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The founder of Insys Therapeutics John Kapoor has become the first pharmaceutical boss to be convicted in a case linked to the US opioid crisis.

A Boston jury found Kapoor and four colleagues conspired to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive painkillers, often to patients who didn't need them.

The former billionaire was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy for his role in a scheme which also misled insurers.

Tens of thousands of deaths have been caused by opioid overdoses in the US.

Indian-born Kapoor founded drugmaker Insys Therapeutics in 1990 and built it into a multi-billion dollar company.

The jury found Kapoor had also misled medical insurance companies about patients' need for the painkillers in order to boost sales of the firm's fentanyl spray, Subsys.

The court heard that Kapoor - who was arrested in 2017 on the same day President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a "national emergency" - ran a scheme that paid bribes to doctors to speak at fake marketing events to promote Subsys.

During the 10-week trial, jurors were also shown a rap video made by Insys for its employees on ways to boost sales of Subsys.

Kapoor and his co-defendants - Michael Gurry, Richard Simon, Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan - face up to 20 years in prison.

A statement from Kapoor's lawyer said he was "disappointed" with the verdict. The men had denied the charges and have indicated that they plan to appeal.

Forbes listed Kapoor's net worth as $1.8bn (£1.4bn) in 2018, before dropping off the publication's billionaire rankings this year.

His conviction marks a victory for US government efforts to target companies seen to have accelerated the opioid crisis.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that opioids - a class of drug which includes everything from heroin to legal painkillers - were involved in almost 48,000 deaths in 2017.

The epidemic started with legally prescribed painkillers, including Percocet and OxyContin. It intensified as these were diverted to the black market.

There has also been a sharp rise in the use of illegal opioids including heroin, while many street drugs are laced with powerful opioids such as Fentanyl, increasing the risk of an overdose.</s>A wealthy drug company founder was convicted on Thursday of directing a scheme to bribe doctors across the country to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl spray.

John Kapoor, the founder and former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy after 15 days of deliberations in a trial that put a spotlight on the federal government's efforts to go after those it views as responsible for fueling the deadly opioid crisis.

Four other former employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company were also convicted.

The company's former national director of sales, Richard M. Simon, regional sales directors, Sunrise Lee and Joseph A. Rowan, and former Vice President of Managed Markets, Michael J. Gurry, were all found guilty in the scheme.

Kapoor and the others were accused of conspiring to pay doctors bribes and kickbacks in order to boost sales for Subsys, which is meant for cancer patients with severe pain.

The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking events that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors, prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors said Insys staffers also misled insurers about patients' medical conditions and posed as doctors' office employees in order to get payment approved for the costly drug.

Lawyers for Kapoor and the others argued in court documents that they couldn't be convicted because prosecutors failed to prove that they intended for doctors to prescribe the drug to patients who had no medical need for it.

Kapoor's attorney sought to shift the blame onto the company's former vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff, who pleaded guilty to the bribe scheme in November.

Attorney Beth Wilkinson said Burlakoff was cutting side deals with doctors on his own and lied when he testified against Kapoor because he was trying to save himself.

The charge calls for up to 20 years in prison, but as first-time offenders, Kapoor and the others will likely get only a fraction of that.

Kapoor's arrest in 2017 came the same day President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. And prosecutors have touted the case as illustrative of their work to fight the drug epidemic.

The trial, which has been going on since January, has been filled with eyebrow-raising moments.

A former sales representative told jurors that regional sales manager Sunrise Lee once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor who Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions.

Lee's lawyer suggested the doctor was taking advantage of her.

Jurors also watched a video meant to motivate sales reps to push doctors to prescribe higher doses of the drug in which employees rapped and danced around a person dressed as a bottle of Subsys.

The former CEO of the company, Michael Babich, has also pleaded guilty and testified against his former colleagues during the trial.

