Federal Prosecutors Say Insys Therapeutics Owes $300M in Restitution

John Kapoor, the founder of Arizona-based opioid pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics Inc., and other former executives that were recently convicted of lying to insurance companies and bribing doctors to enhance sales of their opioid painkiller Subsys should pay $306 million in restitution, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Prison sentencing will be addressed in January, Bloomberg reported.

Prosecutors said Kapoor and four Insys ex-executives “defrauded and misled insurance companies to extract payment for these opioids,” and that the “Defendants committed these crimes to boost profits, and did so at the expense of victims nationwide.”

Federal prosecutors are seeking restitution of approximately $137 million for Medicare, $170 million for insurance companies and $10,000 for some patients who paid out-of-pocket expenses on claims.

The Phoenix drug maker filed for bankruptcy protection in June to deal with mounting lawsuits over its unethical behavior.

Insys showed deceptive behavior in 2016 when they donated $500,000 to help defeat Prop 205, the recreational cannabis initiative in Arizona. Then, in 2017, they received FDA approval to distribute their new drug Syndros, a synthetic form of THC that the company secretly developed, all while fighting against the legalization of marijuana in Arizona.