Sales rep for drugmaker avoids prison
Insys Therapeutics employee accused of paying kickbacks to get physicians to prescribe fentanyl
A sales representative for Insys Therapeutics, a drugmaker whose win-at-allcosts marketing is blamed in part for the opioid epidemic, was spared prison Monday for paying kickbacks to induce physicians in Connecticut and elsewhere to prescribe the company’s powerful fentanyl painkiller.
Natalie Levine, married to former Insys CEO Michael L. Babich, was described Monday in U.S. District Court in New Haven as a bit player on a corporate sales team that federal prosecutors call a criminal conspiracy.
A month ago, a federal jury in Boston convicted company founder John Kapoor and four senior executives of a racketeering conspiracy for creating a corporate scheme to boost sales of its painkiller Subsys by bribing physicians and defrauding Medicare. Babich, like his wife, pleaded guilty before trial. All have yet to be sentenced.
Insys agreed earlier this month to pay $225 million to settle federal investigations into its business practices. It also filed for bankruptcy. The company continues to face hundreds of lawsuits across the country by groups and governments seeking compensation for the costs of addiction. At least ten Connecticut cities and towns are among those suing.
Levine faced a five-year sentence, but was given consideration by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton for her prompt decision to cooperate and help investigators unravel the convoluted Insys sales strategy for its oral spray Subsys. The FDA approved Subsys for breakout pain in adult cancer patients who had developed tolerance for other treatments. It was labeled with an explicit addiction warning.
Levine said the Insys executive sales team devised a phony program under which sales reps such as Levine were required, ostensibly, to recruit physicians who would pitch the benefits of prescribing Subsys to fellow medical professionals at Insys-sponsored medical seminars.
In reality, Levine said legitimate seminars were rare. Rather, she said she and her Insys colleagues hosted host lavish entertainments and made cash payments to induce physicians and other medical practitioners to prescribe the opioid spray.
Levine pleaded guilty to bribing or paying kickbacks to practitioners in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
Heather Alfonso, a nurse practitioner at a Naugatuck Valley pain clinic, testified at a Boston trial that, that over a year and a half from 2013 to 15, she nearly doubled her $82,000 salary with what she collected in kickbacks. Alfonso said she got $1,000 for