Babich told jurors in February that Insys recruited sales representatives who were 'easy on the eyes' because they knew physicians didn't want an 'unattractive person to walk in their door'.</s>A jury in Boston has found one-time billionaire and drug company executive John Kapoor and his four co-defendants guilty of a racketeering conspiracy. The verdict came Wednesday after 15 days of deliberation.

The federal government accused Kapoor, the founder of Insys Therapeutics, and his co-defendants of running a nationwide bribery scheme. Between 2012 and 2015, Insys allegedly paid doctors to prescribe their potent opioid medication and then lied to insurance companies to ensure the expensive fentanyl-based painkiller was covered.

Kapoor is among the highest-ranking pharmaceutical executives to face trial amid a national opioid epidemic. By pursuing this case, the federal government was seen as sending a message that it is holding drug companies accountable for their role in the epidemic.

The guilty verdict could strengthen the cases against other pharmaceutical executives implicated in the opioid crisis.

"Today's convictions mark the first successful prosecution of top pharmaceutical executives for crimes related to the illicit marketing and prescribing of opioids," U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said in a statement. "Just as we would street-level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally distributing these drugs, especially while conspiring to commit racketeering along the way."

"This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public's interest in staunching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets," he continued.

Brad Bailey, a criminal defense attorney in Boston and former federal prosecutor, who has been following this case, said the 10-week trial represented a rare instance in which the federal government used criminal charges to go after corporate executives.

"That's always unusual. That's always an attention grabber," said Bailey. "The big issue is the use of racketeering charges, which had been originally designed to go after the mafia." By charging Kapoor and his co-defendants with racketeering, Bailey said the federal government was essentially saying that the practices at Insys Therapeutics resembled organized crime.

While the criminal charges set this case apart, the schemes detailed in this trial mirror the aggressive tactics that other pharmaceutical companies have allegedly used to push the sale of opioids.

Bribes and lies, or an unknowing executive?

Calling 39 witnesses, federal prosecutors argued that Kapoor was motivated by money and willing to put patients' lives at stake to improve his bottom line. They depicted Insys Therapeutics as a struggling company under intense pressure from Kapoor to succeed.

Prosecutors outlined a two-step approach that Insys followed to boost sales of their opioid painkiller, Subsys: first, bribe doctors and, then, lie to insurance companies.

Insys allegedly targeted doctors with a track record of liberally prescribing opioids, inviting them to participate in a "speakers program." According to the government, doctors were paid handsomely even if nobody showed up for the lecture, but only if they wrote a lot of prescriptions for Subsys. Often, prosecutors say, this meant patients who didn't need the medication were prescribed it anyway.

Insys then allegedly set up a call center where drug company employees pretended to be from doctor's offices. Jurors heard phone calls in which Insys employees made-up diagnoses to ensure insurance companies covered Subsys, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month.

The defense attorneys for Kapoor and his five co-defendants only called a handful of witnesses. One was a patient who vouched for Subsys, saying it significantly reduce his pain after a car accident. The defense also emphasized Kapoor's personal story, arguing that he was motivated to create Subsys only after seeing his late wife struggle with severe pain.

However, the crux of the defense's argument was that Kapoor was unaware of the illegal schemes. They blamed several former employees, in particular Alec Burlakoff, the former vice president of sales at Insys. Burlakoff and several other former Insys executives pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution in the hopes of getting a more lenient sentence. The defense emphasized Burlakoff's history of lying and his hatred for Kapoor, which was captured on tape by federal investigators.

In closing arguments, defense attorneys highlighted contradictions in the testimony of several star government witnesses.

While Kapoor has been on trial in Boston's federal courthouse, the company he founded has been facing financial troubles and management turmoil. Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics said in a statement that "there is substantial risk surrounding our ability to continue ... primarily due to mounting legal costs and uncertain legal settlement exposures."

Last year, the pharmaceutical company agreed to pay at least $150 million to end a Department of Justice investigation into the bribery and kickback scheme. The insurance company Aetna, as well as patients, shareholders and state attorneys general have also sued Insys.

