On May 2, 2019, a jury sitting in the District of Massachusetts convicted five senior executives of Insys Therapeutics, Inc. (Insys) with racketeering conspiracy in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1962(d). Among other things, the evidence at trial demonstrated that the Insys executives operated an elaborate scheme to bribe physicians to write prescriptions for the drug Subsys, a fentanyl spray, in greater numbers and at higher dosages. The bribes took the form of sham speaker programs that purportedly paid physicians for peer-to-peer education programs but in fact were simply payments to physicians to write more prescriptions of Subsys. In convicting the defendants, the jury found that they conspired to violate predicate statutes, including the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), honest services fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud. CSA charges are typically brought against drug dealers; the Insys convictions were the first CSA convictions of pharmaceutical executives.
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