The same day President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency, the federal government said it arrested a wealthy pharmaceutical company executive on charges of bribing doctors to needlessly prescribe his firm’s opioid painkiller.
The Department of Justice arrested Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor, 74, in Phoenix, it said Thursday. Kapoor was charged with using bribes and fraud to prop up sales of a pain medication called Subsys, a fentanyl spray typically used to treat cancer patients suffering excruciating pain.
Kapoor’s arrest comes nearly a year after former Insys CEO Michael Babich and five other onetime executives were arrested as part of an alleged “nationwide conspiracy.”
The Justice Department claims that Kapoor and other Insys executives offered bribes in the form of kickbacks to doctors who wrote “large numbers of prescriptions” for patients, many of whom did not have cancer. The Department also alleged that the executives defrauded insurers by forming a “reimbursement unit” dedicated to obtaining prior authorization from insurers who were reluctant to pay for the drug.
“These Insys executives allegedly fueled the opioid epidemic by paying doctors to needlessly prescribe an extremely dangerous and addictive form of fentanyl,” Phillip Coyne, special agent in charge for the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a press release.
Insys’ stock closed down nearly 23% following the news of Kapoor’s arrest, pushing the company’s valuation down to $417 million. It was a stunning retreat, considering the company was valued at over $19 billion as recently as 2015, when concerns about the company’s practices were first raised. (Insys is now also developing its own drug to reverse opioid overdoses.)