Feds charge pharmaceutical sales manager in kickback scheme for drug prescriptions

Federal investigators said Thursday that a pharmaceutical sales manager helped organize a kickback scheme that paid tens of thousands of dollars in illicit fees to medical professionals in Connecticut and elsewhere who prescribed a powerful painkiller his employer manufactured.

The pay-off scheme probably cost the Medicare program millions of dollars by inducing physicians and other medical professionals to prescribe the painkiller to patients who were not eligible for the treatments under health federal guidelines, authorities said.

FBI agents on Thursday arrested Jeffrey Pearlman, a district sales manager for Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, for paying kickbacks in relation to a federal health care program, which carries a sentence of up to five years. Pearlman, 49 of Edgewood, N.J., collected a $95,000 quarterly bonus at one point in 2013 based on his success at selling Subsys, a powerful, fentanyl-based oral spray approved by the FDA to manage break through pain experienced by cancer patients.

Insys and Subsys were not mentioned by name in legal filings associated with the arrest, but multiple officials confirmed the identities.

Pearlman is accused of arranging for $83,000 in kickbacks to just one nurse who was authorized to write prescriptions by her ex-employer, the Comprehensive Pain and Headache Treatment Center of Derby. Heather Alfonso, an advanced practice nurse, is cooperating with federal investigators.