The New Jersey attorney general amended a consumer-fraud and false-claims lawsuit against Insys Therapeutics Inc. to add the company's billionaire founder, John N. Kapoor, as a defendant.
Insys, based in Chandler, Ariz., and Kapoor are accused of illegally pushing the powerful opioid fentanyl drug Subsys, approved only to treat cancer pain, on patients with routine pain.
Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino said Kapoor and Insys put hundreds of lives in jeopardy and "led to the death of at least one New Jersey resident," a Camden County woman who was prescribed Subsys for fibromyalgia. The lawsuit says two New Jersey state employee health-benefits plans paid $10.3 million to reimburse Subsys prescriptions between 2012 and 2016, while the state Workers Compensation Program paid $300,000.
Insys sold $74.2 million worth of Subsys in New Jersey between 2012 and third quarter 2016. The lawsuit says Insys, led by Kapoor, aggressively pushed "off-label" uses of the opioid painkiller, which is 80 times more powerful than morphine.
Last Thursday, Kapoor pleaded not guilty in federal court in Boston to criminal charges that he bribed doctors to prescribe the fentanyl-based spray. Kapoor and his subordinates are accused of paying speaker fees and other bribes to doctors to prescribe Subsys, and tricking insurers to approve payments by misleading them about patients' pain diagnoses.