On April 15, Insys replaced their CEO, Saeed Motahari, with the company's chief financial officer, Andrew Long. Since their high point in 2015, Insys shares have tumbled. Bloomberg News reported shares had fallen 90 percent.

Brad Bailey, the former federal prosecutor, says other pharmaceutical companies may see Insys's woes as a cautionary tale. However, some worry the trial didn't strike at the root of the opioid crisis.

Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University, says "a lot of what pharmaceutical companies did in the context of the opioid crisis that we are dealing with now was not, in fact, illegal. It was maybe unethical, but it was not illegal."

While bribing doctors to write prescriptions and fabricating diagnoses is illegal, paying a physician to promote a product to their peers is a common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Off-label prescribing is also legal and common, although sales representatives are not technically supposed to advocate for off-label uses of a medication.

Beletsky says by focusing on individuals and their illegal schemes, this trial overlooked broader issues, such as drug companies legally spending billions of dollars to maximize the use of their medications.

For Beletsky, the answer lies in regulation. "We need to think much more deeply about how we regulate the pharmaceutical industry and how we prevent these kinds of practices from occurring in the first place," says Beletsky.

However, experts say, there are currently not major legislative efforts to regulate the pharmaceutical industry. For now, the pushback against marketing strategies that allegedly fueled the opioid crisis remains in the courts.</s>Insys's John Kapoor Is the First CEO to Be Convicted of Opioid Racketeering

(Bloomberg) -- Insys Therapeutics Inc. founder John Kapoor was convicted of a racketeering conspiracy that drove sales of a highly addictive opioid while contributing to a nationwide epidemic.

Kapoor is the first chief executive officer of an opioid maker to be convicted at a trial, with a verdict that is certain to echo through his industry. Signaling that the public is willing to hold executives accountable for the U.S. crisis, it comes as thousands of state and local governments press civil lawsuits against drugmakers to recover billions of dollars spent combating the epidemic.

“A conviction will embolden prosecutors in other cases,” Paul Kalb, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP who specializes in health-care fraud, said in an interview before the verdict. “Kapoor will be plainly portrayed as one of the instigators of the the opioid crisis. But the truth is this is a very complex problem that was not caused by any single person or company.”

Federal jurors in Boston found that Kapoor conspired with four other Insys executives to bribe doctors to pump up sales of Subsys and duped insurers into covering shady prescriptions. Former vice president Michael Gurry, ex-national sales director Richard Simon, former regional sales director Joseph Rowan and one-time stripper turned Insys sales manager Sunrise Lee were also convicted.

The jury returned the verdict against Kapoor on the 15th day of deliberations following a 10-week trial. It marks a steep downfall for Kapoor, who worked his way from modest means in India to start what would turn into a multibillion-dollar drugmaker. Still Insys’s controlling shareholder, he will be forced to sell his shares and may face huge financial penalties.

Kapoor looked down as the verdict was read, his hands folded in front of him. Afterward, the judge denied a U.S. request that Kapoor be placed under house arrest.

Prosecutors took jurors deep into the inner workings of Insys while putting on display some of its more sensational practices. Some of the government’s 39 witnesses offered racy testimony about how the company lured doctors into writing more Subsys prescriptions with sexy sales reps, lap dances and lavish dinners at restaurants that Kapoor owned. Prosecutors said Kapoor and his subordinates used a speaker’s program to bribe doctors who pushed their drug.

In closing statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Yeager pointed to emails from former Insys Chief Executive Officer Michael Babich, who pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors in a bid for leniency, in which he told underlings the company “owned” doctors who were heavy Subsys prescribers.

“Pill mills, for us, meant dollars,” another government witness, Alec Burlakoff, the former head of sales, testified.

