Drug company used rap video to push sales

BOSTON — Employees at a drug company accused of bribing doctors rapped and danced around a person dressed as a bottle of the highly addictive fentanyl spray in a video meant to motivate sales reps into getting patients on higher doses.

The video was shown to jurors this week in the closely watched trial in Boston of Insys Therapeutics Inc. founder John Kapoor and four other onetime executives, including a former exotic dancer who prosecutors say was hired as a regional sales manager even though she had no pharmaceutical experience.

They’re charged with scheming to pay doctors bribes and kickbacks in exchange for prescriptions of the drug meant for cancer patients with severe pain. Kapoor and the former other executives of the Chandler, Ariz.-based company have denied wrongdoing.

The video, titled “Great by Choice,” was shown during a national sales meeting in 2015 to encourage employees to talk doctors into prescribing higher doses, prosecutors said.

In it, suit-clad sales reps rap to the tune of a song by the artist A$AP Rocky about titration, the process of increasing the strength of a patient’s prescription until it reaches the adequate level.

At one point, the person dressed as the bottle of fentanyl spray takes off his costume to reveal then-vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff. Burlakoff pleaded guilty in November to racketeering conspiracy and is expected to testify against Kapoor.

The video is the latest eyebrow-raising piece of evidence in the trial, which has put a spotlight on the federal government’s efforts to go after those it says are responsible for fueling the deadly drug crisis. The trial is expected to last several more weeks.

INSYS THERAPEUTICS 2015 The video was shown at a meeting to encourage workers to talk doctors into prescribing higher doses, officials say.