Criminal Trial Of Opioid Peddling Drug Company Execs Goes To The Jury

Closing arguments are done and the criminal trial of pharmaceutical executive John Kapoor is now in the hands of the jury. Deliberations begin on Monday.

The federal government has accused Kapoor and his four co-defendants of bribing doctors and deceiving insurance companies. In bringing criminal charges against corporate executives, the federal government is widely seen as trying to demonstrate that its acting aggressively against drug companies and the role they allegedly played in the opioid epidemic.

'Driven by greed'

During the 10-week trial, federal prosecutors depicted the one-time billionaire as a man "driven by greed." During closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Yeager told jurors in Boston's Moakley Federal Courthouse that Kapoor put patients' lives at risk to ensure his own financial success.

Kapoor, the founder of Insys Therapeutics, allegedly oversaw a marketing strategy that paid doctors over a million dollars to prescribe Subsys in high doses — often to patients who did not need it. Subsys is a highly-addictive opioid painkiller that's up to 100 times stronger than morphine.

Then, prosecutors claim, Insys set up a call center to ensure the expensive medication was covered by insurers. At the call centers, Insys employees allegedly pretended to be from doctor's offices and fabricated diagnoses and other information necessary to get the medication approved.