Defense lawyers took aim at the prosecution’s case through aggressive questioning of government witnesses, seeking to show that the case was weak. The defense case took just two days and featured a handful of their own witnesses, including a patient who vouched for the benefits of Subsys.

Neither Kapoor nor the other defendants testified.

Kapoor’s attorney, Beth Wilkinson, told jurors that that her client was already so rich he didn’t need more money. He came up with the idea of powerful painkiller after watching his wife in agony while dying of cancer, she said.

“He’s kept his money in this business because he believes” Subsys was a force for good, Wilkinson argued. “He had every reason to believe that this was good for patients.”

Prosecutors -- including Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak, who made his name targeting organized-crime figures in Boston -- methodically built their case over the years, bringing their first charges in 2015 against lower-level executives before charging Kapoor in 2017. The defense painted the government’s witnesses as the real villains, saying it was Burlakoff who came up with the idea of shoveling money to doctors while keeping that information away from Kapoor.

In 2014, according to Symphony Health Solutions, Subsys had a 41.6 percent share of the rapid onset opioid market for drugs that act quickly to treat moderate to severe pain. Insys reached a valuation of $3.2 billion in July 2015, almost 10 times higher than its current one.

The jury’s verdict is likely to register in drugmakers’ board rooms. Companies including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson and Endo International Plc are preparing to face trials over allegations by states and local governments that their sales campaigns fueled a crisis which is costing billions of dollars annually.

Meanwhile, efforts to use the legal system to hold executives accountable for an epidemic that claims more than 100 Americans’ lives daily are gaining speed. The Sackler family, Purdue’s billionaire owners, is facing a new wave of lawsuits over its role in the marketing of OxyContin. They, like the companies, deny wrongdoing.

Read More: Beards Grow Long During Wait for Jury Verdict in Opioid Trial

“This is a really, really egregious example of a pharmaceutical company with no moral compass,” said Piper Jaffray analyst David Amsellem in an interview before the verdict. “There’s a lot of scrutiny and investigation into companies that manufacture opioids, but I look at Insys as an extreme example.”

Kapoor faced a single charge of a racketeering conspiracy. The first person in his family to attend college, he earned a doctorate in medicinal chemistry at the University of Buffalo in 1972, according to a work-history the school posted.

He was a plant manager at Invenex Laboratories in New York and later became chief executive officer of LyphoMed, a hospital-products company. He sold LyphoMed to Fujisawa Pharmaceuticals and formed a venture capital firm that invested in health-care companies.

In 2010, he merged privately held Insys with NeoPharm Inc. to get access to technology to develop pain drugs for cancer patients. Even though he has stepped down as Insys’s chairman and CEO, he still holds more than 60 percent of its stock.

Other opioid cases are on the horizon. On April 10, federal prosecutors in Virginia accused U.K. drugmaker Indivior Plc of deceiving doctors about the dangers of its addiction treatment. Indivior denies the allegations, saying the company engaged in “an extensive education campaign” to teach doctors about recommended dosing limits.

“Working in healthcare is a public trust,” said Peter Pitts, the president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner. “If companies choose to sell drugs inappropriately to increase profits, the FDA and courts will step up to the plate and make sure they’re not able to do so.”

The case is U.S. v. Kapoor, 16-cr-10343, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

To contact the reporters on this story: Janelle Lawrence in Boston federal court at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net;Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider</s>Billionaire founder of Insys Therapeutics John Kapoor leaves U.S. District Court after being arrested earlier Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017, in Phoenix. Kapoor and other defendants in the fraud and racketeering case are accused of offering bribes to doctors to write large numbers of prescriptions for a fentanyl-based pain medication meant only for cancer patients with severe pain. A judge set bail at $1 million for Kapoor, saying he must wear electronic monitoring and surrender his passports. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

BOSTON (AP) — The wealthy founder of a drug company has been convicted of scheming to bribe doctors across the country to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl spray.

A jury found Insys Therapeutics Founder and former CEO John Kapoor guilty of racketeering conspiracy on Thursday after 15 days of deliberations.

