In mid-March 2018, five New York City doctors were arrested and charged with accepting bribes and kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics to prescribe high volumes of Subsys, a fentanyl-based cancer pain medicated spray. The five doctors – Gordon Freedman, 57, of Mount Kisco; Jeffrey Goldstein, 48, of New Rochelle; Todd Schlifstein, 49, of Manhattan; Dialecti Voudouris, 47, of Long Island City and Alexandru Burducea, 41, of Little Neck – all practiced in Manhattan and pled not guilty in federal court to an unsealed indictment charging them with several charges, including conspiracy.
The five doctors allegedly collected tens of thousands of dollars working for Insys’ “Speakers Bureau” from August 2012 through 2016. According to prosecutors, the Bureau was originally created to educate doctors and other practitioners about Subsys, but in practice, it was used to induce doctors to prescribe large volumes of the spray by paying them speaker program fees. As has been typical in these situations, the speakers did not conduct any speeches, but the events were typically social affairs with no actual educational program.
For their participation in these events, the doctors earned kickbacks anywhere from $68,000 to $308,000 and all five were – at some point – among the top twenty prescribers of Subsys nationwide. However, prior to joining the Bureau, all five of the doctors rarely (if at all) prescribed the drug.
In addition, it is alleged that in 2013, Goldstein and Schlifstein went to a strip club with Roper, an Insys sales manager; Serrano, an Insys sales representative; and an unnamed Insys executive, and Insys covered the $4,100 bill, which included lap dances.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said the doctors reneged on their oath as doctors to put the care of their patients above all else. He said they accepted bribes in the form of speaking fees in exchange for prescribing millions of dollars’ worth of a potent fentanyl-based spray that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and used their patients as an “instrument for profit.”
While all five are out on personal recognizance bail, the only one that has returned to work is Alexandru Burducea, who is required to provide weekly reports detailing the prescriptions he writes to federal investigators. The other four surrendered their licenses to prescribe controlled substances.
Insys released a statement,
“The company continues striving to take responsibility for inappropriate actions of some former employees and has invested significant resources over the last several years to establish an effective compliance program and build an organizational culture of high ethical standards. Intending to learn from past events, we also continue working with relevant authorities to resolve issue related to inappropriate actions taken by former employees.”
This case is in addition to the federal case pending in Boston where seven former Insys executives and managers have pled not guilty to charges related to participating in a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe Subsys and defraud insurers into paying for it.