Opioid company executives set to go on trial in Boston Monday - The Boston Globe

Opioid company executives set to go on trial in Boston Monday - The Boston Globe

Federal trial over fentanyl bribes gets underway

Former drug industry executives are headed to federal trial in Boston today to face charges that they paid bribes and kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing the powerful painkiller fentanyl. Here’s what you need to know:

• The background: Federal prosecutors allege that Insys Therapeutics co-founder John Kapoor and four of the company’s former executives took part in a nationwide racketeering scheme to allegedly push doctors to prescribe Subsys — a fentanyl spray approved for cancer-related pain — to patients who didn’t have cancer.
• The allegations: Prosecutors say Insys passed cash to doctors through a phony “speakers program" and misrepresented medical histories to trick insurers into paying for Subsys for patients without cancer, the Boston Globe’s Jonathan Saltzman and Maria Cramer report.
• The defense: Lawyers for the former execs say the government hasn't met the requirements to file the kind of racketeering charges made in the case. In a court filing, the lawyers also said the government is trying to “tar and feather [the defendants] based on drug-dealing allegations at the height of the opioid crisis.”