Four other former employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company were also convicted.

Prosecutors said Kapoor and the others conspired to bribe doctors to boost sales for the opioid meant for cancer patients with severe pain.

An attorney for Kapoor sought to shift blame onto the company’s former vice president of sales, who pleaded guilty in November.

The others charged in the case have also denied wrongdoing.

Two other high-level executives, who pleaded guilty in the case, testified against Kapoor.</s>The founder of a multi-billion dollar drug company has been convicted of bribing doctors to prescribe its highly addictive fentanyl spray to patients who did not need it.

Extreme tactics, including using a sales representative to give one medic a lap dance, were used by Insys Therapeutics to boost sales of its powerful painkiller Subsys.

John Kapoor and four other former employees are now facing up to 20 years in prison on the racketeering conspiracy charges.

During the 10-week trial, jurors were shown evidence that included a video of employees dancing and rapping around an executive dressed as a giant bottle of Subsys, and heard testimony about how the company made a habit of hiring attractive women as sales representatives.

Also found guilty were; Richard Simon, the company's former national director of sales, former vice president of managed markets Michael Gurry, and Joseph Rowan and Sunrise Lee - both former regional sales directors.

An-ex sales representative testified that Lee, formerly an exotic dancer, once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor whom Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions.

Her lawyer said she will challenge the verdict.

Kapoor, 76, and the others were accused of scheming to bribe doctors around the US to boost sales of Subsys and misleading insurers to get payment approved for the drug which can cost as much as $19,000 a month.

The bribes were paid in the form of fees for bogus speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors.

It is the first conviction of a drug company CEO in the federal government's fight to tackle those they see as being responsible for fuelling the nation's deadly opioid crisis.

"This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public's interest in staunching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets," Massachusetts US Attorney Andrew Lelling said.

Kapoor's lawyers insisted prosecutors were unfairly blaming Insys Therapeutics for fuelling the drug crisis, noting that Subsys makes up a tiny fraction of the prescription opioid market.

The convictions could lead to further cases against top executives of opioid manufacturers.

Between 1999 and 2017, nearly 400,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses and an estimated two million people are addicted to the drugs.</s>BOSTON (AP) — The wealthy founder of a drug company has been convicted of scheming to bribe doctors across the country to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl spray.

A jury found Insys Therapeutics Founder and former CEO John Kapoor guilty of racketeering conspiracy on Thursday after 15 days of deliberations.

Four other former employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company were also convicted.

Prosecutors said Kapoor and the others conspired to bribe doctors to boost sales for the opioid meant for cancer patients with severe pain.

An attorney for Kapoor sought to shift blame onto the company's former vice president of sales, who pleaded guilty in November.

The others charged in the case have also denied wrongdoing.

Two other high-level executives, who pleaded guilty in the case, testified against Kapoor.</s>BOSTON — A pharmaceutical company founder accused of paying doctors millions in bribes to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl spray was convicted May 2 in a case that exposed such marketing tactics as using a stripper-turned-sales-rep to give a physician a lap dance.

John Kapoor, the 76-year-old former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy after 15 days of jury deliberations. Four ex-employees of the Chandler, Arizona-based company, including the former exotic dancer, were also convicted.

Some of the most sensational evidence in the months-long federal trial included a video of employees dancing and rapping around an executive dressed as a giant bottle of the powerful spray Subsys, and testimony about how the company made a habit of hiring attractive women as sales representatives.

Federal prosecutors portrayed the case as part of the government’s effort to go after those it views as responsible for fueling the nation’s deadly opioid crisis.

“This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public’s interest in stanching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets,” Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement.

The convictions could embolden federal authorities to bring more cases against top executives of opioid manufactures, said Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

“Paying a fine or even civil litigation is inadequate if we want to deter corporations from killing people in their pursuit of profit,” Kolodny said.

