27 OCT

DOJ: Billionaire pharma owner fueled the opioid epidemic with bribery scheme

The billionaire founder and majority owner of Insys Therapeutics was arrested Thursday on racketeering and fraud charges for an alleged nationwide scheme to push an extremely potent opioid drug containing fentanyl onto patients.

According to the Department of Justice, John Kapoor, 74, of Phoenix, Arizona, used bribes, kickbacks, and other fraudulent practices to get doctors to overprescribe the fentanyl drug, called Subsys. Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. As such, Subsys is only intended to treat severe pain in cancer patients. But according to the DOJ, many patients receiving Subsys didn’t have cancer.

The DOJ alleges that Kapoor, along with six former executives at Insys, paid doctors and pain clinics in various states to write “large numbers of prescriptions.” The department also alleges that Insys used fraudulent means to get health insurance providers to cover the harmful prescriptions.

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Ars Technica

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