Question of the Week — Should the CEO Be Held Accountable?: Lessons from the Insys verdict.

In a shocking first, a federal jury has convicted an opioid-company CEO and other top executives of a criminal racketeering conspiracy. Insys founder and chairman John Kapoor and four other executives bribed doctors to overprescribe a highly addictive fentanyl painkiller, and ran a phony call-center to defraud insurance companies into paying for the expensive drug. Although the company itself had already paid over $150M for the wrongdoing, prosecutors were not...

Founder and Owner of Pharmaceutical Company Insys Arrested and Charged with Racketeering

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team The founder and majority owner of Insys Therapeutics Inc., was arrested and charged with leading a nationwide conspiracy to profit by using bribes and fraud to cause the illegal distribution of a Fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients experiencing breakthrough pain. "More than 20,000 Americans died of synthetic opioid overdoses last year, and millions are addicted to opioids. And yet some medical professionals would...

March 20, 2020

A doctor in Florida has paid the United States $850,000 to settle claims of violating the Anti-Kickback and False Claims Acts.  In exchange for prescribing a powerful but highly addictive fentanyl spray, Subsys, to her patients, Dr. Parveen Khanna allegedly took illegal kickbacks from manufacturer Insys Pharmaceuticals, Inc that were disguised as speaker fees, then submitted claims for reimbursement to Medicare and TRICARE in violation of program rules prohibiting payment...

2019 Whistleblower of the Year Goes to... Anonymous CIA Whistleblower on Ukraine

The results are in, and Constantine Cannon’s 2019 Whistleblower of the Year award goes to the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower who laid the groundwork for what has become the biggest threat to date for the Trump presidency.  She or he is the CIA analyst who filed an anonymous complaint alleging President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.  Perhaps the most...

Top Ten Whistleblower Developments of 2019

By any measure, 2019 was a Very Big Year for whistleblowers.  Our annual Top Ten lists identified 2019’s most significant financial recoveries by whistleblowers, as well as recoveries in enforcement actions at the federal and state level involving government procurement, healthcare, financial, tax, and other types of fraud.  But the numbers, as impressive as they are, can’t tell the full story of the impact that whistleblowers had in 2019.  Below,...

Opioid Executive Sentenced to Over Five Years in Prison for Role in Healthcare Fraud Scheme

Insys Therapeutics, an opioid manufacturer whose main product is Subsys, a spray from of fentanyl that is 100 times stronger than morphine and cost tens of thousands a month, is in the news again. The company and its former CEO, John Kapoor, have been facing a mountain of legal issues in the past three years. Last week, in a decision that most of our readers agree with, Kapoor was sentenced to...

Vote Now for the 2019 Whistleblower of the Year

THANK YOU FOR VOTING FOR THE 2019 WHISTLEBLOWER OF THE YEAR. POLLS ARE NOW CLOSED AND WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT Anonymous CIA Whistleblower on Ukraine IS OUR 2019 WINNER! Whistleblower Insider wants to hear from you on who should be honored as our 2019 Whistleblower of the Year. As in past years, we are especially interested in those individuals who best encapsulate the qualities of the typical whistleblower...

Top Ten Healthcare Fraud Recoveries of 2019

Consistent with the trend in prior years, the bulk of the Justice Department’s fraud and false claims recoveries in 2019 stemmed from healthcare fraud matters.  And again, most of the funds recovered arose from cases originated by whistleblowers under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act.  Not surprisingly, seven of the top ten spots in our list involved false claims act lawsuits against drug companies or pharmacies, reflecting...

January 21, 2020

Patient Services, Inc., a foundation that operated pharmaceutical patient assistance programs, will pay $3 million to resolve claims that it unlawfully enabled pharmaceutical companies to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients in the form of co-payment assistance for patients who took the companies’ drugs.  PSI was alleged to have worked with the drugmakers to funnel their “contributions” to patients who took the company’s drugs, instead of using the contributions for purposes...

DOJ 2019 Fraud Statistics Tell Story of the Critical Role of Whistleblowers

The Department of Justice released its annual report of civil recoveries for fraud and false claims against the U.S., showing recoveries over $3 billion in settlements and judgments for the fiscal year ending September 2019. The data released by DOJ show the critical role that whistleblowers play in securing these recoveries for the government:  of the $3 billion recovered, over $2.2 billion – 72% – was recovered in cases initiated...