Opioid overdoses claimed nearly 400,000 lives in the U.S. between 1999 and 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 2 million people are addicted to the drugs, which include both prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and illegal drugs such as heroin.

Kapoor and the others were accused of scheming to bribe doctors across the U.S. to boost sales of Subsys and misleading insurers to get payment approved for the drug, which is meant for cancer patients in severe pain and can cost as much as $19,000 a month, according to prosecutors. The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors.

The charges carry up to 20 years in prison.

“We will continue the fight to clear Dr. Kapoor’s name,” defense attorney Beth Wilkinson said in a statement. She said the long deliberations prove it was “far from an open-and-shut case.”

A former sales representative testified that regional sales manager Sunrise Lee once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor whom Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions. Lee’s lawyer said she will challenge the verdict.

Jurors also watched the rap video, which was shown at a national meeting in 2015 to motivate sales reps to push doctors to prescribe higher doses of the drug. At the end of the video, the person dressed up as the bottle takes off his costume and is revealed to be then-vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff.

Burlakoff pleaded guilty and testified against Kapoor. Burlakoff told the jury that he met Lee at the strip club where she worked and recruited her to join the company despite her lack of pharmaceutical industry experience because he believed she would be willing to help carry out the plan to pay off doctors.

A former CEO of the company, Michael Babich, also pleaded guilty and testified against his colleagues. He said Insys recruited sales reps who were “easy on the eyes” because doctors didn’t want an “unattractive person to walk in their door.”

Kapoor’s attorney sought to shift the blame onto Burlakoff, who she said was cutting side deals with doctors. Wilkinson argued that Burlakoff and Babich were lying about Kapoor in an attempt to save themselves.

Kapoor’s lawyers also argued that prosecutors were unfairly blaming Insys for fueling the drug crisis, noting that the drug makes up a tiny fraction of the prescription opioid market.

Several doctors have been convicted in other cases of participating in a kickback scheme. A number of states have sued the Insys, which also agreed last year to pay $150 million to settle a federal investigation into inappropriate sales.

Insys said in an emailed statement that the “the actions of a select few former employees” are not indicative of the company’s work today.</s>The founder of Insys Therapeutics Inc. on Thursday became the highest-ranking pharmaceutical executive to be convicted in a case tied to the U.S. opioid crisis, when he and four colleagues were found guilty of participating in a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe an addictive painkiller.

A federal jury in Boston found John Kapoor, the drugmaker’s former chairman, and his co-defendants guilty of racketeering conspiracy for engaging in a scheme that also misled insurers into paying for the drug.

Kapoor’s 2017 arrest came on the same day U.S. President Donald Trump declared the epidemic that has caused tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually a public health emergency.

Kapoor, 76, was found guilty of running a wide-ranging scheme to bribe doctors nationwide by retaining them to act as speakers at sham events at restaurants ostensibly meant to educate clinicians about its fentanyl spray, Subsys.

Prosecutors said Kapoor also directed efforts to defraud insurers who were reluctant to pay for Subsys. His co-defendants were former Insys executives and managers Michael Gurry, Richard Simon, Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan.

They face up to 20 years in prison. They denied wrongdoing, and defense lawyers signaled plans to appeal.

“Dr. Kapoor is disappointed in the verdict, as are we,” Beth Wilkinson, Kapoor’s lead attorney, said in a statement. “Four weeks of jury deliberations confirm that this was far from an open-and-shut case.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Subsys in 2012 only for use in treating severe cancer pain. Yet prosecutors claimed doctors who took bribes often prescribed Subsys to patients without cancer, helping boost sales for Chandler, Arizona-based Insys.

Fentanyl is an especially potent opioid, 100 times stronger than morphine.

Kapoor’s lawyers acknowledged Insys paid doctors but contended he believed they were being legally paid to discuss Subsys’ benefits.

