Opioid maker Insys to pay $225M to settle fraud charges

In early 2013, a physician's assistant practicing at a pain clinic in a small New Hampshire city joined a speaker program run by Insys Therapeutics, the maker of the fentanyl spray Subsys. The assistant then went on to write 672 Subsys prescriptions, despite having never prescribed the drug in the 16 months prior.

The speaker's program was a sham, according to charges brought by the U.S. government against Insys, used by the drugmaker as a "vehicle to pay bribes and kickbacks" to practitioners for prescribing more of the potent opioid painkiller.