Insys founder sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for opioid bribery scheme

John Kapoor, the founder and former chairman of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison yesterday for his role in a bribery and kickback scheme that lawyers say helped fuel the opioid crisis. Kapoor and four other Insys executives were found guilty last May of a nationwide conspiracy that involved bribing doctors to prescribe the fentanyl spray Subsys to patients who didn’t need it. One of those executives, Alec Burlakoff, had also dressed up as a giant bottle of fentanyl in a rap video promoting the company’s drug. Kapoor will serve the most time of the former Insys team — the others executives, who were also in court this week, received sentences of anywhere between a year and a day to 33 months in prison.