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 Natalie Levine, who worked at the Arizona-based drugmaker from 2013
to 2014, plead guilty in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut, to
conspiring to violate a federal anti-kickback statute, prosecutors
said.
Karen Hill, a sales representative who became the company's district
manager for the Miami region, pleaded guilty in federal court in
Mobile, Alabama to conspiring to violate the same anti-kickback law,
court records show.
The pleas came amid ongoing investigations of Insys related to
Subsys, an under-the-tongue spray intended for cancer patients that
contains fentanyl, a highly addictive and regulated synthetic opioid.
Federal prosecutors in Boston in December announced charges against
six former Insys executives and managers, including Levine's
husband, former Chief Executive Officer Michael Babich, in
connection with the probes.
Prosecutors said Babich and others led a conspiracy to bribe medical
practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe Subsys to non-cancer
patients through payments disguised as marketing event and speaker
fees. They have pleaded not guilty.
Insys has said it is working toward a settlement with the U.S.
Justice Department. Several other people affiliated with Insys also
face charges.
Levine's lawyer had no immediate comment. Lawyers for Hill and
Babich and representatives for Insys did not respond to requests for
comment.
In Levine's case, prosecutors said she used a sham speaker program
to pay a Connecticut nurse, a New Hampshire physician's assistant
and a Rhode Island doctor to prescribe Subsys.
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While Insys ostensibly designed the speaker program to educate
healthcare professionals about Subsys, its primary purpose was to
reward healthcare providers who prescribed Subsys, prosecutors said.
They said the medical providers earned thousands of dollars in
kickbacks through the speaker events, which were usually just a
gathering of friends and co-workers at high-end restaurants,
prosecutors said.
According to court papers, Hill admitted to facilitating kickbacks
through the same speaker program to two Alabama doctors, Xiulu Ruan
and John Couch, and Florida medical practitioners to prescribe
Subsys.
Ruan and Couch were sentenced in May to 21 and 20 years in prison,
respectively, after being convicted on charges related to their
operation of what prosecutors called a massive "pill mill."
Both Levine and Hill face a maximum of five years in prison when
they are sentenced.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis and
Lisa Shumaker)
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