Wilkinson in her opening statement in January told jurors Kapoor had no knowledge of “side deals” being cut with doctors. She said a former executive turned government witness, Alec Burlakoff, kept Kapoor in the dark about them.

Burlakoff, Insys’ ex-vice president of sales, and Michael Babich, its former chief executive, testified against Kapoor after pleading guilty to participating in the scheme.

Jurors during the trial watched a rap video Insys produced for its sales staff describing its strategies to boost sales that starred Burlakoff dressed as a dancing bottle of Subsys.

Witnesses also testified that Lee, an ex-stripper turned Insys regional sales director, gave a lap dance to a doctor at a Chicago club while pushing him to prescribe Subsys.

Insys in August said it had agreed to pay at least $150 million in a related settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. In a statement Thursday, it said the case involved “the actions of a select few former employees.”</s>BOSTON — The billionaire founder of the Arizona-based pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics and four other top executives were found guilty on Thursday of racketeering in a scheme that involved giving bribes and kickbacks to physicians to prescribe large amounts of a fentanyl spray to patients who didn't need the painkiller.

After 15 days of deliberations, a jury in Boston federal court reached a verdict in the first-of-its-kind nationwide opioid conspiracy case, finding the CEO and founder John Kapoor guilty of conspiracy charges of racketeering.

Also found guilty were: Richard M. Simon, the company's former national director of sales; Sunrise Lee and Joseph A. Rowan, both regional sales directors; and former Vice President of Managed Markets, Michael J. Gurry.

The case in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts – in which the Justice Department first made indictments in 2016 – is considered the first in federal court involving executives of an opioid manufacturing company.

It centered on a fentanyl-based pain medication called Subsys, a powerful and potentially dangerous narcotic that is intended to treat patients with cancer suffering from intense pain.

Two other co-conspirators, Michael Babich, the former CEO of the company, and Alec Burlakoff, former vice president of sales, had already pleaded guilty to charges. Both testified against his former colleagues in the trial, which took place over two months.

Federal prosecutors argued that practitioners between 2012 and 2015 provided patients large numbers of Subsys prescriptions – including to non-cancer patients – in exchange for kickbacks and bribes from the Insys executives.

The bribes took "different forms," according to prosecutors, but were usually disguised as fees that the company paid the physicians for marketing events. The government cited in-person meetings, telephone calls and texts to inform sales representatives that the key to sales was using speaker program series to pay practitioners to prescribe the fentanyl spray.

The high-profile verdict comes amid other cases being prosecuted nationally stemming from a surge in opioid use and overdose deaths.

In a push to drive sales of the drug, the company even had a rap video produced for their sales team that featured a giant dancing bottle of Subsys that Burlakoff was shown to be wearing at the end.

"I love titration, yeah, that's not a problem," the rap song in the video goes, referring to the process of increasing doses. "I got new patients and I got a lot of them."

The bribes varied for each of the 10 practitioners referenced in the complaint, but exceeded $100,000 or even $200,000 for some of them.

The government also alleged that the company leaders defrauded health insurance companies, which they said were reluctant to approve the payments for patients who didn't have cancer.

Prosecutors said company employees – at the direction of Babich and Gurry – carried out that part of the scheme from a call center at the company's corporate offices. Sales representatives and other workers disguised the identity and location of their employer and lied about patients' diagnoses, the type of pain being treated and the patient's course of treatment with other medication, prosecutors said.

The physicians who prescribed the Subsys to non-cancer patients practiced in Alabama, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Arkansas.

Federal prosecutors called nearly 40 witnesses to the stand during the trial with the defense bring fewer witnesses and as they made their case over two days.

Kapoor, 75, was at one time found to have a net worth of $2.4 billion by Forbes. But his net worth fell to $1.75 billion in 2017 amid the indictments of Insys executives.

MORE: Insys Therapeutics sued by insurers over marketing of its potent opioid drug
Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor is found guilty of racketeering in an opioid-related bribery scheme.