Greedy Murderous Bastards –
March 16, 2018 – Insys paid the doctors, in some cases more than $100,000 annually, in return for prescribing millions of dollars’ worth of the company’s painkiller product, the indictment said. It charged that Insys funneled the illicit payments to the doctors through a sham “speakers bureau,” in which the doctors were paid for purportedly giving educational presentations about the drug that, in many cases, were mere social gatherings at high-end Manhattan restaurants. Such gatherings involved no educational presentation, and attendance sign-in sheets were often forged to include the names of health care practitioners who were not actually present, the authorities said … All five defendants pleaded not guilty in federal court on Friday afternoon and were released on $200,000 bond. None of the five responded to reporters’ requests for comment as they left the courtroom. Mr. Berman’s office also disclosed that two former Insys employees — Jonathan Roper and Fernando Serrano — had pleaded guilty and were cooperating with the federal investigation. Insys, which is based in Arizona, has come under intense scrutiny over its aggressive marketing of Subsys, a form of fentanyl approved in 2012.
