Insys Executives' Racketeering Trial Jury Starts Deliberations

(Bloomberg) -- A Boston federal jury has started deliberations in the racketeering trial of Insys Therapeutics Inc. founder John Kapoor and four other former executives over the promotion of the opioid painkiller Subsys.

Federal prosecutors called 39 witnesses in the trial that spanned two months. The defense took two days and featured a handful of witnesses, including a patient who vouched for the benefits of Subsys. Neither Kapoor nor the other defendants testified.

On trial with Kapoor, 75, are former vice president Michael Gurry, ex-national sales director Richard Simon, former regional sales director Joseph Rowan and one-time stripper turned Insys sales manager, Sunrise Lee.

They’re accused of running a speaker’s program that the government alleges was a vehicle for bribing doctors and an organized effort to dupe insurers into covering the wave of Subsys prescriptions generated by the scheme.

The case is U.S. v. Kapoor, 16-cr-10343, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

To contact the reporter on this story: Janelle Lawrence in Boston federal court at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider

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