The sales video parodied A$AP Rocky’s hit single “F—in’ Problems.”
Jurors for a racketeering, fraud and conspiracy trial in Boston involving former Insys Therapeutics CEO John Kapoor saw a sales video made by the pharmaceutical manufacturer that showed company employees rapping about increasing prescription dosages and dancing with an individual dressed as a bottle of its powerful fentanyl spray Subys.
Kapoor and four other former Insys managers and executives are accused of conspiring to pay doctors in exchange for prescriptions for Subsys, a fentanyl-based medication intended for use by cancer patients with severe pain. Kapoor and the other defendants have denied the charges.
In the video, a parody of A$AP Rocky’s 2012 single “F—in Problems” which prosecutors said was shown during a national sales meeting in 2015, salesmen and other individuals rap about “titration,” a process by which employees persuade medical professionals to increase the strength of a prescription until their patients reach a certain dosage.
At one point in the video, the person dressed as a Subsys bottle – which is notated with 1,600 micrograms, its highest dosage – is reportedly revealed to be Insys’ then-vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff.
In November 2018, Burlakoff pled guilty to a charge of racketeering conspiracy, and according to NBC News, is expected to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against Kapoor.
Another former Insys executive, ex-CEO Michael Babich, testified during the current trial that Kapoor encouraged employees to push for high dosages of Subsys so they would continue taking the drug.
Attorneys for Kapoor claimed that Burlakoff was the architect of the kickback scheme, which according to CBS News, handed out more than $2 million to 18,000 doctors in 2016 alone.
Kapoor’s lawyers also alleged that Burlakoff and Babich sought to reduce their sentences by providing false testimony against Kapoor, and have claimed that prosecutors have tried to link Insys to the national opioid crisis, noting that Subsys represents a fraction of the prescription opioid market
Prosecutors, however, claim that Kapoor personally recruited physicians through expensive dinners and high-payment speaking engagements in order to ensure their commitment to higher dosages of Subsys. Kapoor, who resigned from Insys’ board of directors in 2017 after being arrested, along with Burlakoff, for their role in the kickback scheme on the same day that President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.
Subsys, which is reportedly 100 times stronger than morphine, has been alleged to have played a role in hundreds of overdose deaths since the Food and Drug Administration approved it for use as cancer treatment for breakthrough pain in 2012. The drug, which helped to make Insys the best performing public offering in 2013, is now one of several opioid-related assets for which Insys Therapeutics, Inc., is currently seeking a buyer.