![]() | Expensive dinners, a trip to a gun range, a paid vacation with strip club outings and stock options. Those were the perks provided to a Palm Beach County doctor from Insys Therapeutics for prescribing fentanyl, a recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit claims. The lawsuit against Insys Therapeutics alleges they hired a dental hygienist for the sole purpose of providing sexual favors to unidentified male doctors so they would prescribe its fentanyl spray, Subsys. The Insys manager who put the strategy into action was Alec Burlakoff, vice president for sales at Insys. Today, Burlakoff, along with Insys’ founder, CEO and other top executives, face federal racketeering and fraud charges. | ![]() |
![]() | The lawsuit shows how the pay-for-scripts fentanyl strategy took root. The litigation was kept under wraps for five years until the U.S. Justice Department joined the cause in May. The lawsuit focuses mainly on two Palm Beach County doctors: Dr. Bart Gatz and Lisa Banchik of Boca Raton. They received $229,000 and $72,000, respectively, in 2½ years through a speaker event program Insys used to illegally bribe physicians to prescribe Subsys. Gatz was one of the top prescribers of Subsys in the US from August 2013 through 2015 and No. 7 on the money list for speakers fees. He denies doing anything wrong. | ![]() ![]() |
![]() | Insys’ business plan worked wonders for the bottom line: $650m in revenues over a three-year period. It was also a deadly business. The company reported at least 908 deaths over five years in which its product Subsys was the primary suspected cause. Federal prosecutors in a court filing yesterday said they plan to seek a revised indictment against Insys (INSY.O) founder John Kapoor and six former executives and managers that will “streamline” the case. | ![]() |