The first US prosecution of a pharmaceutical company chief executive tied to opioid overdoses began yesterday as Insys Therapeutics Inc CEO John Kapoor went on trial. The fallout could jolt an industry facing steep penalties for its own role in the crisis.
Kapoor, 75, is accused of masterminding illegal marketing tactics that contributed to an epidemic of addiction and death. A onetime billionaire who rose from modest means in India, he is on trial for using speakers’ fees, dinners and cash to lure doctors into prescribing a highly addictive opioid painkiller meant solely for cancer patients.
The case is being heard in Boston, Massachusetts, but the verdict could echo in the boardrooms of the US’ pharmaceutical companies. More than 1,500 US local governments have sued opioid makers and distributors to recoup the billions of US dollars spent fighting the crisis. The clash could serve as a test drive for how jurors weigh claims of industry wrongdoing.
“It’s a real advantage for the local governments’ lawyers to get jury feedback on the Insys marketing evidence,” said Richard Ausness, an expert on mass tort law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. “It will help them build their conspiracy cases against all the companies involved in the opioid litigation.”
A conviction could turn Kapoor into the face of the opioid crisis.
The first person in his family to attend college, he became a healthcare entrepreneur after earning a doctorate in medicinal chemistry at the University of Buffalo in 1972. He worked as a drug plant manager and later became chief executive of a hospital products company.
After forming a venture capital firm that invested in healthcare companies, he merged closely-held Insys with NeoPharm in 2010 to get access to technology to develop pain drugs for cancer patients.
He remains Insys’ majority shareholder, controlling about 60 percent of its shares, company filings showed.
The shares have fallen by about one-third since Kapoor’s October 2017 indictment.
A conviction on federal fraud, racketeering and kickback charges could send Kapoor and four other former Insys managers to prison for as long as 25 years.
They are accused of bribing doctors to prescribe Subsys, an opioid painkiller approved in 2012 for late-stage cancer patients.
Prosecutors have said that Kapoor oversaw a scheme in which doctors got sham speaker’s fees in return for issuing more prescriptions, and that subordinates lied to insurers about the type of patients receiving the fentanyl-based drug.
Doctors were allegedly seduced with jobs for relatives, lavish meals and, in one case, a US$1,000 private champagne-room session at a strip club.
As the bribes generated Subsys sales, Kapoor pumped more money into speakers’ fees, with spending jumping to US$10.5 million in 2014 from US$550,000 two years earlier, prosecutors said.
Also on trial is Sunrise Lee, a former stripper who, as an Insys sales manager, enticed physicians into writing more prescriptions, prosecutors said. “
“Doctors really enjoyed spending time with her and found Sunrise to be a great listener,” Insys manager Alec Burlakoff told colleagues, according to court filings.
The other defendants are former Insys vice president Michael Gurry, former national sales director Richard Simon and former regional sales director Joseph Rowan.
The accused have denied wrongdoing.
Former Insys chief executive Michael Babich pleaded guilty this month and agreed to cooperate in a bid for leniency.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS