throughout this state.” As part of his settlement, Burkaloff agreed to cooperate with the state in a continuing investigation against former Insys CEO Michael Babich and founder John Kapoor, who directed the company’s sales team to award speaker fees in return for Subsys scripts, Arizona prosecutors said. The Arizona case runs parallel to a federal whistleblower suit that ensnared Burkaloff, Babich and Kapoor and led to the indictment of five New York doctors for accepting kickbacks. At Kapoor’s federal trial currently underway in Boston, prosecutors presented an internal video showing Burkaloff and another sales rep rapping about courting physicians and capitalizing on opioid titration, or boosted dosages for patients who form a tolerance to the drug. “To be great, it takes a decision to be better than the competition,” the reps rapped. “Get a speaker you can meet with over supper. We can come to your office. We can go and bring some lunch in. While your staff is getting fed we can start discussing Subsys.” The video was a particularly poignant piece of evidence in a slew of accusations against the company, including holding sham promotional events to pay doctors back for subscriptions, treating doctors with trips to strip clubs and lavish dinners and offering jobs to physicians’ relatives. Federal prosecutors have tied those aggressive sales tactics to pressure from the top. Babich testified in February that Kapoor was so hell-bent on driving sales that he instituted a bonus program for reps to convince doctors to prescribe high amounts of Subsys spray. Kapoor has pleaded not guilty on federal charges. Insys’ speaker program delivered $7.50 in revenue per $1 invested—a total of $4.1 million—by the end of 2012, Bloomberg reported, citing evidence presented in court. Babich, who pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and mail fraud charges in January, is awaiting sentencing as Kapoor’s trial continues. Babich resigned from the Insys CEO post in 2015. Two sales reps pleaded guilty to federal kickback charges last year. With Kapoor, Babich and Burkaloff off the payroll, Insys agreed to a $150 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in August, which will be paid out over five years. The Insys lawsuits present a rare case when C-level executives of pharma companies have faced charges for their alleged roles in mismarketing drugs. However, amid the nation’s booming opioid addiction crisis, a wave of state and federal lawsuits questioning Purdue’s OxyContin marketing could threaten top-level executives and the company’s billionaire backers, the Sackler family.
