CBS News reported on this (video above).
Other news items included …
Insys’s John Kapoor Is First CEO Convicted of Opioid Racketeering
Greed and Lust Drove Doctor to Push Insys Opioids on Patients
Insys founder John Kapoor convicted in fentanyl bribery case
Insys defendants bribed doctors to prescribe painkillers to those that didn’t need it
The story goes right back to October 26th 2017 when President Trump officially declared a national opioid crisis (ten’s of thousands have been dying). This guy means business and this is why a majority of Americans voted him in. To get the job done ! Unfortunately in Britain, so far, we do not have the correct political leadership. The people of this country are not being protected from these criminals that are allowed to run amuck via the medical system.
Let’s go through the Boston Globe article …
… bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive painkiller to patients who didn’t need it.
This is, so far, happening in Britain as well, with impunity. But the USA have now broken the mould. Pharmaceutical company CEO’s and executives are no longer “untouchable”. They have been convicted under the USA RICO act, the same act used to convict Mafiosi figures. This is exactly like the film The Untouchables based on a real history of combating organised crime. In that case the “untouchable” phrase referred to FBI agents deemed to be “untouchable” because they would not accept bribes from the Mafia. In this case it’s the other way round. Pharma CEO’s were deemed to be “untouchable” because no one could seem to bring criminal cases against them (rather than just the endless payouts). Current events are as equally “exciting” (if you can call it that) as fighting the Mafia, yet the issue is constantly played down in Britain with real hero’s being ignored when they are having to raise up enormous courage to fight these forms of organised crime in the medical system with very little or no help from politicians and law enforcement. Just as in the States, there needs to be the POLITICAL WILL to insure prosecutions.
Four of the five defendants were each found to have committed at least 15 acts of racketeering conspiracy
(My emphasis). There’s that word. In Britain this entire issue is treated as a “conspiracy theory”. A misconception which is of course driven by the criminals themselves to distract attention from the reality of their crimes.
“Just as we would street-level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally distributing these drugs, especially while conspiring to commit racketeering along the way,’’ Lelling said.
This is great news in the face of this sinister attempt to get everyone on these opioids as well as so called “anti-depressants” and “anti-psychotics”. Lelling defines the problem very well. By this point these pharma companies are no different from the Mexican Cocaine Cartels. Your local GP and the NHS have become drug pushers. I don’t think British people are ignorant of this, its simply the case that these mafioso-like criminals in the pharma companies, literally bribing doctors and worse, are allowed to get away with it. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) recently dropped a major bribery case against GlaxoSmithKline. Bribery ? Pharma company ? Sound familiar ? Yet, frighteningly, it’s deemed to be “not in the public interest”. This is while these criminals kill thousands upon thousands with their fraudulent practices, yet there is not the POLITICAL WILL to force a prosecution like this through in Britain. This has to change. The people of Britain deserve to be protected.
“Paying a fine or even civil litigation is inadequate if we want to deter corporations from killing people in their pursuit of profit.”
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, codirector of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.
Exactly. We’ve had this in Britain over and over. Payout after payout. Would you expect a “payout” if someone murdered your wife ? We could see these “payouts” as another form of bribery, just as South American drug cartels “pay off” people who threaten them.
Prosecutors said the five defendants ran Insys like mobsters, displaying “brazen audacity.” They pressured sales staff to persuade doctors to prescribe higher and costlier doses of Subsys, and got physicians to abandon their duty to “first, do no harm.”
This is the reality in Britain. Why is this constantly down played ? Former victims like me and millions of others are portrayed as hopeless “victims of mental illness” while they are practically gunned down in the street be a veritable symphony of Thompson machine guns … Thompson’s loaded with drug bullets. Those being crushed by “Mr. Big” are the real heroes here while British cowards, the politicians, do absolutely sweet F A about it. I pray to The Lord himself that British courage returns to our corridors of government.
As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, eight doctors and medical practitioners got more than $1.1 million disguised as “speaking fees.” Insys also set up a reimbursement center where employees allegedly lied to health insurers about patients’ symptoms to get them to cover Subsys for people without cancer.
If you don’t think this is going on in Britain and that the Serious Fraud Office already know this, then it’s time to throw some ice cold water in your face.
Among the most jaw-dropping pieces of evidence was a thumping rap video that Insys made for its sales staff in 2015 to prod employees to get more doctors to prescribe Subsys, and in higher doses. In the slickly produced five-minute video, two young Insys salesmen, who alternately wore hoodies and spiffy black suits, danced next to a giant Subsys spray bottle with a label marked 1,600 micrograms, the maximum dosage for the painkiller. “Insys Therapeutics, that is our name,” the salesmen sang. “We’re raising the bar and we’re changing the game. To be great it takes a decision to be better than the competition.”
Actually, this reminded me of the way South American drug cartels use music to launder money and to promote their operations.
In another extraordinary piece of government evidence, two former Insys sales representatives testified that they saw Lee, the former stripper and onetime escort service manager who served as a regional sales director at Insys, perform a lap dance for Dr. Paul Madison at a Chicago nightclub. The doctor accounted for the majority of Subsys sales in Illinois.
This matches with what Peter C. Gøtzsche describes in one of his books. A pharma company recorded that they had taken doctors to the opera. In reality they had been taken to a strip club.
And finally here is a quote from a Bloomberg article …
Kapoor is the first chief executive officer of an opioid maker to be convicted at a trial. The verdict signals that the public is willing to hold pharmaceutical executives accountable for the U.S. crisis and comes as thousands of state and local governments press civil lawsuits against drugmakers to recover billions of dollars spent combating the epidemic. “A conviction will embolden prosecutors in other cases,” Paul Kalb, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP who specializes in health-care fraud, said in an interview.
Bloomberg: Insys’s John Kapoor Is First CEO Convicted of Opioid Racketeering.
(My emphasis). And that’s the ball game. Game Over folks ! The USA have achieved “the impossible”. Pharma CEO’s were playing at being Al Capone. They thought they could get away with it …. forever. But now their worst nightmare has come true. None of their usual dirty tactics worked and one of their own has been convicted. I look forward to seeing more prosecutions in the future.
2,061 views