Opioid case promises huge dose of pain for Insys Therapeutics
Insys’s new managers are trying to pivot out of the opioid business into something slightly less controversial – cannabis-derived drugs
New York — Sitting in a Boston court in a dark, pinstriped suit, the former top sales executive at Insys Therapeutics, Alex Burlakoff, listened as federal prosecutors read out crimes he and the company had allegedly committed. Insys had bribed doctors and their employees with payments for sham medical events that often turned out to be parties. Doctors who didn’t write prescriptions for the company’s powerful opioid were cut off from the company’s money. There were lavish dinners, strip-club visits and gun-range outings, all of which led to booming sales of one of the world’s most powerful — and dangerous — pain drugs. Burlakoff was prepared to plead guilty, his lawyers told the judge on November 28 — there was even more evidence that prosecutors hadn’t listed, they said. He’s one of the first drug-company executives charged in the mounting legal backlash to the US opioid epidemic, which was tied to about 50,000 deaths in 2017. Burlakoff faces as many as 20 years in prison, though h...
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